Economics from a people first point-of-view
April 13th, 2010 — Investing
(part 1 of 3)
This is the first of three prospectus pitfalls to watch out for.
You may have been thinking of jumping back into the market and buying some mutual funds. You know by now how the value of investments can drop drastically. But you may not know where to find all the mutual fund fees that will also reduce your returns on your investments.
April 1st, 2010 — Investing
Broke and Broker (part 2)
This week I received a comment pointing out that broker’s commissions have changed a lot since the time of my week at Suze Orman’s Merrill Lynch.
That’s very true! Over the past couple decades financial advisors have switched to charging general advisory fees rather than taking commissions on sales of financial products to customers. Creators of mutual funds also charge fees now instead of using commissions.
But do you know how much those fees will really cost you over time?
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March 24th, 2010 — Investing
Who really benefits from your financial advisor’s advice? It isn’t always you. That’s a shocking fact I learned from working at Merrill Lynch a decade before Suze Orman did.
A long, long, long time ago I worked at the same place where Suze Orman got her start. That was at the downtown Oakland office of Merrill Lynch.
Unlike Suze who decided to go for an interview for a permanent job as a broker at Merrill Lynch after her investment advisor lost all her money in the market, I was simply broke.
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