"Safe investments"

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 🙃

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%.

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.