Harriet just said something I wanted to mention for long time:
The financial advise you get from some people here may/not benefit you at all. They have gained their livelihood on good, hard to achieve/lucky opportunities they got on real estate. They may tell you old and obsolete experiences on other financial ideas that may not fit the current affairs. They may be giving you good, or bad advise. That goes for me too, so no BS about fraud and whatnot please.
After saying that, you can listen, or stay away from people being negative about other “things” out of the despite they missed the chance to get onboard or are negative because they lack of positive ideas that can defeat them,or they are too old for such programs, or have been in such other programs for their entire lives. People as always are afraid of new but old things. They just didn’t know they existed for long time.
Do what the rich people do, same as Real Estate, use OPM, other people’s money. Leverage 75%-80% of your money and retire without risking that portion of your $%.
The stock market of today Monday December 17 can tell you how wrong or believable their knowledge is. They can bring you numbers of alleged results from their portfolios, their 401Ks, IRAs, etc. but the stock market is a no-forgiving monster, the numbers can’t lie, you lose, you lose, there’s no “oh, see? I was at 26,000, then I got to 24,000 but no I am at 25,000…I am winning!” Nope. You are losing. You lose 10% of $100, you need about 11+% to recover. And when you see that compounding almost every day, you are losing, not winning. The winning opportunities are gone, unless your gains are invested but never lost in a stock market crash!
The end result of your choosing may be years down the road and past results won’t guarantee future profits. Nobody can guarantee you that, if they do, they lose their licenses. Anybody here promising to comp you if you lose your money? No!
If you want to be clear in your financial questions and expectations, there’s a list I can give you for you to follow under 3 premises, you pay taxes now, you pay them later, and how are you set up to get tax discounts or aka using tax loopholes:
A list from financial advisors may have these, some, or all of these, or more:
1- Avoid higher fees. Having one plan for mom, another for dad, and individual plans for kids can eat big chunks of your money. Create 1-2 plans so you can avoid lots of fees, and risks.
2- Avoiding market risk. Are you a conservative investing your $, or you have a tendency to be risk it all? Would you settle for a fixed 4%-12%-16% with no loss of your principal, or 100% return, but lose it all or 40% of your entire wealth at the whim of the stock market (2008) and now?
3- Liquidity… Is most of the money you are contributing to x or y scheme in your hands or on the hands of the guy/company managing your “portfolio”? Can you/are you prepared for an emergency where you need to pull most of your “investment” with one call with no taxes to be paid, ever?
4- No taxation. With the help of tax avoiding plans, etc. would you rather pay taxes now, or later? See #6.
5- No limits on your contributions. Research on how you can defeat the limitation of other programs where you are forced to contribute to only a very little amount of your income.
6- SS with no taxation. Are you preparing yourself for a retirement where your SS check,(if you get one in the future, 
) will be taxed 85% due to your income from different “investments”?
7- Living Benefits. Do you have a program to sustain the loss of income from one of the working parents becoming handicapped or disabled?
8- Self Employed, any other business? Do you have any other income besides being a W-2? Are you set up under any corporation scheme out there? Do you have the right one?
9- Tax Deductions: Do you as a business men/women earning enough to create your own tax deduction program, say 10% out if your gross income is more than $50K as such? Are you deducting what you ought to deduct? Do you know about the Augusta rule?
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what I know. I can mention savings on workers comp, cost segregation, deferring paying capital gains after seling a home instead of using 1031, credit card merchant account discounts, you name the trick, it’s in my sleeve.
Other people “investing” in the stock market can chime in. They know their thing, and I am not familiar nor I support their ideas, but I respect them. Their money, their future.
I know we got into a match of words with some negative individuals on this forum. But this forum should exist to offer advice in all aspects of investments and saving programs, no matter what you think, they are intertwined. A buck in the bucket is a buck in your pocket. You guys exchange private emails with deals in the make, why such secrecy? Or why, say, a mortgage company, real estate guy, or any other guy with such experience is not allowed to offer their help? You guys advertise other stock management companies or bring links to this forum. I think that is a good idea, let the investor or forum participant make the right decision.
What I mean is that this should be done without the crazies attacking anybody because “they think” is a fraud. Specially when such ideas or “schemes” have been around since 1848.
Warren Buffet loves to invest and buy such “schemes” Oh boy! He turnes a losing investment into a tax deduction opportunity. That’s how the rich are getting richer. Are you using your losses to get rich? Some may do, but you?