amexsux.com

[RANT] Public Service Announcement: Run away from Ameriprise. **tl;dr: they're an overpriced, predatorial scam, and their shit is all broken.** My company has a Simple IRA retirement plan, and it is managed by my boss's brother, who is an Ameriprise "financial advisor", or as I like to more accurately refer to him: a salesman. Ameriprise [used to be](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Express#Financial_Advisors) American Express Financial Advisors -- you [might remember them](http://www.amexsux.com/) as those guys who would take you and your coworkers out to a free lunch in exchange for pitching their investment products to you. I wasn't initially aware of their identity/story and assumed they were some second-rate investment company that would be mediocre but fine. Of course, I didn't know nearly as much about investing then, or how ugly it can be. **Strike 1: Terrible recommendations** After quizzing me about my risk tolerance and whatnot, the salesman sent me a list of 9 recommended mutual funds. 5 of them had a front-end load of 5.75%, 2 had slightly lower front-end loads, and 2 had no front-end load. *What is a front-end load?* It's a sales commission. It's a percentage that gets extracted from your contributions up-front, and goes to the salesman. If you invest $100 and the FE load is 5%, then you are only really investing $95. There is rarely any good reason to pay a FE load, and it is generally an ignorance tax levied on the unaware, by unscrupulous salesmen like those employed by Ameriprise who make their living from it. The expense ratios on these funds were almost all (except 2) over 1.00%, with the highest being 1.64%. *What's a normal expense ratio*? Well, for index funds, which are widely recommended (with lots of supporting theory and evidence) as the most prudent investment option for the average investor, a good expense ratio is under 0.50% (and even 0.50% is a little high), with a few of the lowest being under 0.10%. *Why does the ex