[forgottenpaswrd]

"I firmly believe that the financial sector is nothing more than a thief."

Then, why do you use their services?

If your financial advisor does not provide value to you you could fire him.

"Can anyone tell me a way to save for retirement that produces similar results and isn't funding criminals?"

Is called: Investing in yourself. You should probably do it as early as possible, you will probably lose all your money(like most people do first time they try). Then you will either go back to your financial advisor(but with some respect from what he does, as you show how it was not as easy as it looked) or you will learn and do well.

Personally I don't like lots of financial institutions, mainly because the tricks of simulating value created in order to justify outrageous incomes. Then the trick is revealed and society has to pay the party.

Having said that, investing well is a profession or value creation activity like any other. It takes skill to know what is going to work and what not, where to risk wealth and where not, and facing responsibility and accountabilty.

The problem is not the financial services, like people like communist(much worse system) want make people to believe.

The problem are monopolies, big institutions without real competition married with politicians.

[chrisBob]

I use the service because I haven't found a better option. I feel like I am in a position of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

> you will probably lose all your money(like most people do first time they try) That is the problem.