Читать книгу Financial Adulting - Ashley Feinstein Gerstley - Страница 12

When it's time to figure out something in our financial lives, we probably start by googling (I know I did). I found pages and pages of results and resources with contradicting evidence and advice, often shaming me for my choices. I decided it might be easier to ask a financial professional or expert, but it was hard to know how to find someone and whom to trust.

The financial services industry is the least trusted of any other industry. Only 2% of people really trust financial professionals¹ – and for good reason! We hear horror stories from friends and see media coverage of the terrible things that happen. Between 2005 and 2015, 87,000 financial advisors (7% of them)² were disciplined for misconduct or fraud. And that's just the ones who were caught.

Then there's the natural conflict of interest we feel in our own interactions with financial professionals. The people who are supposed to be educating us are the same people who are selling us things, and they earn big commissions from those sales. This can lead to a lot of misinformation and recommendations that are not in our best interest.

Don't even get me started on the jargon and unnecessary complexity that's been perpetuated to keep the majority of the population out of the conversation.