Invitations to Financial Seminars/Dinner

[jj]

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this but we have been deluged with invitations to these "Seminars" (read sales pitches) by local financial planners since DH retired.  Most of them you know are going to be awful, annuities and the like, but one caught my eye recently and we signed up.  It was on Modern Portfolio Theory, very interesting, I thought. 

We were just chewing through our steak when they got to the sales pitch.  Showing how by using their superior analysis to find asset classes which don't correlate well with each other you could take a 7% withdrawal rate from a retirement portfolio and still see the portfolio balance on the graph streaking into the heavens while leaving the ordinary (i.e. not managed by them) diversified portfolio running out of funds after 21 years.  At that point I was ready to run. 

Now comes the hard part, rebuffing all the calls from the salesmen.  There's no such thing as a free lunch after all....

jj

 

[MooreBonds]

Now comes the hard part, rebuffing all the calls from the salesmen. There's no such thing as a free lunch after all....

jj

Hey jj...turn the tables on them. Tell them that you will give them asset-backed loans for just 7%, which they can then use to invest using their superior analysis, and they are then able to keep all of that stratospheric growth!

 

[Sheryl]

I went to one once.



Worse than the timeshare sales pitches. 

 

[Nords]

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this but we have been deluged with invitations to these "Seminars" (read sales pitches) by local financial planners since DH retired.

Schwab puts on a good show. I was impressed at how they managed to have a Mandarin-speaking rep seated next to one of their Mandarin-speaking customers, and their "top" bond guy seated next to another customer who was 29 years into his 30-year bonds...

The interesting thing is turnover. When you go to these dinners every 6-12 months it's not unusual to learn that the entire crew from the last presentation has already left the company. So much for personalized service!

 

[education]

I avoid these "no pressure/just sharing information" get-togethers at all costs. No such thing as a free lunch sure rings true here.

These people work on commission and someone has to foot the bill for the food and meeting room. These representatives tend to operate like vultures and, stereotypically, love to wear down the uninformed and the aged.

Professor

 

[Nords]

These representatives tend to operate like vultures and, stereotypically, love to wear down the uninformed and the aged.

Well, thank goodness none of that applies to me!

My FIL occasionally receives Schwab's invitations and we get Business Week or Fidelity invites every year or two. To begin with, they're held in places that I'd never be allowed into normally visit, and the architecture/decor/views are impressive. You can't just wander into our local convention center to look around, but when you're carrying an invitation (like Wayne & Garth's backstage passes) then you can explore just about averywhere.

It's quite educational to attend these "free" events to learn more about crowd investor psychology and marketing to the blissfully ignorant. We enjoy figuring out the logic & math fallacies in the presentations and, if a rep strikes up a conversation with us, to ask more pointed questions about their products. When we start to compare their offerings to a diversified ETF portfolio, they lose interest in the discussion and we get to enjoy our meal in peace.

It's also a good personal checkup. If you see a bunch of your investments up on their screens, then it's time to take a hard look at your portfolio...