Everyone always thinks they know better than the professionals, like they have some secret knowledge over people who have been in the field their whole lives.

Sometimes that works out, like your Mom telling you to swap milk for heavy cream when you’re making scrambled eggs. This one is real. Try it.

But sometimes it shows you why you should leave things to the pros, like your Dad insisting he can build you that coffee table you wanted from IKEA.

But one field you should never, ever, try to stick your neck where it doesn’t belong? Finance.

This user’s customer learned that the hard way when he rudely insisted OP move all of his money out of the market, only to immediately lose a TON of cash!

Check it out!

Demand that your money be moved? Don’t let me tell you that this is a bad idea? Sure.

Some of you might recall that financial crisis that happened a bit back, circa 2008-ish. At the time, I was working in a call center for retirement accounts such as 401k’s or 403b’s.

For any non-Americans, these are plans from your employer where you can contribute a portion of your salary, usually they will also contribute something as well, to save for retirement.

This is probably the biggest way that Americans save for the end.

As the account-holder, you have control over how the money is invested. Usually from a small selection of different mutual funds.

OP said because of their experience, they were assigned to deal with some of the center’s more passionate callers.

Also, about the call center… I had some experience, I knew what I was talking about and was able to speak with confidence in my voice.

Therefore, I was on the “escalated” line. This is reserved for the people who “want to talk to a manager.” I was not a manager, but I and others like me got these calls.

In some rare cases, we actually fixed a problem, but more often than not, just told the customer the same thing they had just heard from the first rep, only with that level of confidence.

Then they hung up as a happy customer. We also had the ability to review previous calls to the center.

One day they were transferred a particularly enraged customer who had made some unfortunate investments.

So, one day in April of 2009, an irate client was transferred to me.

He had just gotten his quarterly financial statement, showing that he was invested in several different funds that were affected by the stock market.

His complaint was that he had called a month earlier to request that his stock-market based investments be moved to something more stable and less risky.

This didn’t happen. At that time, the news was all doom-and-gloom, leading people to make majorly ill-informed financial decisions.

And OP soon confirmed the reason why the customer was so upset.

I reviewed the transaction history on his account.

I confirmed that whoever he had spoken to previously had only redirected new contributions into stable funds, but had made no change to any existing balance.

I told the gentleman that I could review the call, and if our rep had made a mistake, adhere to his wishes. I then tried to say something else… but was quickly cut-off.

“Yes, review that call. I want my money out of the market!!!” I try to say something like “okay, but sir….” only to be cut-off again.

This was not a man with a small account balance, at the time it was 500k+, meaning that at the beginning of the crisis, he probably had around 1 million in his account.

And while OP admitted their rep had messed up…

I reviewed the call. And yes, our rep had made a mistake. I went through the process to retroactively conduct his requested transactions.

The rep got a negative mark on his record for making a mistake, but the customer really got the short end.

For those that don’t know, the low-point in the market was in early March of that year. Many stocks and markets rebounded enormously and very quickly.

They also said this customer REALLY should have listened to what they had to say!

What I wanted to tell the guy was something like “fund A is up 28% since the day you made that call. Fund B is up 32%…. ” and so on.

But, as he didn’t give me the chance to tell him to think about his request… well, that is why I am posting here.

As my company had to backdate his transactions, he instantly lost about 150K in his account, and missed out on the boom.

Of course, he called later to complain. But, even after our mistake, we had done exactly as he had asked. I hope he is enjoying his retirement.

That’s why you listen to the experts folks! You’re obviously calling the center to get help with your account, so why would you think you know better than them?

Reddit was quick to come in with their own gems of financial wisdom, including an old study done on who the most successful investors are.

Another person shared that its when the market dips that you should be buying.

This user got his financial gains simply by being lazy!

And finally, one commenter got his financial wisdom from a very unexpected source: World of Warcraft!

You know, I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon lately, you think that will help with my financial decisions?

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.