Human Financial Advisor Horror Stories

Stay away from FirstCommand! They sell themselves as "military-friendly financial advisors," but in reality they're just commissioned salespeople.

I thought I was doing the right thing as a new officer for my financial future by promptly going down to the local First Command office and signing up for their investment and life insurance products (they sponsor events on base and their "advisors" are prior military, so they must be the good guys, right?), but it took me 12 years to realize I was being taken for a giant ride.

One of the funds they had me in was so awful that when I went to liquidate it as part of transferring my assets to Vanguard, I found out that the fund had lost so much in value and so many people put in redemption requests that the fund had stopped distributions (TFCIX).

I've since moved all my assets to Vanguard, but I still have $2K in TFCIX languishing back at FirstCommand because I still can't redeem those shares to this day. Bottom line is that you can do a lot better for yourself elsewhere; don't give these guys your hard-earned money.

I once gave a major fund control of 100G for one year. I got a 2% return. They made more money in fees than I did in ROI. Meanwhile, the rest of my money invested in index funds earned 10%+ after fees.

My partner put 50k into investments via a well known financial services company during Covid and saw a decent profit (unexpectedly quick, but that’s Covid I guess). We have only seen shrinkage since then.

I put about 100k down about 2 years ago, it has only dropped since. My FA has never spoken to me, in fact he moved off my account without telling me, and the new advisor didn’t even intro themselves. When me and my partner tried to get time to speak to the new person it took weeks.

When we eventually got them on a call they were fine but didn’t give us much concrete, there were follow ups to be done, the FA has not followed up in 3 weeks. I emailed a week ago asking for a date for these, no response. Is this normal for FAs? In my industry I would be fired immediately by my clients for this level of service (specifically talking about the service not the profit on the investments as I’m aware that’s a long game).

Are all FAs generally incredibly slow and hard to reach? I ask as this person belongs to a large reputable firm. This far they have taken my money and charged me fees despite my investment never generating profit and never speaking to me either. While my wife has had slightly (she has spoken to the advisor once before I invested) better service, and had profit a while ago, the service is so poor.

A lonnnng time ago, my financial adviser (my first brokerage account) churned my account. That means that he traded frequently, just for the purpose of generating commissions. In those days, there was no such thing as the low deep discount commissions that we pay today (and no internet). When I eventually figured out what he was doing, I began the process of learning about the financial markets and I have done it myself for 40 years.