These two questions will help you determine if your financial adviser, broker or agent is looking out for your best interests:

 

1. What was my return for 2019?

2. What are my costs?

 

That’s it!

 

My answers to compare what your advisor reports about your portfolio:

1. 13.2% Return for 2019

2. .07% (Cost of my investments in dollars is about $1,100 for all of 2019).

Click here for my portfolio details in a previous post 

• My portfolio contains 66% bonds and 34% stocks. It is a very conservative portfolio appropriate for a retiree in my 70s. So, if your portfolio return is less than mine and your cost is higher than mine, initiate a serious talk with your adviser.
• Talking with financial advisers about returns and costs is like walking into a caged lion!
• I have talked to enough advisers to know that they have answers to every question you could possibly ask. Be prepared as your adviser may get defensive and high-strung with over-the-top distractions.
• Remember, the vast majority of financial adviser’s clients never, and I mean NEVER, ask these two straight forward questions.
• Some advisers may say that they never look at one-year returns because it is a short-time horizon. Others might get evasive. A few self-confident advisers will answer the two questions without hyperbole.
• My boring and conservative portfolio returned 13.2% in 2019. If your portfolio had a return of 4% or less in 2019, FIRE YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISER IMMEDIATELY! Even bonds had a 5%-8% return. 

The Callan Table of Investment Returns reports that Large Cap Value, which reflects most of the domestic stock market returns, reports 31.49%. In fact, every stock market asset class had a significant increase in 2019. Even fixed income (bonds) had a range of 5.09% – 8.72%. Cash Equivalent is not invested in either stocks or bonds.

PDF file for your records: Classic-Periodic-Table_2019

 

 

Steve Bio:

Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96) taught elementary students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years and UCLA Extension teaching educational technology to student teachers. Because of his negative experience with annuity agents, unions, and his school district benefits personnel over the most horrific tax-deferred plan in history, the 403(b), Steve wrote investment articles for the United Teacher-Los Angeles (UTLA) newspaper for 13 years.

So he became a 403(b) activist and talked to anybody who listened about reforming this terrible plan. He simply wanted to inform his colleagues that districts and the insurance industry are looking out for their best interests, and not the teachers. The media began listening for the first time in the entire history of the 403(b) plan commonly known as the TSA in 1998. From 1961 to 1998, nobody in or out of education ever talked about this terrible 403(b) specifically with k-12 school districts. I kid you not!

Consequently, he was thrice featured retirement plan advocate for reformed 403(b) plans for public k-12 colleagues that were in the Los Angeles Times and U.S. News and World Report. He co-founded an investor self-help group (403bAware with a colleague, Sandy Keaton) for teacher colleagues. He also wrote 7,000 helpful posts in three online investment forums since 1997. Frequently quoted by the media, testified at California State legislative hearings and honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) for his retirement planning advocacy.

For the last thirteen years, he continues to serve on LAUSD’s Retirement Investment Advisory Committee (RIAC) as a “Member-at-Large” and former co-chair. The committee monitors the district’s 457b/403b of 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, worth $2.5 billion in total assets. Lastly, Steve and his late husband, Dan, were featured participants for the award-winning documentary, PBS Frontline: The Retirement Gamble, aired April 23, 2013.

Steve is the co-author (with late husband, Dan) of the book, Late Bloomer Millionaires and the author of Fighting Powerful Interests: Educators Challenge Tax-sheltered Annuities and WIN!, a story of how a handful of LAUSD educators struggled for years to improve the 403(b) to no avail. But we never quit! We were instrumental in LAUSD’s implementation of the new 457(b) plan and earned a very rare, but very precious “Plan Design” award.

For a copy of both books, email Steve at steve.schullo@latebloomerwealth.com and he will happily email you both books, FREE with no obligation except to read them and get informed, in a pdf file format or go to the home page of this blog and download the books. No obligation. I only ask you for a review on Amazon. Thanks in Advance. My advocate friends and I want future generations of teachers to not be sold those terrible costly and pathetic return 403(b) annuities.