OAG
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Well against my better judgment I agreed to a Financial Review by a local bank where I had recently opened a Checking Account and Credit Card Account (due to $275 cash "gifts" they provided to do so). Well I knew it was a fishing expedition on their part for new "fee based" clients to "manage". I explained to the head reviewer that I had two annuities (Military Retirement and Social Security) that gave us about $50K a year against expenses of less than $30K; that we had fully paid medical care from Medicare and the Military Tricare for life program; and that we had a few "fixed income" CD's. They asked about these CD's very quickly and I handed over an accurate but sanitized listing of 62 CD's paying an AVERAGE of 5.71% return and amounting to a total value of about $700K. I asked "can you improve on that rate for this ladder of insured CD's maturing over the next 7 years?" the response was "No, we cant". Then they got into our mortgage and car loans and we responded we don't have any of those things and don't plan to ever have them in the future if we can help it. I told them the only reason I had agreed to discuss our situation with them was the phone call the account manager made to me on Friday even tho I had said that I was happy with our situation as it was but heck, maybe you can show me a way to improve the situation and discuss fully insured investments that would pay more than I was receiving now. Then we got down to why I was not using their CC much; and I explained that Pentagon FCU has one that pays 5% monthly cash rebate on gas and 1.25% other purchases and that their CC did not do this much. Needless to say the interview was just about over at that point and the head guy left. When we left the account manager was scratching his head and was actually was looking at the Pentagon Federal Credit Union site on his computer and had asked for and written down the NFCU site address on his little pad. I promise this is the very last "financial makeover" interview I will agree to. Thanks ER Forums for the financial education over the past year or so.