When To Fire Your Financial Advisor (Your Letters)

Today we’ll throw out our regular playbook to focus on what’s really important: your burning financial questions! From Ginny, who wants to become interested in finance (plus a husband who has a BIG man-crush on OG), to Craig and his wife who just inherited a big sum of money….and to Chris wants to know if he should use his savings to pay off his car note before his wedding, we made you and your questions our BIGGEST focus today.

BUT, that’s not all… we still managed to tackle two big headlines. Making ripples across the financial sector, one ex financial advisor has been sent to prison for seven years after stealing $300,000 from a 97 year old. How do you avoid that mess? We’ll show you where this situation went off the rails. Plus, in our second headline, a series of mistakes has the Omaha Public School’ pension fund scrambling after a $771 million shortfall. Headlines like these don’t exactly inspire trust in the financial industry, so we’ll share our big ideas on saving for retirement without walking into a mess like this.

A letters episode doesn’t mean we’re skipping out on the Haven Life Line! Jared is at a critical point with his financial advisor, who hasn’t had the best returns in the past couple of years. Is it time for Jared to give his financial advisor the boot? We can’t make the decision for him… but we can tell him our thoughts.

As always, we’ll still save some time for Doug’s (completely epic) trivia.

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Show Notes:

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LinkedIn

Thanks to LinkedIn for supporting Stacking Benjamins.  Go to LinkedIn.com/sb and get a $50 credit toward your first job post.

Check out LinkedIn

Grammarly

Thanks to Grammarly for supporting Stacking Benjamins. Get 20% off a Grammarly premium account, go to Grammarly.com/sb.

Check out Grammarly

Headlines

• Financial ‘adviser’ gets more than 7 years for stealing $300K from 97-year-old (Michigan Live)
• OPS’s $771 million pension shortfall a product of ‘mind-boggling’ mistakes, World-Herald investigation shows (Omaha)

Letters

Check out the letters we’re answering from the mailbox below!

Andrew

I’ve heard the argument that investing in small cap value stocks has historically returned more than the broad market, which makes sense if you hold shares in individual stocks. However, since this style of investing is largely accomplished by investing in mutual funds or ETFs, wouldn’t these vehicles be required to sell any stock that had price appreciation to the point of no longer being considered small cap or value and then replacing that stock with other companies that were on the downtrend falling out of the midcap range in order to meet their investing objectives?

I have heard the converse of this argument as a positive for investing in S&P 500 funds as these funds naturally sell off losers when those companies fall out of the S&P 500 and replace them with companies that are on the uptrend, so wouldn’t this mean that small cap value funds/ETFs are always holding stocks that don’t see price or P/E change, selling winners, and buying losers leading to poor performance overall?

I haven’t learned anything from your show yet, but I believe there is always a first for everything and am hoping this question can provide that first for me. Thanks!

Craig

Hey Guys! My wife and I just inherited $50,000. We are both 30 with only a mortgage in debt. What would you recommend we do with the money? Thanks as always for your help, even though I don’t learn anything 🙂

Holly

My daughter is opening a Roth IRA. She has about $2500 in W2 employment wages. Can she add to this years Roth with babysitting and yard mowing money? I would like her to reach $3000 so she can at least qualify for Admiral shares from Vanguard.

Ginny

My husband has a man-crush on OG. Aside from that, my husband loves all things finance. He knows it. He is smart about spending and budgeting. The problem is that money talk bores me to tears, yet, I know it’s important to get a grasp on at least the basics. How can I become more interested in the topic of our finances?

Chris

Should I payoff my $28k car loan @ 3.49%? I have $48k in savings. That holds my $20k Emergency fund. I have a have a wedding to pay for (est. 20-25k), not all at once, in Oct 2019. No revolving credit card debt. Roth 401k maxes out at the end of the year. 10% of each paycheck goes automatically into savings. Love the show! Especially the round table episodes.

Haven Life Line

• Jared’s advisor has been getting consistently worse returns than Jared’s 401k and his wife’s target date IRA. Is it time for the advisor to go?

Join us Wednesday!