[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=joedabrkr]
Truthfully, considering your arrogance I am surprised you can appreciate ANYTHING that doesn’t center around YOU>
[/quote]

For the young people who read this forum.

The world is filled with guys like Joe. They're angry all the time, and what really drives them crazy is for somebody who is not a failure to point out that success is possible.

Do you suppose that if Joe was succesful he'd be railing against my stories--or would he be telling stories of his own?

Does he take you for a fool with his, "I'm doing what I love and don't intend to retire" nonsense?  This is a business that exists because human beings want to retire as early as possible.

Regardless of what you do, you're an idiot of there are not things you would want to do more.

Watch the TV commercials--somebody's talks about a guy who wants to retire early so he can teach in an inner city school.  Others talk about wanting to retire early so they can travel.  Another has a couple wanting to retire early so that they can buy a Llama farm.

The list is endless.  The only reason anybody declares that they don't want to retire is because they know they cannot retire. Why in the world would a prospect want to do business with a financial advisor who doesn't understand such basic human motivations?

[quote=joedabrkr]

Not succesful?  How would you know?  Suffice it to say I live well within my means, and yet those means include owning a home on the grounds of the country club I recently joined.  Hardly the province of a 'failed planner'.  Starka, by the way, is considerably more successful than I financially, but you can continue to believe whatever you want. 

[/quote]

How do you know how successful Starka is?  Because he says so on this forum?  Why do you believe him, but not others?

Do you grasp the concept that anything can be said on this forum, anything at all.  And those of us who read it can draw whatever conclusions we care to draw from the word pictures you paint.

For example I no more believe that you own a home on a country club that you belong to than I believe you can fly.

What I believe is that is what you wish you did, that is where you wish you were.

Let me explain why I conclude that.

You have been "indy" for a few months.  You relocted when you failed at UBS to get away from the shame of it as well as to truly start over.

Even you would not venture out into the great unknown of going Indy and all the expenses that it involves while also biting off a country club membership not to mention a mortgage on a golf course house.

You see Joe, every time you try to sneer at me you paint yourself as a failed planner.

If I was your client and I was starting a new business would you advise me to join a country club and buy an expensive home--or would your advice be to take it slow for a year or two to see just how much I could afford in my new business?

Are there any young reps out there that feel like they are without a
mentor? That they don’t get the hand holding they need to take their
book to the next level.  I would think it would be a little
disheartening to see some big shot come in with million dollar book and
nice signing bonus while you’re sitting at your desk trying to figure
out how to get to the $500,000 level.

[quote=mrgrinch77]Are there any young reps out there that feel like they are without a mentor? That they don't get the hand holding they need to take their book to the next level.  I would think it would be a little disheartening to see some big shot come in with million dollar book and nice signing bonus while you're sitting at your desk trying to figure out how to get to the $500,000 level. [/quote]

It is disheartening, and it's a problem as old as time that is dealt with by those leeches called managers.

Firms with formal "mentor" programs find that they work wonders on paper, but when put into practice there are a zillion reasons why they fail.

Suppose you were mentoring me.  You're probably not a teacher by training, and you're probably also an achiever, so it is quite likely that you will become a combination of bored and irritated by just about everything I do and I don't do.  Our relationship is not going to last long--even though we both hope it would.

What about your manager?  Another reality is that they are often distracted by lots of things that are far more pressing--they really are--than what the new kid has on his mind.  All too often they'll be abrupt and dismissive which sends a signal they don't mean to send, but they send it in spite of themselves.

Everybody who ever made it made it pretty much on their own--trial and error, nose against the grindstone stuff.  Watch what goes on around you, if somebody seems to be firing on all cylinders ask them if you can buy them a drink after work and chat about it.  You'll find that a producer who is being flattered is far more interesting in offering advice than a manager or mentor might be because there is no flattery there, it's part of their job, and you're not doing what they suggest.

The cold, unvarnished, reality is that this is a business that rewards "self starters" and that concept goes all the way back to day one.

[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=joedabrkr]

Not succesful?  How would you know?  Suffice it to say I live well within my means, and yet those means include owning a home on the grounds of the country club I recently joined.  Hardly the province of a 'failed planner'.  Starka, by the way, is considerably more successful than I financially, but you can continue to believe whatever you want. 

[/quote]

How do you know how successful Starka is?  Because he says so on this forum?  Why do you believe him, but not others?

Do you grasp the concept that anything can be said on this forum, anything at all.  And those of us who read it can draw whatever conclusions we care to draw from the word pictures you paint.

For example I no more believe that you own a home on a country club that you belong to than I believe you can fly.

What I believe is that is what you wish you did, that is where you wish you were.

Let me explain why I conclude that.

You have been "indy" for a few months.  You relocted when you failed at UBS to get away from the shame of it as well as to truly start over.

Even you would not venture out into the great unknown of going Indy and all the expenses that it involves while also biting off a country club membership not to mention a mortgage on a golf course house.

You see Joe, every time you try to sneer at me you paint yourself as a failed planner.

If I was your client and I was starting a new business would you advise me to join a country club and buy an expensive home--or would your advice be to take it slow for a year or two to see just how much I could afford in my new business?

[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=mrgrinch77]Are there any young reps out there that feel like they are without a mentor? That they don't get the hand holding they need to take their book to the next level.  I would think it would be a little disheartening to see some big shot come in with million dollar book and nice signing bonus while you're sitting at your desk trying to figure out how to get to the $500,000 level. [/quote]

It is disheartening, and it's a problem as old as time that is dealt with by those leeches called managers.

Firms with formal "mentor" programs find that they work wonders on paper, but when put into practice there are a zillion reasons why they fail.

Suppose you were mentoring me.  You're probably not a teacher by training, and you're probably also an achiever, so it is quite likely that you will become a combination of bored and irritated by just about everything I do and I don't do.  Our relationship is not going to last long--even though we both hope it would.

What about your manager?  Another reality is that they are often distracted by lots of things that are far more pressing--they really are--than what the new kid has on his mind.  All too often they'll be abrupt and dismissive which sends a signal they don't mean to send, but they send it in spite of themselves.

Everybody who ever made it made it pretty much on their own--trial and error, nose against the grindstone stuff.  Watch what goes on around you, if somebody seems to be firing on all cylinders ask them if you can buy them a drink after work and chat about it.  You'll find that a producer who is being flattered is far more interesting in offering advice than a manager or mentor might be because there is no flattery there, it's part of their job, and you're not doing what they suggest.

The cold, unvarnished, reality is that this is a business that rewards "self starters" and that concept goes all the way back to day one.[/quote]

A useful post from ol' Put...these are the reason I'm glad you made a comeback...but you're still wrong on the retirement issue...go back and re-read my post on page five...I'm still waiting for your rejoinder...

[quote=Indyone][quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=mrgrinch77]Are there any young reps out there that feel like they are without a mentor? That they don't get the hand holding they need to take their book to the next level.  I would think it would be a little disheartening to see some big shot come in with million dollar book and nice signing bonus while you're sitting at your desk trying to figure out how to get to the $500,000 level. [/quote]

It is disheartening, and it's a problem as old as time that is dealt with by those leeches called managers.

Firms with formal "mentor" programs find that they work wonders on paper, but when put into practice there are a zillion reasons why they fail.

Suppose you were mentoring me.  You're probably not a teacher by training, and you're probably also an achiever, so it is quite likely that you will become a combination of bored and irritated by just about everything I do and I don't do.  Our relationship is not going to last long--even though we both hope it would.

What about your manager?  Another reality is that they are often distracted by lots of things that are far more pressing--they really are--than what the new kid has on his mind.  All too often they'll be abrupt and dismissive which sends a signal they don't mean to send, but they send it in spite of themselves.

Everybody who ever made it made it pretty much on their own--trial and error, nose against the grindstone stuff.  Watch what goes on around you, if somebody seems to be firing on all cylinders ask them if you can buy them a drink after work and chat about it.  You'll find that a producer who is being flattered is far more interesting in offering advice than a manager or mentor might be because there is no flattery there, it's part of their job, and you're not doing what they suggest.

The cold, unvarnished, reality is that this is a business that rewards "self starters" and that concept goes all the way back to day one.[/quote]

A useful post from ol' Put...these are the reason I'm glad you made a comeback...but you're still wrong on the retirement issue...go back and re-read my post on page five...I'm still waiting for your rejoinder...

[quote=Indyone][quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=mrgrinch77]Are there any young reps out there that feel like they are without a mentor? That they don't get the hand holding they need to take their book to the next level.  I would think it would be a little disheartening to see some big shot come in with million dollar book and nice signing bonus while you're sitting at your desk trying to figure out how to get to the $500,000 level. [/quote]

It is disheartening, and it's a problem as old as time that is dealt with by those leeches called managers.

Firms with formal "mentor" programs find that they work wonders on paper, but when put into practice there are a zillion reasons why they fail.

Suppose you were mentoring me.  You're probably not a teacher by training, and you're probably also an achiever, so it is quite likely that you will become a combination of bored and irritated by just about everything I do and I don't do.  Our relationship is not going to last long--even though we both hope it would.

What about your manager?  Another reality is that they are often distracted by lots of things that are far more pressing--they really are--than what the new kid has on his mind.  All too often they'll be abrupt and dismissive which sends a signal they don't mean to send, but they send it in spite of themselves.

Everybody who ever made it made it pretty much on their own--trial and error, nose against the grindstone stuff.  Watch what goes on around you, if somebody seems to be firing on all cylinders ask them if you can buy them a drink after work and chat about it.  You'll find that a producer who is being flattered is far more interesting in offering advice than a manager or mentor might be because there is no flattery there, it's part of their job, and you're not doing what they suggest.

The cold, unvarnished, reality is that this is a business that rewards "self starters" and that concept goes all the way back to day one.[/quote]

A useful post from ol' Put...these are the reason I'm glad you made a comeback...but you're still wrong on the retirement issue...go back and re-read my post on page five...I'm still waiting for your rejoinder...

[quote=joedabrkr]

So, conclude away my friend.  I'm going back to work so I have time to get to the club tomorrow.


[/quote]

Joe, you failed to state that you actually quit your job at UBS, went out on your own with LPL that suggests you be very careful with your expenses, moved to another city.

And then against all common sense actually bought a membership in a country club--thousands of dollars--and bought a home on the golf course for hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Is that the kind of advisor you are?

I ask again, if I were your client would you advise me that the thing to do when I am starting over again, on my own, would be to bite off a big mortage and spend a hell of a lot of my liquidity on a country club initiation fee?

Is that what you advise me to do?

you all really could be a lot more civil to one another, and try to reserve these boards for actually informative content. The bickering and one-upping is quite tedious.

[quote=broker-editor]you all really could be a lot more civil to one another, and try to reserve these boards for actually informative content. The bickering and one-upping is quite tedious. [/quote]

Yes I agree.

Sadly not everyone sees things that way.  They insist on provoking others.

[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=joedabrkr]

So, conclude away my friend.  I'm going back to work so I have time to get to the club tomorrow.


[/quote]

Joe, you failed to state that you actually quit your job at UBS, went out on your own with LPL that suggests you be very careful with your expenses, moved to another city.

And then against all common sense actually bought a membership in a country club--thousands of dollars--and bought a home on the golf course for hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Is that the kind of advisor you are?

I ask again, if I were your client would you advise me that the thing to do when I am starting over again, on my own, would be to bite off a big mortage and spend a hell of a lot of my liquidity on a country club initiation fee?

Is that what you advise me to do?

[quote=Indyone]

Put, do you honestly think that all of these Merrill clients have to work into retirement?!!  If so, that wouldn't speak very well of Merrill's ability to grow a nest egg.  Clearly, these folks are looking to stay busy for the sheer satisfaction of it...NOT financial necessity.

It's time for you to wave the white flag on this argument and move on to something where you have some solid ground...

[/quote]

As Joe has decided I am not Put, I may be Rick, or I might be anybody.  But I can discuss this.

First in the entire piece you mentioned that the inability to retire certainly doesn't speak well for Merrill's ability to grow assets.

That, of course, is specious.  A whole hell of a lot of people who are facing retirement are finding that they don't have enough money because they didn't start to save early enough and/or they thought that having $50 per paycheck sent to Vanguard was going to secure their future.

I am a member of the generation, on the leading edge.  A great many of my peers started thinking about our savings when the $2,000 deduction for an IRA became available.  In those days a broker could sit down with a prospect and say, "Look at this spread sheet.  If you put $2,000 per year into an IRA and it grows at 20% per year by the time you're 60 you'll have eleventy million dollars, which will generate a huge monthly retirement income for you."

The prospect would say, "Yeah but that's at 20%.  Let's be more realistic, what would happen if I only average 15% without taking any risk?"

Now, twenty-five years later we--including me--are dealing with accounts that have far less than value than we anticipated them having.  Thankfully we have defined benefit pension plans, but a great many of us are going to have to work to earn the money that we thought we'd be getting as interest on our 15% tax free bonds.

The article in Money is simply the latest in a series of them over the last ten years or so.  Wall Street is partially orchestrating the theme.

The brokerage firms are faced with a situation where there is a coming time bomb of angry boomers who don't have what we thought we should have.  There are millions of us who were led to believe, back in 1975, that if we put our $2,000 per year aside by the time we were in our sixties we'd have all that money.  As mentioned it aint there.

So, through organizations such as the PR side of the NASD and the SIA the concept of working in retirment is being presented as a wonderful thing to do.  If enough of us can be pursuaded that retirement is not all that it's cracked up to be there will be far fewer of us who will be pissed that we couldn't pay for our retirement if we want to.

In other words, what you're looking at is little more than paid advertising trying to pursuade people to not retire because they don't have enough money--after spending half a lifetime thinking they did because it was invested by Merrill Lynch.

My generation--those who are turning sixty in the next several years--are also children of the inflation era.  We were coming of age at a time when prices were running so fast that we actually thought if we didn't buy something now we'd never be able to afford it.  So we bit off HUGE mortgages figuring that we'd grow into them.  Some did, thankfully I did, but a lot didn't.

I have a very close friend who bought a $400,000 house in 1976.  His mortgage payment was about 65% of his take home pay.  I used to talk to him about putting $2,000 into an IRA and having a zillion dollars in 2006-but he could not afford it.  His house was his investment.

Well, there are a whole lot of baby boomers who are sitting on expensive homes, but there are far more of them than there are younger people who can afford to buy them.  There is going to come a day when my buddy, whose house is probably now worth $750,000 or so, will attempt to liquidate it.  I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if he ends up with not much more than he paid for it.  Of course he lived there all those years, but strolling into retirement without a house and about $400,000 in cash is not a comforable place to be.

In your piece you said your clients "eat up" the idea of you staying in production till your eighty because of continuity.  I used to work with a guy who was close to 80.  If you walked into the bathroom and he was standing at a urinal you dare not speak to him because if you did he would turn towards you and pee all over your pants.  When you're 80 your clients won't want to deal with you.

It is human nature--a burning human desire--to stop working young.  Denying that reality does not paint any financial planner in a good light.

I have to admit the one about the 80 year old was a pretty darn funny mental picture!!

Is it possible that those IRA’s a re much smaller than folks expected because they were poorly invested by poorly trained brokers/salesmen at the “major firms”.  Maybe because they were too busy trying to sell proprietary funds and IPO’s that were most profitable for their organzation?  Hmmmmmm…Maybe because the so-called “major firm research” in 1999 failed to properly warn them of the risks built into technology stocks?

[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=Indyone]

I have a very close friend who bought a $400,000 house in 1976. 

[/quote]

now you're the one making up stories--

we all know that equipped with your personality and ego, your only friend is your wife, and she's got to be heavily sedated on something--

[quote=joedabrkr]I have to admit the one about the 80 year old was a pretty darn funny mental picture!!

Is it possible that those IRA's a re much smaller than folks expected because they were poorly invested by poorly trained brokers/salesmen at the "major firms".  Maybe because they were too busy trying to sell proprietary funds and IPO's that were most profitable for their organzation?  Hmmmmmm.....Maybe because the so-called "major firm research" in 1999 failed to properly warn them of the risks built into technology stocks?
[/quote]

Joe, what about those is anything other than a whining excuse?

Why would a guy who comes from UBS want to talk about poorly trained wirehouse brokers?  Where is the training better than at a wirehouse?

Where is the gun that was held to your, or anbody else's, head when it comes to the nonsense of selling proprietary funds?  There are lots of brokers around the country with enough ethics to simply not sell something they didn't believe it.  Nobody makes a broker sell things the broker is not comfortable with.

As for the failed research. You have an ally in me on that count, but it's intellectually dishonest to blame everything on bad research.

[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=joedabrkr]I have to admit the one about the 80 year old was a pretty darn funny mental picture!!

Is it possible that those IRA’s a re much smaller than folks expected because they were poorly invested by poorly trained brokers/salesmen at the “major firms”.  Maybe because they were too busy trying to sell proprietary funds and IPO’s that were most profitable for their organzation?  Hmmmmmm…Maybe because the so-called “major firm research” in 1999 failed to properly warn them of the risks built into technology stocks?
[/quote]

Joe, what about those is anything other than a whining excuse?

Why would a guy who comes from UBS want to talk about poorly trained wirehouse brokers?  Where is the training better than at a wirehouse?

Where is the gun that was held to your, or anbody else's, head when it comes to the nonsense of selling proprietary funds?  There are lots of brokers around the country with enough ethics to simply not sell something they didn't believe it.  Nobody makes a broker sell things the broker is not comfortable with.

As for the failed research. You have an ally in me on that count, but it's intellectually dishonest to blame everything on bad research.

[quote=joedabrkr]

I don't blame everything on the research, but it was a MAJOR failing on the part of the industry.  Nobody was willing to stick their necks out and risk giving up the big I-banking profits to be made.  Now as an industry we're still paying for that.  A major failure in integrity.

[/quote]

Were you not bright enough to conclude things like, "JDS Uniphase cannot have a liquidating value in excess General Motors (or whatever).

My point is that the tech bubble was so obvious that only a moron would have not taken most, if not all, of their money off the table.

The old saw that greed overcomes fear is true.

[quote=Big Easy Flood]

[quote=joedabrkr]

I don’t blame everything on the research, but it was a MAJOR failing on the part of the industry.  Nobody was willing to stick their necks out and risk giving up the big I-banking profits to be made.  Now as an industry we’re still paying for that.  A major failure in integrity.

[/quote]

Were you not bright enough to conclude things like, "JDS Uniphase cannot have a liquidating value in excess General Motors (or whatever).

My point is that the tech bubble was so obvious that only a moron would have not taken most, if not all, of their money off the table.

The old saw that greed overcomes fear is true.

[quote=joedabrkr]


Too, when Lucent dropped by 50% I thought maybe it was a bargain.  Little did I realize.

And then there's the overall loss of creditiblity for the industry and financial markets.

[/quote]

How big a loss can be suffered on 75 shares of Lucent?

How does changing from UBS to LPL cure "overall loss of credibility for the industry and financial markets?"