Soundbites and Sales Tactics: Why I Couldn’t Trust a Single Financial Advisor with My Money

I feel like we may be getting shafted by our financial advisor and unsure what to do next.

Some background info: My brother and I inherited a $1 million that was put in a trust in 2018. Since my brother and I were young and dumb, my mom was appointed as the caretaker of the trust and she gave it to here trusted financial advisor to invest/manage until we wanted it transferred. He manages other family funds as well (529s), including her retirement. So we thought it was fine. This amount basically makes up all of our assets.

Cut to now, I’m in mid 20s, my brother is slightly younger, and it’s time to transfer and split the trust. We go to meet this financial advisor, and we were thinking, hey he probably didn’t preform as well as the market, but there should be some gains here. We both thought we were going to stay with him and maybe just tweak our portfolio. Then the meeting happened, and I feel like we’re getting f*cked. I’m not financially literate though, and so I would really appreciate others perspectives to see if I am being crazy.

Reasons why I think we may be getting reamed:

• Over 6 years our total gains on our $1 million principal is $100,000One of the main reasons it’s that low is because, for the last 6 years, the portfolio has consistently been 70 % CDs and 30 % no cost basis at & t stock my grandparents bought in the 80s.
• He has our money invested this way because he swears the market is going to crash. Yeah, he has been timing the market INCORRECTLY for 6 YEARS. I asked if he would do anything differently at this point and he said no b/c it’s going to crash this year. I asked him what would his investment strategy be if it doesn’t crash this year, and he said it will crash and did not give me a straightforward answer.
• When I asked him what commission he was getting off a portfolio like this, he tried to tell me none since it’s not a fund like ETFs(which he gets 1%). After some persistence he finally told me he gets commission from the bank for every CD he buys/sells. Idk if that’s normal so any insight here is great. My mom’s portfolio that he manages is diverse and is mainly stocks and index funds. She is about to retire, yet he puts her in a riskier portfolio than us. And for us, with longer outlooks, he puts all our funds in cds because he swears the market will crash. If he really thought the market will crash, why didn’t he push for my mom to reinvest more of her funds in cds as well? This really bothers me and maybe there is something I am missing here, as I know little about investing. So please let me know.
• He spent the whole meeting talking about how the market will crash, showing as data and graphs as proof. This data is all public info, and I understand where he could be drawing conclusions like this, but if you’re wrong for 6 years, you’re wrong for 6 years. He went on for 40 minutes before I had to push the conversation towards our actual portfolio. Idk why but this really rubbed me the wrong way.

There is maybe more, but this is what I have for now. I asked him to call me once the first cd is up so we can discuss what to do with it, and he called today. I honestly feel like I should just ask him to transfer the funds to me and I’ll put it in an index fund. But this puts us in a situation where every time a cd is up I’m slowly transferring. Idk what to do.

I understand I was an idiot for not taking agency in this situation earlier. But all I can do at this point is focus on the now. My brother is more financially illiterate than me and my mom gets defensive when I start asking questions. So, what do you make of this? Am I reading this wrong or is he screwing us? If he is screwing us, from a range of incompetent to malicious, how bad?

Put it this way, have you ever been to a circus? You have! Well, remember those people who made you laugh? Finance advisers can also do this. But they can also make you cry. Here’s a funny story—true as well.

We had a clown, visited us as they do for many years, charging us fees, etc. Also, fees that were not revealed to us, which we discovered later. Well, after 13 years of having him sponge off us, we realized he had F.C.ED us, big style. He said the investments were not taxable as they were a specific type of investment.

Well, we realized these were taxable when we questioned him, asking, "Why did you set these investments if they are taxable?" He ran away and left us with a tax bill of 13 years, plus interest.

People will say, "Why did you not make your own enquiries into what is taxable and what is not?" Well, the answer to that is because we were paying a professional.

Well, it cost us dearly, so make sure it doesn’t happen to you. Leave the clowns in the circus!

Just filed my taxes and I’m looking more closely at my finances. I’m pretty good with the basics but feel completely out of my depth with investments.

In 2021 I started a Morgan Stanley investment account with the financial advisor who has been managing my parents’ money for many years.

I invested $67,000 in 2021 and let the advisor choose the stocks/bonds/funds/etc, telling them that I’m extremely risk adverse and I needed safe investments. On Jan 1, 2022, the value was $71,950. On Dec 31, 2022, the value was $58,587. In 2022, I paid $1,025 in trade commissions and $984 in service/advising fees. So basically I paid my advisor $2,000 for her to lose me $13,363 over the course of 2022.

Is this normal? Every time I ask my parents or advisor they tell me “the market is down for everyone.” But my parent love their advisor and thinks the sun shines out her butt and my advisor has a financial incentive to keep me.