Funny Craiglist Posts: Gold Digger vs Investment Banker

So one of my friends forwarded me a set of posts he found from Craigslist in New York. I decided it was time to share this post with you nice folks. It is basically a gold digger from New York who put a personal ad where she claims shes gorgeous and refuses to marry a man who makes less than half a million. Reading this may aggravate you, but trust me the rebuttal by the investment banker will make you feel much better. Here is the gold digger vs investment banker craigslist posting in its entirety.

Financial Advisors Are Scam Artist

I have a whole slew or problems with the Insurance Industry as a whole, but for now I want to stick ot one thing that has been bothering me for some time. Financial Advisors rip you off every chance they get. In a previous article Ameriprise: Recruiter Secrets I discussed how my past experience turned me on to the world of Financial Advising, or as I like to call it “modern day car salesmen.”

Finally my views are ligitimized and if you want to read an in depth article check out the NY Times: Elderly Exploited by Financial Advisors . With the baby boomers about to retire everyone is jumping to help them into their transition to retirement. I do not know about you but I view my retirement as a peaceful time with few stresses as I travel and enjoy my remaining time on earth with friends and family. However, with this new demographic comes a lot of money and so all the slime come out of the craqks to try and exploit the elderly.

Of course there are legitimate Financial Advisors but they are very rare. You no longer can trust Certificates as they are fairly easy to obtain. As long as you can juggle a few fractions and percentages you will eventually pass all the licences you need to start selling financial services. And then it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, you buy a nice suit, throw out impressive terms, and people will throw money at you as long as you promise them security in their old age.

The problem is incentives. The insurance industry is not sufficiently self regulating. As long as they hand out certificates as a business they continue to grow and profit. They really are nothing but middle men that claim to help you but individual financial advisors profit from moves that most likely are not beneficial for you.

There is a site called Motley Fool that had helped me open my eyes “somewhat” to how you are better off investing on your own then listening to anyone else. There is a also a site that doesn’t have any incentive to try to cheat people out of money called Flip Side Invest which hopefully will continue in its path to helping people more knowledgable in their investing and saving practices.

If you want to learn how to trade stocks the best thing to do is join an online stock game .

Ameriprise: secrets from a recruiter

Know what you are getting into before you go to interview. Ameriprise is nothing but a glorified pyramid scheme. They were once knows as American Express Financial Advisors, but American Express had to drop them because their practices were hurting their brand name. You can read the full post at FlipSide Invest.

“As a recruiter I literally scoured online job boards for resumes. It did not matter what the resume said all I needed was a name and a Phone Number of someone who was looking for work. Experience, background, education, none of that mattered. I also did my research and when I heard of layoffs I would jump at the opportunity knowing that these desperate souls would come in to office.

Here is the breakdown of the recruiting. I would call about 100 to 200 people a night and of those who picked up about 20% would say they would come in. Of those half actually showed up for phase one, a simple test you take on the computer to measure your core competency. Half would then go to phase two, where you were set up on a mock phone call to see how well you can sell over the phone. And half would create a marketing plan, basically you fill out a form with all your family and friends contact information (which gets used by the Ameriprise).

The career breakdown is as follows. You get promised six figures within two years based on some ridiculous statistics. Here is the secret, if you do not bring enough new clients you get fired, and those people are not counted towards the figures they use. Another ridiculous thing about Ameriprise, you have to pay out of pocket to pass the Series 6 and 7, and in some states Life and Health exams. Amerirpise only pays you back if you pass all the tests in less than six months. So there are a lot of people who waste a lot of time and money and cannot move on because they feel like they already invested so much and get trapped by Amerirpise.

The advisors get paid based on fees and most importantly commissions. The commissions are only made once the quota is met for the month. One advisor told me that some months he was making under minimum wage for the hours spent working. Imagine not making quote for the month and it’s the 3rd week already. Believe it or not sometimes the advisors get so desperate that they charge themselves for consulting fees in order to make quota for the month. ”

Here are the attributes of a successful financial advisor for Ameriprise:

• Committing 70+ hours a week for the next 4 years
• Being able to look an elderly person in the eyes knowing they are throwing hteir money away
• Being able to win peoples trust through deception and fakery
• Only priority in life is to make a lot of money for yourself

I also found this great website with a lot more about Ameriprise and great resources for alternatives AmerirpiseSuck.

If you really want to waste your time just go play an online stocks game, but don’t go to a so called expert because he took you to a free lunch.