You can’t afford to outsource your financial life.
Most of the financial instruments you are being recommended, while having some benefits for you, are designed and created to benefit mostly one party, the one who sells them to you. While the industry tells you otherwise, the odds are stacked against you to make money through the use of traditional financial advice.
A financial advisor, in theory, has one main job: His job should be to help you protect and increase your hard-earned money. But his true reasons for selling you his financial instruments like annuities, wholesale life insurance, mutual funds, and so on, are that he (or she) has to put food on his family’s table. So the fact that those financial advisors get a commission for every investment they sell to you, combined with the fact that some investments pay the advisor higher commissions than others, should already show you that there is an inherent conflict of interest and calls into question if their advice is always in your best interest.
There is even an insider joke in the financial planning industry where the planner says: “I made money; the firm made money. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.” This joke indicates that the third person—the customer—didn’t make any money in the deal. That is the reality of the regular financial advice world.
The entire financial advisor industry actually benefits from keeping their clients (you) in the dark, keeping you uneducated, and keeping you dependent on their “professional advice” for guidance. Financial management companies want you to give them your hard-earned money month after month without ever asking if there is a better way to make it grow, or without ever wondering if you are capable of choosing your own investments.