AKA “surprisingly, oligopolies are there to make money and care about their customers just enough not to pee on their faces while someone else is looking”.
Interesting article, but nowhere near what Wells Fargo was doing. They had institutionalized their fake account openings. The average customer had 8 accounts (including checking, savings, credit cards, mortgages, etc.). That’s obviously too many.
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but I have something like 11 accounts with Tangerine (they’re free). It’s convenient for budgeting for different things.
It’s mostly out of laziness! I’m a big fan of “set it and forget it” approaches to life. It also helps keep track of finances and prevents splurges you can’t afford. If I have $300 in my “travel” account, I’m not going to go on a $1500 trip.
I’m lucky to have a lot of savings. I regularly get calls and emails from Scotiabank telling me to buy mutual funds and increase my credit limit. I always figured that if someone contacts you saying they have an offer that will make you a lot of money, they’re lying. CBC seems to confirm that.
If you have a notable amount in savings, investing it in some way is generally a good idea, but I agree with not trusting your bank to steer you right.
All-equity mutual funds net fees will, on average, return more than 5¼%. (Should be about 7-8% on average). That said, that comes with a lot of volatility (value fluctuations) and you can expect sometime in the next 50 years to have a year that’s down as much as 50%, but over the same 50 years it will outperform any GIC.
They’re still a terrible product, though. An ETF will do the same, but be worth about 3-4× as much after 50 years due to mutual fund fees eating most of the compound gains.
Anyway, the ethics of mutual funds are why I quit the finance industry before even really getting started in it. I did financial analytics as a co-op student for one of the major banks in the mutual funds group and had the skills and connections to make a career in finance, but I couldn’t stomach making a career working on financial products that are predatory.
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