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Beware the Financial Planner
He’s a two-bit hustler MBA notwithstanding
I gotta laugh at these Yahoo News come-ons that talk about the four mistakes people make when hiring a financial adviser. Here’s my take: The biggest mistake you’ll make when hiring a financial adviser is contacting the mother fucker in the first place.
Let me give you a little personal history therein. Over six years ago when I was about to purchase a 5-year bank CD at 2.5% (the rate at that time), my brother somehow convinced me that using his financial guru would be a better plan. I contacted that guy who then promised me that he could put my stash in safe corporate bonds that would yield in the neighborhood of 4% with virtually no risk.
I told him not to invest my money in anything that would yield anything less than the face value at maturity (though I did realize that if I wanted to cash in before the maturity date, the bond could be of more or less value than that face). So what happened? He put half my gelt in mutual funds — something I told him not to do.
During the pandemic, 8 of those funds liquidated at significant capital losses. And now 6 years later, I am at a net loss in every single mutual fund in which he placed my money. And so — goodbye to that genius at UBS — and off to Ameritrade where nobody offered advice and I had no issue…
