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Strategies & Market Trends : Dividend investing for retirement -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JimisJim who wrote (20130)	6/25/2014 11:17:31 PM
From: robert a belfer	Respond to of 34328

LOL, we had a guy like that around here a few years ago. I think he was also Edward Jones. At the time I was looking for someone to guide my wife if my cancer won so by virtue of that and the fact he was a USNA grad I gave him a meeting. I printed out all or our accounts, redacting the acc # etc and gave them for him to review. He did not even look at them. He told me he would sell everything and put her into mutual funds. I was so not impressed. At least he picked up the tab for lunch.

To: JimisJim who wrote (20130)	6/26/2014 9:47:28 PM
From: B.K.Myers	2 Recommendations Recommended By JimisJim Steve Felix Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 34328

JimisJim, Thank you for sharing that story. I am familiar with Edward Jones because I have had a couple of computer programming contract with them. They still train their financial advisors to go door to door to meet new clients, and require them to keep a log of their contacts. They are very aggressive and set high goals for their financial advisors to meet. Those that do not perform up to their expectations are quickly weeded out. Unlike a lot of big brokerage firms, Edward Jones builds their business around small 2 person branch offices consisting of a financial advisor and a branch administrator. The branch offices are independent profit centers, supported by the home office in St. Louis, MO and Tempe, AZ. Although there is a mentoring program at Edward Jones where the more experienced and successful financial advisors help the newer ones get started, it is still very much built around the individual branch office. I do find it a little surprising that he did not understand DGI. I guess that will come with time, if he is able to survive the first few years. When we moved my mother-in-law to an assisted living home we met with 5 different firms (Edward Jones was NOT one of them) to help us decide the best way to invest her money. Four of them recommended what was essentially the same proposal, a mixture of mutual funds. It was like they did not listen to what our needs were and simply gave us their "standard" investment advice. My wife and I were very disappointed until... Finally a financial advisor from Merrill Lynch came back with the perfect proposal. We needed income to pay for the assisted-living home but wanted to preserve capital so that her children would have an inheritance. We realized that she only had a few more years to live, so capital gains were not needed. His perfect proposal to us was to purchase 5 bonds with sufficient yield to provide enough income to pay her living expenses. Each bond was purchased with an attached death put so that we would not lose the initial investment. As luck would have it, my mother-in-law lived through the financial crash in 2008 and the value of the bonds plummeted (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in particular). But because we had the death puts, when she finally died a few years later, we received the full face value of bonds. It turned out to be the perfect solution for our situation. It is hard to find an advisor who can tailor an investment plan to meet an individual's needs. The Merrill Lynch advisor's ability to hear and understand our needs and then tailor a specific plan to meet our unique needs was a pleasant experience. We still keep some of our funds with him although I prefer to personally manage the majority of our investments. The ideas that I get from the Dividend investing for retirement have proven to be as valuable as that Merrill Lynch advisor’s advice. I would like to sincerely thank everyone that posts on this thread. B.K.