Comments on: Ameriprise Takes Your Money But Doesn’t Give You Your Financial Plan

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:21:09 +0000

Everyone should understand that no one cares as much about your financial future as you do. You must take accountability for your financial decisions. That being said I have been working with the same IDS/Amex/Ameriprise Financial advisor for 30 years now. Together, we have made bad and good investment decisions. He has reccomended funds from his companies and others. I took it upon myself to understand the differences associated with each. I pay a percent of my portfolio, a service fee and probably commissions on certain products. Over 30 years I have paid my advisor and his company a considerable portion of my money. Oh yes, I am retiring this year at the age of 53, 7 years earlier than the plan we put in place 20 years ago. I will be putting my 401k and other assets into the hands of Ameriprise and my advisor when I do retire.

By: john

john — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:29:47 +0000

I just read through these posts and most of them are just plain stupid. If you are seriously considering moving your money because you read a slam article and a bunch of negative comments from anonymous people, you are an idiot. Don’t believe everything you read or hear. If you really don’t trust your advisor then schedule an appt. and ask questions. But honestly, the majority of people will just ask questions about something they don’t understand, get an answer they don’t understand, and then give their money to the first person who says what they want to hear. Too many times people get lured away from a seriously good advisor because of their fears of the market, or because of what some scumbag tells them. My point is, if I were the advisor to most of you people I would have already asked you to take your money somewhere else. It’s not fair to the clients who actually want advice when i have to spend all my time explaining how a VUL works every time amateur eddie comes in with some article he read or something he saw on the news that scared him.

By: Anna

Anna — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:00:04 +0000

I landed with my universal life insurance policy through Ameriprise, by no choice of mine. We foolishly bought, from a relative, through IDS many, many years ago. The company sold out to American Express/Ameriprise. I just learned, in plain English (from a lawyer) some parts of the plan that most of our servicing agents obscured by jargon designed to impress me with the product….not inform me about how it really works.
Now, having “borrowed” against the cash value, paid it back (quite long ago) and then, used more of the cash value to make payments, we have nothing but very, very expensive (increasingly expensive life insurance).

I understand more (about how this was always designed to work)after a 20 min. visit with a lawyer than I ever have before. That is because he simply said, “Here’s the bottom line” and told me it…..rather than trying to keep me engaged in something very profitable to the company and the individual sales person.

By: Regina

Regina — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:44:16 +0000

After reading all of these I am seriously considering taking my money out of Ameriprise!
Does anyone have anything to say about Rick Edelman?

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:17:56 +0000

I am an Investment Advisor and I hate Investment Advisors. Ironic huh? Look anyone with liquid net worth under a mill does not need an Investment Advisor. I raise capital for small companies and when asked about investment advice from individuals I pretty much tell them I could care less where they put their money. Ameriprise sells “the Plan”, Edward Jones sell “Cookie Cutter” plans, and Wadell & Reed sell front load funds. The entire industry is bullshit with low barriers to entry…..

By: Nayan

Nayan — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:12:52 +0000

These guys are salesman. They are interested in their own commisions and not in maximizing your portfolio. I filed a complain with them and they countered that with bunch of lies. SEC also didn’t help much.

Why do they try to sell you?
1) Cash value life insurance
2) Variable Annuity within a IRA account
3) Limited patnership REITs
4) Front load mutual funds
5) Active portfolio management which keeps on buying and selling for no reason.

Bunch of crooks!

By: Patricia Bowman

Patricia Bowman — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:45:56 +0000

Ameriprise Financial converted my inheritance, amount $200,000.00. This company was referred to as the “devil” by my attorney, what is the problem here?

By: ripped off

ripped off — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:06:52 +0000

I was cold called by a new Ameriprise planner looking for clients. He met with my wife and me, and took about 4 hours reviewing our goals, income, investments and overall financial position & limited understanding of investments. He met with us two weeks later and gave us a list of suggestions – open Roth IRAs. Get disability insurance (he didn’t sell us the policy but he helped us decide our coverage level, he encouraged me to get a life insurance policy, and he presented an outline of various types of investments – some stocks, a few bond funds, some vanguard funds like emerging market and so on. This was not something fast – we agreed to invest about $1000 a month for the portfolio with a $50,000 initial investment which I suggested to jump start my forray into the world of finance. My financial planner charged me $300 for the meetings and for drawing up some specific investments based on my goals and expected returns. He met with me every 90 days for 2-3 hours and reviewed things with me. He never charged me another flat fee akin to the $300 consultation, but he did tell me when a fund had a load or sold at a premium, as well as charging me $40 per trade to buy stocks he reccomended (I hold them, usually, IBM, Msft, Chx, LLL, Dell, Apple, etc). I was very happy with him. Sadly he quit, and my new guy is going to be fired this week after 6 weeks. He charged $900 to ” review” my existing portfolio. He moved me out of some ETFs (spy, dia, qqqq) and into ( BQY and some financial ETF as well as a Dow housing ishare…..) he also told me that the SPS advantage my old guy told me I qualified for when I exceeded $125,000 was “too small” – new guy ” doesn’t allow investors worth less than $500,000 to open a SPS. Adding insult to injury he raised the fee for the SPS from 1.25% ( firm minimum and rate my prior advisor set) to 1.75% of my balance. Oh and told me he was going to charge fee based transactions -at $250 per stock trade. Oh, and he met me once for an hour, and “scheduled a follow-up for 6 months. I had the good, now I have the bad, and it’s well on the way to ugly. And I thought all Ameriprise planners were like my first experience

By: Johnnie Stevens

Johnnie Stevens — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:14:48 +0000

I am paying $2000 yearly to an Ameriprise advisor whether he loses or gaing and so far I have only had loses. Is this in line with what others pay for the services. Should an advisor be paid even when he is a loser.or should he be paid for performance. When I instructed the advisor to take me out of equities because of the falling market and he refused to do so do I have cause for complaint?? I am 72 and have less than half of what I entrusted to Ameriprise.

By: MaryAnnM

MaryAnnM — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:36:40 +0000

This is a question for anyone who could help. In a nutshell, I have a RiverSource Retirement Advisor 4 Advantage VA (Annuity) and have gone from $235,000 to $191,000 in 6 months due to the market. I understand that if I move, cash out, etc this money, I will pay a penalty and taxes because I am only 42.

Is there another place I can transfer this account without penalties, early withdrawal taxes and have it more secured? I don’t care about making a ton of money on it, I just want it to be safe.

Anyone, please? Thank you, MAM