(Shared by Brian Minier, VP – Eagle Charitable Giving)
I joined the Eagle Financial Solutions team two months ago, and have already seen how our safe money approach has been able to help so many of our clients.
I have also started to analyze the “traditional” way of investing recommended to my wife and I many years ago….
Once we had kids, our financial advisor opened 529 plans for both my son and my daughter. Recently, I took a closer look to find out how these plans were performing.
I spoke to a representative of the firm that provided these 529 plans to our family. I asked a simple question – “how much money have we invested into these plans since we opened them?” After some back and forth discussion, the representative was not able to provide me this information. I was told that this information would be provided to me at a later time. I was eventually sent statements that provided the current value of these plans; however, this was not what I asked for.
This did not sit well with me so I did some digging of my own. To my irritation, I found out that each of these 529 plans are now worth less than the total amount of our contributions (although after thinking about it, I was not really surprised, based on the recent performance of the stock market).
After I had a chance to reflect on this interaction, some questions came to mind:
Did the representative of this firm really not have this information? I was able to find this out by going to the source – so why did this “advisor” not take the time to do this for me? It only took me 10 minutes and this “advisor” was supposed to be my advocate. Is it a coincidence that I have lost money after years of investing in my children’s college 529 plan and my “advisor” was not able to provide the amount we invested?
We have been told for years that 529 plans are the answer to pay for college. Shouldn’t we look for a different option? Wouldn’t it feel good to be able to predict how our investments will look in 10-15 years regardless of market volatility?
Eagle Financial Solutions has given many families this predictability when it comes to safe money investing for college, and I wish I had known about this approach 10 years ago!
If you are looking for a safer way to save for college, retirement, or any other goal, do yourself a favor and talk to one of our safe money advisors. You won’t regret it – you’ll only regret that you didn’t do it sooner….
