Economics from a people first point-of-view

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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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.

Suze Orman’s Merrill Lynch office

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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If you can follow the threads of a mystery story and sometimes even figure out whodunit, you can find work in this economy. You can uncover new business opportunities and/or find the best places to look for a new job. You can tell when it’s time to leave a job too. Economics can help you do this.
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