Paying for Underperformance

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 had lots of commission fuelled bad advice from so called ‘financial advisors’.However one piece of advice really sticks out as the worst and also the turning point in my investment life.

The first part of the scam was my crooked accountant recommending an Executive Pension Plan at around age 34.

A pension planner was wheeled into my office and I was signed up and within a few days was then paying 250 GBP/Mth into this wizard investment that would give me a pension at age 60 totalling a zillion GBP p.a. OK first two rip offs, crooked accountant got a nice lump sum and commission for the next 10 years and pension planner got a lifetime rake off of everything I paid into the plan. In fact for the first two years all of the contributions I was making went into their pockets.

Fast forward a few years and the pension planner is back and well guess what my plan is underperforming so I need to increase the payments to 1,000 GBP per month. Holy shit ! I sign the papers and away we go. Now being curious, I do some investigation about how much commission I was paying. For the next two years half of my extra payment goes straight to the pension guy.

That was 9,000 GBP so I could see where my pension was going, exactly nowhere except into the advisors trouser pocket. Well that was it payments stopped and I realised I was being ripped off on everything, pension, investment plans, insurance the whole nine yards. Roll on 6 months I had my own pension fund and I was the trustee, I also had an insurance broker business with a very important client, me.

I never looked back and educated myself and will never ever in a million years take any shit from so called financial advisors. Look after your own money because if these guys were any good they would not need money from a loser like you. Remember Bernie Madhoff, there are plenty more out there.

I am 27 years old and recently inherited about $700,000. My family has a financial advisor through a more prominent firm, but I can not trust the guy. He is charging +2% fee on our total sum. He got a lot of customers, so I feel like he does not have enough time/energy to focus on my wealth.

I have been studying/reading and thinking about doing it by myself through Vanguard's index funds. I'm thinking put majority of my money in couple index funds and let it sit for years without making adjustments. However, I am pretty scared that I'm going to blow all my money.

Some say I should hire a financial advisor, but it seems like FA are all trying to do whatever is in THEIR best interest (although they say that they will be my fiduciary).

Edit: I'm sorry. I don't think I was clear regrading the fee he is charging us. 2% is one time fee as long as I leave it in that designated mutual fund. What I meant by total sum is $ I will put into a mutual fund and after that i guess there are some "hidden" fees. I guess the fee is set by each mutual fund company and he gets a little portion of that 2%.