I broke up with my advisor

Besides, he wasn’t even my original advisor. He had replaced the young guy who knocked on my door in 2007, looking for clients. As a former sales manager, I sympathized with him and liked that he was out there hustling. When he left for greener pastures, my portfolio was assigned to the new guy, who we’ll call John Doe.

I’m sure John is a decent guy. He’s young, energetic and eager, but ultimately—as I found out—not what I’m looking for in an advisor.

We met—albeit briefly—in a local coffee shop to discuss my investments recently. It didn’t go well. I’ve been writing about institutional investing for the past three years and am probably a little savvier than the clients he’s used to. And after reading about the Couch Potato strategy which focuses on index investing, I was looking to save some money on fees, especially since the events of 2008/09 had undone what little progress I had made prior to that.

So while I had pretty much made up my mind about switching to the Couch Potato method, I asked John about index investing. I wanted to give him a fair shake and was curious to see what he’d say.

I figured he’d try to steer me away from such investments as they seriously eat into his commissions. He didn’t disappoint.

After I outlined out the discrepancy between the fees for TD’s eSeries mutual funds and those of the funds I was currently in, John admitted that yes, the TD funds were cheaper. And yes, their performance was the same if not better than my current funds.

So why would I keep paying higher MERs, I asked him.

He responded to my question with one of his own. “Who picks these funds?” he asked, arms wide in mock alarm. “Is it a portfolio manager? Does this person have credentials? Do they know the sector? It’s all very opaque, if you ask me.” Plus, he added, these products haven’t been around very long and lacked the track record of standard mutual funds.

I actually hadn’t thought of this, but I was fairly confident that in the aftermath of the economic crisis the brain trust at TD and the other four big banks—along with an ever-growing number of smaller players—would put quite a bit of research into a fund before releasing it. In any event, neither of us knew the answer, so I pushed on.

“Ok John,” I said, “what have you got for me?” I left the door wide open for him to convince me that I’d be better off in his hands as a full service financial advisor. I expected him to ask me a million questions about my life, finances, goals, et cetera.

But he didn’t.

Leaning forward across the table, he scanned the room furtively and lowered his voice as he pulled a document from his binder and slid it across the table. “This bond isn’t on the market yet,” he said with glint in his eye. “But the terms are excellent and you’ll get a good price for it if you decide to sell prior to the maturity date.”

Frankly, I’ve encountered opium dealers in Thailand who instilled more trust in me than John. I came here to talk index investing, and he’s trying to sell me a bond? Looking at the document, I saw that it was a 15-year bond with a minimum purchase of just under half of what I had to invest. He knew what size my portfolio was and what I did for a living. Despite this, he waited until he thought he saw an opening and floated a product with a fat commission tacked onto it.

I left the meeting, telling him I’d call him. But we both knew it was over.

So sorry John, but I have to break up with you and your super-secret, too-good-to-be-true bond. I just know there’s an advisor out there somewhere who has my best interests in mind. Now all I have to do is find them.