Totally agree. I have an advisor who is a CFP and more. Best thing I ever did. I am a proponent of fee based advisors.
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For those who really don't want to manage their own money or are unable, a fee based financial advisor is a good choice, but recognize that Advisors are in business to make money, for themselves first. Should the client do well, fine but its not their main objective.
We had an Advisor for years and were invested in GIC's and Mutuals, of which they received a commission. Over the entire period our portfolio pretty much remained static. Only when we took control of our own finances and focused our investments towards generating a reliable and growing income did we see significant results. It did not happen over night but grew slowly over the years and as mentioned we are now retired and financially worry free. Even if the market should crash as in 2008\2009 I expect no loss of income.
Investing is a personal matter and each person should review and make their own choices.
You had a bad advisor then. They are not all in it for the money. A fee based advisor does not get a commission. They charge a fee based on the portfolio value. Mine charges less than 1%. I make money. They charge a fee. Their goal is not solely $$. Again, you had a bad advisor.
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Actually he was one of the better one. Very open and explained his fees and commissions up front. I had no problems with him personally. What I didn't like were the Mutuals. As he wasn't a broker we sold the mutuals and transferred our funds to our brokerage account.
Yes, the information is quite valuable!
I would also say that you can get some high-yielding ETF's created and managed by the Bank of Montreal and some other fund management companies which use more advanced strategies to raise the return you can get in dividend income.
These strategies work in your favor at tax time when they show a big portion of that income as RoC - Return of Capital is tax-free income.
I would suggest you also look at the technical aspects of the various markets and the kind of limited risk strategies which trading some of these financial vehicles can offer. The TD-Bank has a special trading platform called Think-or-Swim. After I learning from a friend how to use the demo version with virtual funds, a partner and I was able to apply his favorite index option spread trading strategy to multiply a humble amount into a respectable trading account. Some of the numbers are in this brief report.
Yes, your own finances are a personal matter, but so is your education, and if one uses a full-service broker or a paid advisor instead of learning how to work with ones credit or ones funds, how to invest them in ANY of the financial tools, or trade them with the help of all the various order types, either in a registered, a cash or a margin account so as to make full use of the loan value of ones holdings, you have not invested enough in your own financial education to be able to trade any market online successfully - not just stocks but also Precious Metals
A very important part of that education is to handle your finances not like a casual game, but like a serious business. You have to know how to read price charts so as to place your limit orders intelligently, place fixed or trailing protective stop orders and not hesitate to close a position when it's called for.
Taking a small loss once in a while is part of the course of managing your own money like a pro - paying a full service broker or some financial advisor is not ... learn how to be one yourself, it's your life and your money so invest in your education to become proficient in it yourself ... :)
It makes a lot of sense to have a margin account instead of using strictly a cash account. One can just borrow against the equity in ones own account when the need presents itself or keep it fully paid for.
Using margin credit has also to be seen as a smart way of potentially raising the overall yield in an account, especially when some of the ETF's produce more on dividends than the interest rate being charged on the margin loan ...
A dividend paying position can be made into a DRIP, where the cash paid out gets used automatically to add more units to the position, or one can simply let the regular dividend income reduce the margin loan balance so one can add more units on margin at an appropriate time to provide for the value of the investment portfolio to continue to grow into the future at a measured rate.
Good advice
I tried stocks a few times in the past but was never able to make money, instead lost what I invested. May be it is not for everyone.
Mike - to make good money with any financial instruments, may they be, ETF's, bonds, equities or derivatives, you have to have studied them all & gained some experience trading/investing on a smaller scale before hoping to have a few workable strategies which will take you to financial independence down the road ...
Consider this alternative!