How to tell financial adviser to go away?

[Shewillbemine]

You seem to have a lot of unwanted people who hang around your house.

What's going on there?

[Lone Warrior]

You seem to have a lot of unwanted people who hang around your house.

What's going on there?

I wonder if his/her roommate recently went to jail and left $50k to invest and the sale people smell easy blood.

Once in awhile I have people, usually young people, ring the doorbell in the evening around 5 p.m. I just assume they want to sell me magazine or some crap so I don't open it even thought they probably know someone is home due to the TV blaring. A few times I can't see who's at the door so I could 15-20 seconds after the last ring to crack my curtain or blind. If I see someone already down at the other end of my 200 yards driveway, I tapped the glass to get their attention and go back watching TV. If I am bore, I'll get in my truck and back out of the driveway, drive around 1-2 times to see how many of them there are and if any of them are cute, then I drive back home to see if they want want to knock again.

Recently, I put a gate up at the end of my driveway but the remote doesn't have a range that far so it is annoying to walk half way down the driveway to lock it so it stays open. I had driven back home to find to find people at my door and I just lock the damn gate as I am entering. It is also fun to watch the look on their face when I roll into the garage and lower the door while the gate closing. There is no fence so they technically just need to cross the high-grass ditch but the look on their face is priceless.

This is Texas so I can do whatever I want on my property. A nice thing about living in a subdivision with many retirees is that some of them are always on high alert so I don't have to worry about paying high door for surveillance system. I usually find at least 1 neighbor strolling past my property when I get home if there had been an unwanted or uninvited solicitor. The neighbor(s) won't say anything but if I greet them with more than just hello, they'll go into some pretext greeting and story so they can talk about how they saw something while I was out. I normally pick them up a nice book or some trinket on a following business trip to show I appreciate they look out for me. Over the years, it has been much cheaper than security system and I sleep well knowing no-one had been inside my house except the people who built it.

[Gailete]

At one point we lived next door to a three generational family with an aunt and uncle thrown in the mix as well. If I door home and forgot to turn off my lights the lady of the house was over immediately to tell me. If I dropped a glove between getting out and getting to the door she would notice it, pick it up and bring it to the front door. At times they would even sign for a UPS package when they knew we were both gone from home. We had to go out of town on a business trip and although we locked the house, we knew Karen and her eagle eye would be keeping an eye on the place. Very nice to know something would be aware if something had gone wrong. In exchange if I saw her walking home from the grocery store, a good mile away, in the middle of winter I would pick her up and she was always thrilled. They didn't have a car. Karen wasn't by far the sharpest tack in the box, but she sure knew when to call for help. At one time one of the uncles came over with a bag of meds and asked me to call for an ambulance. So I did. He had a bit of a speech impediment so I couldn't follow what he was saying, but they didn't have a phone and knew I would do this favor. So the ambulance crew came and took him away. He died the next day. Usually my nursing vibes would have picked that up, but I just could figure out what he was saying and since he had walked over and his color was good, I didn't think he was that bad off.

Eventually they moved away to cheaper housing and we got a maniac that eventually set the house on fire with two women, 4 children including an infant and six dogs inside! Our house was only about 10' from theirs so we were ready to evacuate if needed. I learned it is much better to have true neighbors in every sense of the word, than creeps. It may not keep all the door knockers away, but it is nice to know that if they are hanging around where they don't belong the neighbors will step in and make sure that I know.

I can't stand door to door salesmen. I only fell for one once, when recuperating from my first knee replacement. I was bored silly and I hear this voice saying "there is a black man at your door'! (our town at that time I don't think had a single black family). So I went to see what was up and he was selling some cleaning product. He was highly entertaining and I shelled out the money to buy a bottle and figured if it didn't work for me, I could charge it off to entertainment. He knew he was in a place that wasn't fully integrated (not even a little integrated) so he got the elephant in the room acknowledged immediately! Hopefully at this point, he is head salesman somewhere earning $200K+ a year.

[colby99]

An advisor with the following attributes should be a good bet. This criteria would have steered you away from Ameriprise.

I. CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER

These advisors have met rigorous requirements of education, examination and experience and abide by a fiduciary standard of care.

II. FEE ONLY

These advisors are paid a percentage of assets under management and/or fees for financial planning, an arrangement that minimizes conflicts of interest.

III. COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL PLANNING

Obtaining investment management in the absence of comprehensive financial planning is legal, but it is not advisable. You can get everything right on the investment front, and still fail to achieve your financial objectives.

IV. PASSIVE INVESTING

It is difficult to really examine the available academic studies and conclude that active investment management is a good bet. The likely impacts of active investment management are increased investment expenses and higher taxes not marketing beating performance. Active investment management is the attempt to outperform the market by identifying underpriced securities and/or to time the market (knowing when to get in or out).

V. INDEPENDENT/REGISTERED INVESTMENT ADVISOR

Independent advisors, those not affiliated with a national brand, are far more likely to rely upon referrals to grow their business. And a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) has volunteered to be held to the higher fiduciary code of conduct that such a registration entails.

Now, you may not have enough assets to meet the minimums that an advisor with this profile requires. Minimums are often $1 million and rarely under $250,000. If this is the case, Google Vanguard. This well regarded mutual fund company offers financial planning for a fee, albeit not face to face. Understand that the time required to offer comprehensive financial planning may be difficult to justify on a 1% annual fee with clients that have fewer assets. Some companies that offer their services to such clients push very high cost investments that lock you in for a period of years. This is to be avoided.