All Forum Posts by: Joe O

Hope he's not your "adviser" anymore.

FWIW, Financial Advisers should be fee only. If you aren't paying them, you're the product, and they're selling something to you and making money off of you.

If you're that concerned about total returns counting all investments and idle money, keep it easy and track your net worth. Then it's easy to see what percent return you're getting year over year.

Shhhh.. let people think Vegas is a bad place to invest, and we can keep scooping up the deals. ;)

Full Disclosure: I think Vegas is a great place to invest right now, and I'm putting my money where my mouth is on that one.

Added both to my Christmas wish list. Always hard to think of things for that. Thanks for the recommendations.

Average on my SFRs in Las Vegas is $1073 rent, average property tax is $950. So just under a month's gross rents to pay for the taxes.

All excellent points David.

And regardless of whether or not one agrees with you about the equity markets doing well or not, if you want to invest in equities, there are better ways. By investing in an EIUL with their high fees, you are guaranteeing you will underperform the market versus sticking your money into a low-fee index fund, like something at Vanguard or whatever.

If the market does have mediocre returns, your EIUL will do worse. If the market does great, your EIUL will do worse. By paying high fees to index, instead of low fees, you're guaranteeing a worse performance.

Jeff Brown posts about them all the time on the bigger pockets blog. I LOVE his articles, I hate when he posts about EIULs. He's very smart about lots of Real Estate things, but at some point someone convinced him EIULs were good, he bought into the idea, and has been preaching it ever since. His other retirement posts are good, his other general posts are good, the EIUL stuff is junk.

I will say that he actually believes it - I don't think he's a shill for an insurance company, and I don't think he makes money off it. But the insurance companies are making money off of it. He genuinely believes it's good, and even advised his daughter and son-in-law to invest in the EIUL over 401k.

However, in general, they're a money maker for the insurance company selling it to you. There are much better financial vehicles to invest in.

The smart money buys term life insurance and invests the rest.

Oh, and one last thing for the OP, as an aside from EIULs... Don't invest in anything you don't understand. Would you tell a friend to blindly invest in "real estate" or would you encourage them to understand it first? :D

No. Anonymity is one of the most important parts of the internet, especially when dealing with money issues, as this site does.

And if you allow any picture, like that of a god or whatever, why require one? You set a further barrier to entry that may dissuade some from participating.

1) Yes

2) To the extent and percent that you use it for business. Consult your CPA.

Signatures on a napkin can be a proper legal document. If there's a meeting of the minds and agreement, there shouldn't be a legal problem.

However their signature on a tablet will look different than on paper. I'm sure you've signed those credit card machines at grocery stores and had it look nothing like your signature.

Very likely there won't be a problem. Still, if you're worried, why risk it?