Helping a friend - was her 75 year old mother given wrong advice

jimjames

JohnRo wrote: »

There's the rub. The contention that DIY investment is cheaper and more cost effective and by extrapolation more lucrative is subjective and conveniently unverifiable, when accounting for all aspects involved.

I suppose its the same with any form of DIY that you need to take account of your time and effort too. I know that I'm rubbish at doing work on the house and it will take me 10x as long and be a worse job than getting someone in that knows what they are doing. It may cost more as it is their time I am paying for rather than my time that is "free" but ultimately I will get a better job and I can actually spend my time doing something to earn money or enjoy instead.

fairleads

lisyloo wrote: »

Morally I agree with all of you that the situation is not great and needs to be improved.
However I think the OP wanted advice on mis-selling in the real world that we live in and not about the morals of it all, which actually has no effect on the reality of the case.

Thank you for confirming what I've believed in for 40+ yrs, that
there is no morality in the provision of financial services.

lisyloo

Thank you for confirming what I've believed in for 40+ yrs, that
there is no morality in the provision of financial services.

I think out of respect for the OP those that want to discuss morality should start a new thread.
Perhaps leave this one for practical advice on mis-selling as it manifests itself in the real world (which I think is what the OP wants) and start a new one to discuss morality in the Financial services.
The only arguments on this board have been where the two issues have become confused.

The fact is that the morality of the situation has nothing to do with whether this case will qualify for mis-selling or not. It will be down to the guidelines/definitions that exist within the industry for expected behaviour. I'm sure many will not agree with those definitions but it's what the OP has to deal with in the real world.

fairleads

lisyloo wrote: »

I think out of respect for the OP those that want to discuss morality should start a new thread.
Perhaps leave this one for practical advice on mis-selling as it manifests itself in the real world (which I think is what the OP wants) and start a new one to discuss morality in the Financial services.
The only arguments on this board have been where the two issues have become confused.

The fact is that the morality of the situation has nothing to do with whether this case will qualify for mis-selling or not. It will be down to the guidelines/definitions that exist within the industry for expected behaviour. I'm sure many will not agree with those definitions but it's what the OP has to deal with in the real world.

Spoken like an IFA, or should that be an FA

atush

What a load of cobblers.

Anyone incl me (and I am a scientist) is told they are in finance should they disagree with you (and your creepy minions) lol.

RetiredInThailand

lisyloo wrote: »

How do you know that you couldn't have done better with advice, even after charges?

That's a good question which unfortunately has no answer.

All I know is that I've done well enough on my own, and my choices have soundly beaten the total returns on nearly all funds over the last 5, 10 and 20 years, and I put much of that down to the lack of charges.
A good (lucky?) advisor might have suggested that I get into gilts a year earlier than I did and that would have been a good move, but he might also have suggested that I get into something that has collapsed over the last couple of years. Indeed many people who bought such things were probably advised to do so by someone or another. So who knows?

lisyloo

Spoken like an IFA, or should that be an FA

If you had bothered reading, I said in post #39 that I don't work in finance AT ALL.

Rather than being respectful to the OP why don't you fill up the thread with totally untrue insults? is this because you've run out of arguments?

All I have said in that post is that the morality and how some of you would like the world to be is NOTHING to do with the actual law.
This does not represent ANY opinion from myself about the morality of the situation although if you look back and bothered reading you would see that most of us are in general agreement.

lisyloo

All I know is that I've done well enough on my own, and my choices have soundly beaten the total returns on nearly all funds over the last 5, 10 and 20 years, and I put much of that down to the lack of charges.

Well of course it's going to be cheaper to do something yorself rather than pay someone else.

And I suspect that you are a good deal more intelligent and inclined than a lot of elderly people or a lot of the population generally.
I would suggest a lot of the population are not actally capable of doing the job and certainly most elderly people would not be able to. This is not ageist, it's well know that learning is more difficult the older you get as is reading, maintaining concentration etc.

Of course it's going to be more expensive to pay someone to do something for you rather than do it yourself. Just at it would be if you did a car service, plumbing or DIY yourself?
Even if you hate people that work in finance, do you think they should all work for FREE?

Unfortunately not all of us can do everything for ourseleves.
I'm not well endowed with practical skills of muscle.
Elderly people often need more help than most.

Just because someone pays for a service does not mean that's a bad thing.
Not all of us want to manage investments in the same way that not all of us like DIY or car servicing.

Personally I pay to have my investments managed as I am not inclined to do it myself. I recognise this comes at a cost, but we only have one life and I want to spend mine doing the things I enjoy not the things that I find a chore.

darkpool

JohnRo wrote: »

Personally I find the whole contention staggeringly arrogant, misguided and irritating. I can't help wonder how much of a saving, if any, is really being made when the extraordinary amount of time spent reading, fretting, studying, always "getting it right" and arguing about the fact are factored into the DIY equation.

i have 300k in financial assets, if i went to an IFA he would either suggest i put the lots into Unit Trusts (annual fees 2%) or if he thought i looked really gullible he would suggest an investment bond (annual fees 3%).

so going to a professional would cost me 5k to 8k more a year than DIY. tbh i don't spend an "extraordinary" amount of time looking after my investments.

of course i would go to an IFA if he had some arguments that showed his skills were worth it, but so far no IFA has provided any evidence to show that his skills are worth having......

lisyloo

but so far no IFA has provided any evidence to show that his skills are worth having

So don't go to one then.
However if you did pay go and pay for their services you would be on a sticky wicket claiming it "wasn't worth having" once you'd agreed to everything and signed to say you "understood and agreed" to it.

The buyer has to take some responsibility here for what they do.
They are a capable, competant adult and can't claim to be an entierly passive party if they've paid (for MANY years) and signed up to it.
If you have misgivings initially then there are cooling off periods. This gives people time to read and research.
Often when people claim later is because they are dissatisified with the performace.

I'm dissatisfied with the performance of all my lottery tickets.
Perhaps I should try a mis-selling claim on those :-)