The 1% Trap: How a Small Fee Can Cost You 32% of Your Investment Returns Over Time

I had a client who was retiring, and we were in the process of rolling over his 401(k) and pension. In our conversations, I learned that he had purchased a fixed annuity at his local bank a couple of years prior.

Since they wanted to consolidate all of their investments, they were more than comfortable transferring everything to me – but I knew that they had just taken out the fixed annuity a couple of years prior.

My inclination was that there was probably some type of surrender charge attached to it. I inquired about this to the client, and they were under the impression that there was not a surrender charge and that they could take their money; principal and interest, and walk away at any time.

Why did they believe that you ask? Because that’s what the advisor had told them. The advisor had told them they could take out the investment, take their guaranteed interest at any time, and walk away with everything without penalty. Now, once I heard that, as much as I wanted to believe them, I knew something sounded fishy. I had them call the bank and talk to the advisor to clarify how it actually worked. As it turns out, it wasn’t that way at all.

Yes, they could walk away with the principal, but all the interest that they accrued would be forfeited, and in their case, it was approximately $7,000 that they’d be leaving on the table.

Obviously, we weren’t about to give up a big chunk of money just for the sake of consolidating, so we left it as-is to revisit when the surrender period expired- which was four years away! Lesson Learned:Just because the advisor tells you something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. If something sounds too good to be true, ask for it in writing.

Ugh, I'm so frustrated. I thought we were doing a good thing for ourselves, but now I think we are trapped. Full backstory: A friend recommended their "financial advisor" to us. We thought, "Great! We've been meaning to meet with someone... we have a kid on the way, and my husband isn't putting away anything toward retirement since starting his new job in August."

So, we set up a phone meeting with this friend from Northwestern Mutual. She gives us a call, and we end up speaking with her for over an hour. She asks us lots of questions—what we are looking for (we tell her we want to set up retirement stuff for my husband and explore maybe putting some of our $17k in savings into CDs or mutual funds). She asks us questions about when we see ourselves retiring, how "aggressive" we are, etc. All good stuff. We hang up and agree to talk again in a week when she will give us a plan.

Cut to a week later, we're having another phone meeting, and she emails me THE PLAN. It's many, many pages, basically explaining what we have vs. what we will need if we want to retire. But she mostly just talks about how we need more life insurance. "Sure," we think. Maybe we do need more life insurance. She explains that my husband needs at least $1 million in life insurance and I need $500k (we both already have $150k policies through work). This is news to us, but we hear her out. She also spends a ton of time explaining how we need to have disability insurance. Again, we think, "Maybe we do." So we spend the greater part of an hour and a half talking about life insurance and long-term disability insurance. She briefly mentions we should be maxing out my Roth IRA and could perhaps start one for my husband.

We hang up with plans to talk again in a week and sign some paperwork. Over the next week, my husband and I really realize that we don't want disability insurance (she quoted us paying like $170/month), and we didn't feel we needed more life insurance at this time (she had us paying $340/month in permanent and $125/month in term). But we were okay maxing out my Roth at $450/month. We also wanted to explore stocks/bonds/CDs/mutual funds more (like we initially told her). So, I sent this all to her in an email before our next meeting. She responded with, "OK, great! Sounds good... talk soon."

Cut to another phone meeting, where she would talk with us about our updated PLAN. She emails us the NEW PLAN while we're on the phone. LITERALLY NOTHING IS CHANGED. She proceeds to spend the next hour convincing us why we need life insurance and disability insurance. My husband and I are both pushovers and listen to the whole spiel again. Every time we bring up a reason why we don't feel like we need it, she tells us how wrong we are. I mean, she's the professional, we thought. I still expressed my disinterest in disability insurance but wasn't completely closing the door on life insurance. She kept guilt-tripping me about "what will your kids have if one of you dies!"

By the end of the conversation, I hadn't agreed to anything except to roll over my Roth to Northwestern. She had me give her my bank routing info to get "the paperwork started." She also said she was going to be sending me a bunch of stuff to sign in the next few weeks, but it was just to apply for things... nothing was set in stone. We could just see what the insurance company was going to quote us, and we still weren't committed to anything. "Ugh, fine," I thought. She said a small amount might be taken out of my checking, but it was just to make sure "the charges are able to go through when we start moving more money to my Roth."

So a week or two goes by, and I see a ~$30 charge go through for "disability insurance"—WHICH I TOLD HER I DIDN'T WANT! And I just realized... this doesn't feel good. It doesn't seem right. She's not listening to what we want. She still hasn't addressed our interest in CDs/mutual funds/stocks, which we initially came to her for. I spent the weekend doing my due diligence—spending a few hours on r/personalfinance, NerdWallet, just googling in general about what my husband and I should really be doing. I decided to call the whole thing off with Northwestern.

It's been a nightmare trying to cut off ties with her. I was kind and courteous through the first couple of emails and subsequent texts: "We really appreciate your time but have decided to pull out. Again, thank you." She is being evasive and manipulative, telling us we are completely wrong and still need to work with her. At this point, I have just ignored any further communication. It has just been a really bad experience.

But THE REAL REASON I still feel like I can't completely ignore her is that I asked her several times when I should expect to see a refund for the disability insurance THAT I DID NOT WANT AND DID NOT AGREE TO. She just dances around the question. I'm also worried because I've gotten a "bill" (no charges yet) in the mail for the $340/month in permanent, $125/month in term, and $170 in short-term disability.

Is there anything I can do to make sure I don't get charged for this? If I communicate with her any further, she just tries to talk to us about why we need to invest with her, etc.

WHAT DO WE DO? She is being shady AF.

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.