Is your financial advisor stealing from you?

Most are just monkeys 🐒 on a string following a long set of guidelines. What you need is someone who understands math and questions every single guideline. Some of the guidelines don't past the test and end up costing their clients money every year.

This is a very small percentage that can actually do this. In fact my financial advisor is one of the majority monkeys. Occasionally I need to remind him to manage my account my way or he will start managing it like the rest of his clients. But he is a very good and smart person with a good heart.

I wouldn't trust a good percentage of them, find one that gives of the right vibe.

In the fall of the year 2005 and when the real estate market was going crazy and all kinds of real estate investors were giving speeches and masquerading as advisors, I attended a local seminar about real estate investing.

I already had my rural land property/investment business model developed and most of my current advisors in place. A mortgage broker was speaking about loans for real estate.

These so called mortgage financial advisors were recommending people take interest only loans to fund their real estate purchases because the rates were low and it cash flows easily. There are many problems with this dumb advice.

Here are some:

• Debt at some point has to be paid back. Anybody who has done any investing and used debt with real estate, stocks, or a business knows this. Delaying indefinitely paying off a debt is foolish.
• Even if an interest only loan for any type of investment cash flows today, it might not tomorrow, next month, or next year. The investment might quit paying. For example:
• The tenant lost his/her job. The property flip did not work as the foundation crack was not discovered during the euphoria when the property was bought. Funds (from more debt) were needed to fix the crack when an engineer who looked at the property to buy it discovered it.

We are invested with a big name financial investment company but have a good relationship with our financial advisor. Until today I never thought about how much it cost. The rate is 1.35%. I always thought that was 1.35% of the profit but apparently it’s the entire balance. Our rate of return last year was -8%. Yes that is negative.

Well on top of this we were charged our fee of $3600. I have no idea what to do. My husband and I both have IRAs a few stocks, a CD, 2 529s for our kids. How do I get this money out and how can I invest this. I had luck with vanguard in the past when I was single but had some tax issues once we got married that is when we went to the financial advisor. Edit: so the -8% is actually April 2022-April 2023. My actual rate for jan 2022-dec31 2022 was -23.4% plus they still charged the 1.35% so in actuality in 2022 I was down 24.75%!!!!! I feel like such an idiot.