We buy everything with a credit card and pay it off at the end of every month. Free money for a month and airline miles too.

Dave is ok for beginning earners, and really he is just telling folks stuff they should have learned in grade school but schools don't teach basic money management anymore.
He comes up short on a lot of things and somethings he is just flat out wrong about. He is still telling folks to put cash in envelopes, but people under 25 can't even find envelopes in a Walmart because they hardly ever use them anymore. And folks under 20 have trouble operating an envelope.

Dave is ok for beginning earners, and really he is just telling folks stuff they should have learned in grade school but schools don't teach basic money management anymore.
He comes up short on a lot of things and somethings he is just flat out wrong about. He is still telling folks to put cash in envelopes, but people under 25 can't even find envelopes in a Walmart because they hardly ever use them anymore. And folks under 20 have trouble operating an envelope.

Public schools don't teach personal finance, because they don't want young people knowing about frugality. Next thing you know they will be questioning government deficit spending and why there's no balanced budget and why we need to pay $350 million for each fighter jet and why a space hammer costs $485k.

I had a financial advisor for years and he never really made me any money. I have made more money in the last year and a half in my fidelity account in one fund than I made in probably 10 years with that guy. He was a nice guy, but... nice doesn't earn you $.

It's not hard to do some research and find mutual funds that have a track record of growth. Find one that has grown alot in the last 10 years, and its probably a good one, as are index funds.

It is just hard to save $ when everything keeps going up. I just shopped my car insurance, going to switch tomorrow. That's going to be $220 a month. Interested to see what the house insurance will come in at.

No offense lockjaw, but you can throw a dart against a wall and make money in a rising market. Picking a fund based on the last 10 years may be the single worst selection process. I'll also add that unless you work for a large brokerage house the info about what is happening inside actively managed funds is pretty poor. I was amazed at what I didnt know when I switched companies. The brokerages just have tools that the average invester doeant have access to (that also goes for many financial services firms).

What happens when you lose 50% one year.... thats right, you have to make 100% just to get back to where you were. Financial advising is more about structuring assets and risk management. High returns dont mean much if it exposes you to losses or if the assets are set up using poor tax/rate/access strategies.

Maybe your advisor was bad, but thinking you are better than him after a year is pretty bold. Let the market go through some corrective cycles and then you'll be able to take a victory lap if you dont lose money.

Maybe one day I'll start a thread about my concerns related to indexed funds, but I'll just say that the level of correlation between asset classes today along with the algorithms that drive trades scares the heck out of me. I have these discussions with my advisor and he gets a kick out of it (we are friends). But, for that reason I dont own many indexed ETFs or mutual funds.

The average Joe walks into Fidelity or an Edward Jones office and they are pitching mutual and bond funds. Never as one recommended I buy Costco or any individual stocks. I agree with Lockjaw, for the average guy a Vanguard Index Fund that tracks the market is a good investment option. Especially if you are just getting started. Or maybe I am not in the income bracket of Financial Advisors who recommend individual stocks.

Well, I wouldnt walk into a fidelity of Ed Jones office. They arent going to go the individual stock route because their business is mutual funds. Plus, my guess is they dont want to throw darts at individual stocks for guys that dont have enough money to diversify. Rule of thumb is 100k to get a diversified individual US large with maybe some midcaps portfolio. Then you still need to use some type of open or closed fund or ETFs to diversify depending on risk tolerances. And that is just the equity side. Sure you can buy a few stocks here and there but there is a difference between investing and speculating.

Those "financial advisors" make money on the fee's from every trade even the losing trades, so they dont care if you make money or not. But if they want to keep clients for the long term they will make the clients money and Index, Mutual funds, and other ETF's, are generally safe steady money makers. They just don't get the attention that a big home run single company stock trade gets.

That simply is not true.

If people want an advisor to actively manage a stock portfolio with trading at least quarterly then a fee-based account is what they need. I used to run mine at 1% or discount it depending on the client. If a person wants to buy and hold stocks then the fee based account will hurt more in the long run. So, paying a commission at the beginning is better. I had many individuals and also corporate accounts that this favored because they were buying and holding for the dividends (tax free for corps). I also had client accounts that would have benefitted from fee-based but because they directed their own accounts I wouldnt "put my name" on it as to charge a fee for my services, so they had to pay more to direct their own trades. This is mai ly because a fee-based financial consultant has a higher fiduciary responibility to the client accounts.

Now, under the obama admin they changed the feduciary rules and it spooked a bunch of the financial firms into going one way or the other. Fee based or commission based. It had to do with companies holding the 12b-1 fees that were paid out to the brokers/agents annually. I think it made a mess of things because people hold different monies for different reasons. This in the long run made the clients pay more(just like every damn thing obama did).