"Financial Planners"--the grifters of the business world

One man I knew inherited from his parents their entire and sizable estate, which was put in trust; and there was a trustee named by the last surviving parent to settle the debts of the estate, sell some real property, and pay a set amount of money per month for life to the trust beneficiary.

Zero. ($0). No monthly payments happened. A month, three, six, a year passed. My friend was ultimately told the decedent’s debts exceeded the trust assets, and there were no funds left in the trust. Debts included substantial fees for financial advisors, the trustee, and lien(s?) on property my friend had no way of knowing even existed.

I said, “get a lawyer. Now!”

Nobody would take the case. My faith was totally ruined and I now do not have the belief that it is a good idea to appoint anyone as a financial advisor, least of all anyone working in banks as financial advisors or as trustees. Even with a scrupulous outside and unaffiliated CPA accountant, and regular financial reports by that objective third party CPA, there is no way to understand if a financial advisor or trustee is or will be faithful, because most heirs and beneficiaries don’t even know how to understand even simple financial reports. It seems to me that trusts as a means of conveying property after death just make trustees and lawyers wealthy at the expense of bereaved people who are the rightful heirs.

The sizeable estate my friend was to inherit was somehow mysteriously bled dry. I figure the best thing to do if you are wealthy is to give your money away while you are alive to those you wish would have it after your death. There is too much opportunity for uncheckeable theft, otherwise. Heirs and beneficiaries are not as financially savvy as financial advisors, and are vulnerable prey.

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.

What are some signs that your financial advisor is stealing from you?

• They don’t provide timely statements of activity on your account.
• They give you excuses if you want to move money around.
• They can’t explain withdrawals from your account.
• They can’t provide third party account statements to support internally reported information.