A good friend of mine recently referred a financial planner from Northwest Mutual to me. Though I wasn’t looking for financial planning services at the time, I thought going might provide another good learning experience. And it did! I learned that my potential planner really wants to sell me life insurance.
Life insurance. Well- I can’t say that I’ve been thinking too much about that, as my wife and I are 24 and 22 respectively. We have no debt, and Alex just barely graduated with a great degree from BYU’s Marriott School of Business. We don’t have kids either. So where’s the fire? Why does my financial planner keep pushing and pushing and pushing! It became clear within the first 10 minutes of he and I meeting that he was going to hard pitch me on life insurance.
To be completely honest, I really didn’t appreciate how forward he was about it. I voiced my concerns to him, telling him that right now I didn’t feel like an expensive universal life insurance policy was what I was looking for. And, yes, I understand that the longer I wait to buy insurance, the more expensive it will potentially be. But to lock myself into an expensive policy right now? No thanks.
Nobody Likes A Pushy Financial Planner
I feel like this guy was completely trying to take advantage of me. If I hadn’t been somewhat savvy to personal finance prior to, he may have been successful in selling me one of his policies. And I’m not trying to say that what he was offering couldn’t have been good. Here’s the point: When I make it clear to my financial planner that I am NOT interested in the product he’s pushing, he needs to stop. Period. Had he made it clear that he was okay with me not getting insurance and tried to adjust his services to my needs, I might have been more interested.
My financial planner someday will not be an aggressive salesman. In the next several years when I decide to take the plunge and invest in a financial planner, I’m going to find somebody that listens more than sells; somebody that cares more about my financial well-being than his commissions. I know they need to make their money too, but you can do that without being a pushy salesman.