Lame Presentation
We had a presentation at work this week for the students. We have these on occasion, usually about city services or health resources. This one was described as a "financial presentation" to help students manage their finances and (ironically) avoid financial scams, but it turned out to be an hour-long sales pitch! I was really dissapointed, and the more I think about it, the more dissapointed I become. This guy spoke for an hour, in which he gave students the following helpful information: being wealthy is good, wealthy people are just like regular people only "in the know", taxes are baaad, we need to cut out the "middle man" banks and invest directly with "money professionals", and he can show us how to do this and be wealthy at retirement. The were no actual details or concrete financial information in the entire presentation, the whole thing was geared toward giving out his business card and getting students to write down their contact information (so he could hassle them further). The only thing he said that was unrelated to his sales pitch was that debt is bad and that credit cards should only be used for emergencies, however this was prefaced by "They asked me to talk about..." and took all of 5 minutes, so I'm fairly certain this isn't part of his regular spiel.
This guys works for the World Financial Group - which I googled afterward. It's a legitimate investment company from the States, but has been red-flagged on some sites and involved in some disputes/lawsuits for misleading investors. They pay their "financial advisors" to recruit people, who are in turn paid to recruit more people (sounds like a pyramid scheme to me!). His company gets people to invest in some kind of "Universal Life" account, and would probably pressure any students who contacted him for "financial advice" to invest their money. Regardless of how sound these investment opportunities are, our students are new immigrants, most of them looking for work, trying to make ends meet, struggling to meet costs of daily life like rent and food (many using the food bank) -- these are not the kind of people who can afford to make a monthly contribution to an investment group in order to be "wealthy in retirement". Unfortunately, due to their limited English and inexperience in Canada, they can't really tell the difference between this bozo and a legitimate financial advisor trying to help them sort out their finances.
This guy is a friend of one of the full-time teachers, which is how he got the opportunity to present in the first place. I would have hoped CIES has some kind of screening process in place for presenters, but apparantly not. I'm definitely going to bring this up to my students and let them know I wouldn't recommend contacting this person - however I still worry about the rest of the student population. I saw many students taking business cards and writing down their contact info. Urgh, people like this financial guy really make me sad.
This guys works for the World Financial Group - which I googled afterward. It's a legitimate investment company from the States, but has been red-flagged on some sites and involved in some disputes/lawsuits for misleading investors. They pay their "financial advisors" to recruit people, who are in turn paid to recruit more people (sounds like a pyramid scheme to me!). His company gets people to invest in some kind of "Universal Life" account, and would probably pressure any students who contacted him for "financial advice" to invest their money. Regardless of how sound these investment opportunities are, our students are new immigrants, most of them looking for work, trying to make ends meet, struggling to meet costs of daily life like rent and food (many using the food bank) -- these are not the kind of people who can afford to make a monthly contribution to an investment group in order to be "wealthy in retirement". Unfortunately, due to their limited English and inexperience in Canada, they can't really tell the difference between this bozo and a legitimate financial advisor trying to help them sort out their finances.
This guy is a friend of one of the full-time teachers, which is how he got the opportunity to present in the first place. I would have hoped CIES has some kind of screening process in place for presenters, but apparantly not. I'm definitely going to bring this up to my students and let them know I wouldn't recommend contacting this person - however I still worry about the rest of the student population. I saw many students taking business cards and writing down their contact info. Urgh, people like this financial guy really make me sad.