On Monday, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. So we won’t have to worry about him stealing your money, but how do you protect yourself from other Bernie Madoffs out there?
Well, one of the first things you can do is go to FINRA.org and go to the broker check section and check out your broker. It will let you know if there have been any violations or any lawsuits against your finical consultant. If there is, you may want to move to someone who has a clean record.
Next very important thing is to make sure you get independent statements. If your financial advisor is the only one providing you statements, that’s very unusual -- that’s what happened with Bernie Madoff. So, make sure you’ve got either an independent custodian providing it or a mutual fund company providing them for you.
Finally, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Trust your gut on this, if someone is telling you something about a 9% guaranteed return, walk out the door.
If you follow these three steps, you will be pretty well protected.
