Many moons ago I met with a bank advisor to see if they could facilitate me buying shares in an employee-owned company through a TFSA. She had the most blank look on her face, and said real slowly, "m-u-t-u-a-l f-u-n-d-s?" I was like no, explained it again, and she's like, "I don't know, that sounds a lot like mutual funds."
Now just before Christmas an advisor from company who's name is the opposite of moon-death called my wife. She had some mutual funds in an account that was set-up by a former employer in a company-matching RRSP program. Anyway, this guy built her a plan and gave her a 10-page report with a bunch of fancy graphs. On closer inspection, he obviously just plugged in some numbers into some internal software program to generate the report, but he has no understanding. The report made no sense. It says things like her monthly retirement expenses are estimated to be $1000/month and she is currently on track to meet 156% of her saving needs, but if she follows his advice (presumedly buying expensive mutual funds) with a modified plan, she can do 23% better! His proposed modified plan doesn't even have her retiring early or spending more, just having more money left over when she dies.
If you want some free advice, I suggest checking out the Canadian Couch Potato and Canadian Portfolio Manager websites.
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