mickeyd
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this article. I began by skimming it and kept finding nugget after nugget. It does not seem to have any earth-shattering news or data, but it is a well written piece that I got a lot out of.
I especially liked this one. I have attended about 20 of these seminars and have always been very skeptical but well fed. I always recall what Scott Burns said once about free-lunch seminars~ "Enjoy to free meal. But don't drink the Kool-Aid."
Retirees are vulnerable because they're looking for ways to stretch their income. Plus, many seniors are afraid to ask questions, consult with their children or complain to regulators. "A lot of people think they'll lose their independence if they admit they were taken advantage of," says Barry Lanier, chief of the bureau of investigations for the Florida Department of Financial Services. When Finra surveyed senior investors last year, only 56% of the victims who admitted to being defrauded said they had reported the incident.
The money that seniors have amassed is "usually irreplaceable," says Jacob Zamansky, a securities lawyer in New York City. "They can't afford to lose the principal, so they generally need to be conservative. Anything that doesn't meet that investment objective should be viewed very suspiciously."
One night in 2005, Virginia LaValley called her son, Ken, and told him she had just made a new investment that was paying 7% annually. "I don't know a whole lot about investing," Ken admits. Still, he thought that his mother, then 75, was mentally sharp enough to make her own decisions. But when co-workers told Ken that earning a guaranteed 7% was unrealistic, he figured "something wasn't right."
I especially liked this one. I have attended about 20 of these seminars and have always been very skeptical but well fed. I always recall what Scott Burns said once about free-lunch seminars~ "Enjoy to free meal. But don't drink the Kool-Aid."
http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-reti...Investment-Scams?mod=retirement-post-spendingBe skeptical of any claims made at a free-lunch seminar, a common sales tactic to get seniors into a one-on-one meeting. And don't trust a salesperson just because he or she has a professional designation that focuses on seniors. Such credentials sometimes require little more than paying a fee and passing an easy take-home test. (Look up the requirements for professional designations at Finra.org.)