What is the dumbest piece of advice a financial adviser has given you?

Here is a little secret about financial advisors and those faking same despite having licenses. Most are clueless and don’t know what they are doing. Why? They don’t have real world experience with their own funds. If they do, they usually have a losing record. Ok. Here is my answer to the question.

In the fall of the year 2005 and when the real estate market was going crazy and all kinds of real estate investors were giving speeches and masquerading as advisors, I attended a local seminar about real estate investing.

I already had my rural land property/investment business model developed and most of my current advisors in place. A mortgage broker was speaking about loans for real estate.

These so called mortgage financial advisors were recommending people take interest only loans to fund their real estate purchases because the rates were low and it cash flows easily. There are many problems with this dumb advice. Here are some:

• Debt at some point has to be paid back. Anybody who has done any investing and used debt with real estate, stocks, or a business knows this. Delaying indefinitely paying off a debt is foolish.
• Even if an interest only loan for any type of investment cash flows today, it might not tomorrow, next month, or next year. The investment might quit paying. For example:
• The tenant lost his/her job. The property flip did not work as the foundation crack was not discovered during the euphoria when the property was bought. Funds(from more debt) were needed to fix the crack when an engineer who looked at the property to buy it discovered it.