Leave the clowns at the circus

I went to see one about setting up a private pension because I don't get one through my employer (employed through an offshore company). Got charged about 150 quid for them to go away and "research" some options for me (probably very little research to be done; they already have a standard set of funds that they use through Openwork). For the first year they wanted 35% of my contributions.

The fund that they "found" for me (something Graphene, can't remember the name of it and I'm not at home to check) consisted of several individual funds to apparently lessen the risk of a single fund manager going to shit. In total the funds consisted of about 70% UK equities (why?), had rubbish past performance when compared to a global index tracker and would've cost me well over 2 or 3% per year (can't remember the exact number sorry), plus about 1% per year to the financial advisor for "management" after the initial 35% for the first year.

Does anybody else find cold calls from financial advisors extremely annoying? I have 3 accounts.

Schwab holds retirement accounts and it does what I need it to do. I use TD as a brokerage and it does what I need it to do. They fulfill their purpose and never bother me and are great. But I also have bank account w Bank of America / Merrill lynch and I get a call from them every week from a different dillhole offering me his financial services and I find it so annoying and violating bc I know what’s happening is that these back office bungoles are looking at my accounts and holdings, which is targeting me as a good call for their prospecting.

It’s like I’m paying them to upsell me on their services, which they have never actually are able to explain why I need

I’ve had initial chats with two, and met two at parties. No horror stories, but all four left me certain that I wouldn’t trust them with a penny of my money. The two I met socially gave me the strong impression they had no idea what they were doing and just parroted dubious soundbites like “you’ll never lose money in property” or “you can’t go wrong with bonds”.

One had been in agriculture before getting a job at his father-in-law’s advisory firm.

I tried to chat to them about more complex post-recession low-interest rate stuff and they kinda changed the subject and just went back to soundbites. The two I actually spoke to about getting advice, one didn’t know how to deal with crypto and promptly ghosted me, the other also appeared to lose interest once it was clear I wasn’t just gonna buy life insurance and commission products. All four did the 1980s sales-y bullshit like using my first name constantly (one of them calling me by the wrong name over and over).

So (while I know every industry has its bad apples), my own personal experience has been that 4 out of 4 had strong scammy used car salesman / estate agent vibes. So basically, they’re the last people I’d hand over money to.I manage my ~£0.5m portfolio myself.