[quote=Primo]Either my sarcasm is not obvious enough or you should read more carefully.  A couple of posts back SKO said he did not get a tax credit for premiums paid at Jones.  This is  because health premiums come out pre-tax as you know, therefore explaining the difference from paystub to w-2.  Does that make it more clear?  Or are you going to the"dumbass" insult again, resulting in me using the “sticks and stones” defense.  In the future, I will attempt to be far more obvious in my posts when I agree with you.[/quote]

Sorry, didn’t get the sarcasm, I didn’t read the whole thread.

[quote=spikedkoolaid]I’m sorry, when I was at Jones they made me pay for my health benefits $1000/month.  Was it pre-tax?  Has something changed?

What a wonderful career we have!

I do!

Not good. Not good at all.

A few more points about going Indy vs staying at Jones.

1. The Jones FA pays an unusually higher rate on thier health insurance. Why? As stated by home office: to subsidize the BOA and home office employees. When I went Indy I dropped my costs by 30% with the same insurance company and made it a business write off.

2. When you look at the K1 - Make sure to pay attention to the pay increases the top 7 Jones leaders had right after they agreed to pay for legal settlements over the last several years. A few years ago, Doug Hills increase year over year was exactly what he had to pay for the settlement. Its still that way today. As a LP you dont really have ownership control over what happens to your revenue dollars.

3.A truly great FA at Jones will appreciate this. Yes it is great to be Indy and have more control but here is the difference. Working together as part of a respected team. Once I went Indy, I had numerous comments from Attornesy, CPA’s and from my top clients that they liked what I was doing. They were confident in sending referals to me but hadnt been confident that Jones could really help the wealthy. Despite the surveys, they knew that I lacked product and support to handle the wealthy. Jones couldnt handle real estate in their trust management. In fact, the first order of business was to sell it off.

4. I ran the numbers on LP vs what my book of business would be worth. If you are going to goodknight then go Indy and hire your own people. The future value of the business greatly overwhelms what an LP could be worht. But remember, most Jonesers are not business owners. They were school teachers etc. They wont understand what it means or why you would want to have ownership and control of the whole thing.

Go Indy, dont look back, and as happened to me, be prepared to see others follow you when they see the light.

Thanks for the advice and the truly enlightening post.  I’ve never heard any of that before.  I’ll take it all under advisement. 

Freeman, you’re right on most points (the Trust dept issue is a strange thing to highlight, but I guess we all have our hot buttons).  Fact is, Jones is no different than most wirehouse and regional brokerages.  Our payout is what it is, the bonuses are what they are, and the ^%#$ that happens behind the scenes is not unlike most other major firms (in our industry and others).  They take care of the select few.  When a senior exec gets a fine or some other type of compensation hit, they take care of them somehow.  I don’t exactly blame them.  That’s just business.  When Doug Hill was fined or whatever, he did what he was doing with the blessing of the firm.  He was just the fall guy, since he was in charge.  So they took care of him.  I think it would have been crappier if they didn’t.  Just like the other financial execs that get $20mm sendoff packages when they are fired because their firm just wrote off $20B.  And I don’t think they owe it to all 30,000 employees to explain every little move they make.

I just like flippin’ hamburgers.

No sense in starting a new thread for more or less the same re-hash, but I was curious how many of you on the inside knew about this one…

Stuff like that happens everyday despite the company.

Or because of the company, just depends on your point of view…

How can someone in a one man(person) office be exposed to the amount of distress claimed in this proceeding. It’s not like she had to walk through the door every morning to a waiting and irritated Branch Manager ready to accost her. Can someone really cause this much trauma over the phone? I honestly cannot believe things were that bad.



This is exactly why everyone should experience service in the military; it allows for “stress” and “heavy-handed” management style to be put into perspective.

Nog, putting aside your well-expresed hate for EJ, there are thousands instances of insecure managers who like to abuse the people below them.  I think it was just a volatile combination between a dickhead RL and type A granny FA.  Dysfunctional teams exist everywhere. 

Nog, putting aside your well-expresed hate for EJ, there are thousands instances of insecure managers who like to abuse the people below them.  I think it was just a volatile combination between a dickhead RL and type A granny FA.  Dysfunctional teams exist everywhere. 

Thanks, All, for the good input regarding my question at the beginning of the thread.

Noggin is right. I went indy today and my eyes are open. I will not bash Jones, but I will also not pretend that they are perfect.

There have been numerous benefits to working at Jones, but after a period of time I began to notice that there were imperfections in the system.

Noggin is right about the RL keeping score. Politics plays an important part of the regional culture. Our region wasn’t that bad, but again, not perfect. LP awards incorporate the intangible “volunteerism.” Volunteerism leads to producing reps becoming RL’s and trying to manage a bunch of A-type personalities scattered over two hundred miles. If you have a squeaky wheel, distance may aggravate the problem

The office environment is not hostile, but if you have a huge tool for an RL, I could see where hostility could play.

Congratulations not-noggin, as always keep us posted on your transition successes.