How My Wife’s Financial Planner Mismanaged Her Investments for Years
Sounds like my wife’s ex financial planner. I warned her after meeting him once before she gave him her money but she trusted him because her dad uses him (btw her dad has less than 1% of his net worth with this guy). Took me five years of doing yearly reviews with her to finally pull the money and put in index funds.
They put her in an annuity, impossible to liquidate private reits and my favorite was summer of 2020 after qe was in full force they put a third of her money in bonds. The underperformance was insane. Had it just been 10% worse than an index fund I’d be so happy.
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Trading My 401k for a Questionable Insurance Policy
It was once suggested to me by a “financial advisor” to cash out my 401k and reinvest it into a whole life insurance policy.
Leave the clowns at the circus
Put it this way, have you ever been to a circus? You have! Well, remember those people who made you laugh? Finance advisers can also do this. But they can also make you cry. Here’s a funny story—true as well.
We had a clown, visited us as they do for many years, charging us fees, etc. Also, fees that were not revealed to us, which we discovered later. Well, after 13 years of having him sponge off us, we realized he had F.C.ED us, big style. He said the investments were not taxable as they were a specific type of investment.
Well, we realized these were taxable when we questioned him, asking, "Why did you set these investments if they are taxable?" He ran away and left us with a tax bill of 13 years, plus interest.
People will say, "Why did you not make your own enquiries into what is taxable and what is not?" Well, the answer to that is because we were paying a professional.
Well, it cost us dearly, so make sure it doesn’t happen to you. Leave the clowns in the circus!
My REIT Nightmare
What's the dumbest piece of advice a financial adviser has given you? Put your money in this “safe” REIT…. lost half of it AND the fund was “frozen” when the banks did their nasty back in 2008; had to wait for 5 years to get even that back.
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