This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Simple Path to Wealth" by JL Collins. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Are you considering getting into investing? What are the most common investing mistakes beginner investors tend to make?
In his book The Simple Path to Wealth, blogger and financial expert J. L. Collins warns new investors of four pitfalls they should know about before investing their hard-earned money. These include financial advisors, winning stocks, dollar-cost averaging, and common investment cons/scams.
In this article, we’ll look at four pitfalls investors should beware of, starting with financial advisors.
1) Financial Advisors
Financial advisors include money managers, investment managers, brokers, and insurance salespeople (who sometimes masquerade as financial planners).
- Managing other people’s money is extremely profitable. Financial advisors profit from people’s insecurities by making investing seem complicated and intimidating.
- Although most advisors promise to get better results by actively managing mutual funds, they don’t. Simple index funds perform better and cost less.
- Financial advisors are costly at best and ripoffs at worst.
How Advisors Earn Their Money
Advisors earn their money in three basic ways, which influence the advice they give to clients.
1. Commissions
An advisor gets paid a commission, also known as a load, whenever you buy or sell an investment. For example, major loads are charged for American Funds, but no loads are charged to buy Vanguard funds.
In addition, some funds charge a yearly 1% management fee for the advisors who sell the funds. Because they’re actively managed, these funds carry a high expense ratio and typically underperform low-cost index funds.
Advisors are motivated to put their interests ahead of client interests and push the investments that pay high commissions and management fees. For example, insurance investments such as annuities and whole or universal life pay advisors some of the highest commissions, therefore advisors aggressively recommend them.
The commissions and fees you pay an advisor are typically hidden so you don’t notice them. Further, advisors can make more money by buying and selling investments in your accounts (“churning”) to generate commissions. This is illegal although it can be justified as adjusting your asset allocations.
2. The “Assets Under Management” (AUM) Model
The second way financial advisors make money is by charging flat management fees, usually 1-2% of your total assets. While this is presented as more “professional” than the commission model, this undercuts the growth of your nest egg and, later, your income in retirement. Your advisor is basically skimming your investment returns, which could have earned you more when you reinvested them.
For example, if you had a nest egg of $100,000, and you invested it for 20 years for a return of 11.9% a year:
- You’d end up with $947,549.
- Factoring in a 2% management fee, your return would be 9.9% a year and after 20 years, you’d have $660,623—which is $286,926 less.
- In addition, you’d have given up the interest that $286,926 could have earned, compounded over 20 years.
Under the AUM model, your advisor’s personal interests can still influence her advice. For example, if you want to withdraw money for a child’s education, she may advise against it because her annual fee will decrease.
3. Hourly Fees
Many advisors shun this model because it generates less money for them than commissions and fees. When advisors charge an hourly rate, clients are more time-conscious because they have to write a check for each visit, and therefore are less willing to spend time with their advisor. In contrast, clients don’t notice commissions and fees as much. Still, advisors may charge as much as $200 to $300 an hour.
Paying an hourly rate is the most transparent way to buy financial advice—however, you still have to determine whether the advice is in your best interest.
Some advisors use a combination of these payment methods, making it even more difficult for the client to understand what she’s paying. Rather than trying to find the rare good advisor, you’re much better off going with an index fund that costs you less and returns more.
2) Attempts to Pick Winning Stocks
Besides costly advisors, another pitfall for investors to beware of is the temptation to try to pick winning stocks, or to believe an analyst who says he can.
Analysts study industry sectors and companies to try to predict stock performance. But their predictions aren’t typically accurate because they’re based on companies’ own internal performance forecasts (sales predictions), which are guesses. Further, these guesses are often inflated by managers and CEOs so they look better for Wall Street.
No one can make accurate predictions and pick winning stocks from reading company reports and analyses. Nor can you do so by reading books on valuing stocks like The Intelligent Investor, which was written by Warren Buffett’s mentor in 1949, when there weren’t many managed mutual funds available (so if you wanted to invest, you had to pick stocks). If you’re interested in stocks analysis, the book is worth reading, but it won’t teach you how to consistently beat the market.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of JL Collins's "The Simple Path to Wealth" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full The Simple Path to Wealth summary :
- A simple road map to achieving financial independence and a secure retirement
- How to put your money to work for you as your “servant”
- Why you don't need a financial advisor to help you invest
