Myles of Investments

Read about my successes and failures. Learn from my experiences and gain insight without losing any cash!!!

Lesson: Catching a Falling Knife
Lesson: Currency Exchange
Lesson: Mutual Fund
Lesson: Paid to Wait
Lesson: Pricing in a Downturn

This is where you’ll find find my Blog. I will comment on the latest news relating to investing, real estate, and the financial markets.

Free Financial Planning Advice

When I started this site I wanted a place where new and seasoned investors could go for free financial planning advice and knowledge. This page is based on my own real life investing and knowledge gathering. There are many ways to obtain free financial planning advice, such as, take out books at your library, talk to relatives or friends who have experience, and of course, go to the bank to discuss options.

The bank’s are often the first place people go when looking for free financial planning advice, and while the bank employs financial professionals, be warned that your advice is not exactly free. If you didn’t know, most financial institutions pay a commission to their financial professionals to sign up people to put money into a specific mutual fund. This means they are selling and promoting a specific fund, on behalf of the bank. So, while your financial institution may offer many great mutual funds as options, you should be sure that you know what the costs are, and think about why they want you to chose a specific fund over another. Better yet, look into the companies that are in a successful fund, single out the ones who perform well, and buy those through a discount broker. You should also know, that the bank takes a MER or management expense ratio for managing your money – no matter how your fund performs. This means that they get paid as long as you leave your money in their fund whether or not you earn or lose money your banker still gets paid! This means that is in the bank’s best interest to sign you up for something. This is not to say that they can’t be helpful, but it is important to know the policies before you sign a dotted line!

I will share one of my own mutual fund experiences, to illustrate my point – I went to the bank, to deposit money each month in order to save for a down payment on a house. I told my banker I wanted a low-risk, short-term investment, where I would not lose money, and I wanted to be able to take it out when I found the perfect house. My banker signed me up for an “income fund” that the bank was promoting that month, and my adviser was happy with their commission, the bank was happy with their MER commission, and I was happy to have my money “safely” invested in a mutual fund. But, when it came time to take my money out, the fund was actually worth less than what I had put in: because of the price of oil, or stock market worries, or some other reason. What it really meant is that the bank had invested in riskier securities and not managed it well enough to at least give me my money back! In the end, the bank and salesperson were both happy, and I had in fact paid a high price for my free financial planning advice. I lost money, and had no control over how the fund was managed. While free financial planning advice is everywhere, you need to be especially careful in considering the quality and the hidden costs before diving in!