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Trading My 401k for a Questionable Insurance Policy

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It was once suggested to me by a “financial advisor” to cash out my 401k and reinvest it into a whole life insurance policy.

ISSUES
Incorrect Advice
Conflicts of Interest

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My 1 experience with a financial advisor 18 years ago. I did my high school senior project on investing. So my “mentor” was this financial advisor. I had 5k from my grandmothers to invest in (my great grandmother has mutual funds for all the grandkids so I cashed mine out and my grandma also threw in $1,000 for me)

Anyway.

His can’t miss these are about to be the next big thing picks were Nokia and Pioneer energy services. So Nokia only ever went downhill, I bought I think around $16 and sold at $5 some years later. Pioneer it actually had tripled at one point to $18 then a year later it was $2 then they went bankrupt so bye bye to that money.

I was really into computers back then, I had built my own and talked to him about how everyone in gaming was using Nvidia GeForce graphics cards. He has no interest in it. I can still hear his whiny voice saying how computer industry moves so fast and there will always be some new better faster thing on the market so that would be bad to invest in. And how Nokia was going to rule the cell phone market for years and years.

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ISSUES
Incorrect Advice

Trading My 401k for a Questionable Insurance Policy

Read full story

It was once suggested to me by a “financial advisor” to cash out my 401k and reinvest it into a whole life insurance policy.

Read more
ISSUES
Incorrect Advice
Conflicts of Interest

My First Financial Advisor's Churning Taught Me to Take Control of My Investments

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A lonnnng time ago, my financial adviser (my first brokerage account) churned my account. That means that he traded frequently, just for the purpose of generating commissions. In those days, there was no such thing as the low deep discount commissions that we pay today (and no internet). When I eventually figured out what he was doing, I began the process of learning about the financial markets and I have done it myself for 40 years.

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