As the old adage goes: “If you listen to a financial broker, you’ll be broker, financially’. These vendor trained financial experts only have one thing on their mind; their commission. You should have only one thing in mind when it comes to your retirement; growth. Unfortunately, those two things never seem to be the same.
How many financial brokers accurately predicted the crash of 2008? Very few. Yet, unfortunately, 85% of investors still use these professional guessers. The following are 5 sales pitches that should cause you to turn away and run if you hear them:
1) We are conservative. What does this mean? When did they become conservative? Before or after all the tech stocks crashed in 2000? What if you’re 55 years old, do you want to be conservative with your accounts or are you willing to be more aggressive? Besides, unless they can accurately predict what return you will receive in the future from a stock, then they are just guessing, which is, in my opinion, a very risky rather than conservative option to financial planning.
2) We provide estate planning for you. The only planning they are doing is how they plan to sneak in fees to take away from your profit potential. Very little money in the first few years goes to your life insurance cash value account and you will have to pay fees to get any of your money out of your account when needed. If you multiply these losses times 10 years, you can see how gigantic these ‘losses’ become. Where does this money go? To the company that sold you that plan. You need a retirement plan that will grow your money, not your Insurance Companies’ bank account!
3) We offer low cost trades. Follow the numbers to see how great this works for your broker and makes YOU broker. Lower cost trades lead to more trades, which ultimately makes your broker more money from transactional fees. These higher costs for them mean lower returns for you. A recent study at Cal Berkley also shows that the more trades an individual makes the more likely he or she is to lose money. Overall, lower trades lead to lower yields. If you can find an investment vehicle that works, stick with it, and watch your profits soar.
4) We only work with the Big Boys. Wall St. likes to throw in names of the bigger companies as proof that these investments will be solid. You know, top performing companies, like GM, or Lehman Brothers, or Bear Sterns. How about Washington Mutual? Or good ol’ Enron? Find out when these geniuses told their clients to pull their money out of these companies. Chances are after they had already lost a ton of money. The size of a company has nothing to do with their success. Even old reliable Berkshire Hathoway gave a 60% return from 2002 to 2007. Again, unless you can guarantee a return, you’re just using past performance to guess for the future.
5) We believe the markets will (fill in the blank). No one knows what the stock market is going to do or how it will perform. The only thing anyone can guarantee in the stock market is how it performed in the past. Anyone making a guarantee of future performance is just plain lying to you.
Actually, if any financial guesser suggests putting your money in the stock market, you should run!
The safest way to plan your retirement is to have control of your own money and invest in a program with a guaranteed interest rate. Without being able to accurately determine your future value, how could anyone plan for their retirement? If you want to receive a high interest rate like you would receive if the stock market provided you with a good return along with the safety and security of investing in a bond or CD, then you should be looking into a Discounted Diversified Notes.
Realbridge Solutions LLC offers you a way to really diversify by taking your money out of the unstable market and putting it in discounted real estate notes which pay a fixed interest rate and are backed by hard assets.
Combing minimal risk with higher interest rates is the smartest way to invest in a tumultuous economy. How else can you accurately plan for retirement unless you can calculate to the dollar? With a Discounted diversified Notes, you are able to grow your retirement account even during a deflationary period.