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A Simple Mistake That Cost Me Thousands in Home Buying Benefits

Original source

When I was preparing to buy my home, my financial advisor who arranged the mortgage told me that the lender ‘didn’t accept’ help to buy ISA’s, so told me to transfer the money to my savings account and withdraw the full sum in bulk.

I later found out that’s not how it works…! I missed out on the government grant. I would have reported but I have no evidence as the advice was via email while I was using my work email address of a workplace many workplaces past!

Still bugs me when I pass his office 🙃

ISSUES
Poor Communication
Incorrect Advice

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A Simple Mistake That Cost Me Thousands in Home Buying Benefits

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When I was preparing to buy my home, my financial advisor who arranged the mortgage told me that the lender ‘didn’t accept’ help to buy ISA’s, so told me to transfer the money to my savings account and withdraw the full sum in bulk.

I later found out that’s not how it works…! I missed out on the government grant. I would have reported but I have no evidence as the advice was via email while I was using my work email address of a workplace many workplaces past!

Still bugs me when I pass his office 🙃

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ISSUES
Poor Communication
Incorrect Advice

My financial advisor seems to ghost me, is this normal?

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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.

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Whole life insurance before...your 401k?

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Not advice that I was given, but I've worked with plenty of clients who were told by someone else to buy whole life insurance BEFORE investing into IRA or 401(k)...young, no kids, no spouse...just bad financial advisors looking for commissions.

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