FINANCIAL ADVICE
Today I visited my financial advisor to ask advice about selling my house and moving to Capitola. Clueless as I am at every yearly visit, this time I was a bit suspicious because my second financial advisor, Jeff Nelson, Martha’s husband, who advised me in San Miguel on how to invest the money from the sale of my house, what to do and what not to do, had undermined my confidence in my financial advisor. His advice was to buy an index stock from Betterment for which I would pay a very small fee, and never, ever, to pay a financial advisor a percentage of my assets. Instead, if I wanted advice I should pay a flat fee for financial advice, otherwise the financial advisor would be making as much from my invested money as I was.
But I like my financial advisor, a warm and attentive woman, who always makes me feel secure and even, clueless as I am, smart. She always tells me I am doing all right. And I believe her. So after our brief meeting I went away happy and whistling, having convinced myself that even if Jeff were right that the mathematics of how much return I’d get with or without the index fund balanced against the value of the advice that I got from my financial advisor was impossible for me to figure out. Not knowing what was going on but feeling completely secure was all I really wanted anyway. So I went home happy.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 