Has anyone had experience with Primerica?
I have recently become involved and am seeing what experience people have had.
Hi! Your friendly insurance guy here again! :)
I am inclined to agree with the two prior posters. Primerica tried to recruit me at one point. Their approach was sort of like "Amway." They pay you more commissions for recruiting your friends, as I understood it; and focus secondarily on providing sound financial services. I was not overly impressed with the knowledge of the Primerica rep that approached me, either.
It's possible that I met one bad apple, thought I at the time, so I did some online research and found the horror stories of them absolutely abound. I'd avoid working with one as an advisor, and if they tried to recruit you I'd suggest finding another company to work for.
I've been working there for 2 full years now on a very part-time basis. Maybe I could of have better results now if I put more time into it... Anyway, you want to know my experience?
First of all, I wanted to quit the day I joined. I didn't know if this was for me or if I could do the things that these older experience people can do. Then I reflect my first day on a job from a different company and had the exact same experience. So I just hanged on and observe how these people do business and build a business.
A month later, I got my state life license and did my second FNA appointment and was able to do a life sale. I got paid $312 at a Representative contract. A month after that, I got my reimbursement check for passing state life exam.
3 months into the business, I recruited a total of 3 people and got promoted to Senior Rep. My recruits later quit. I didn't bother asking why.
A year after I joined, I recruited a total of 5 people. These 2 people also quit. I also got my securities license at this time and started my own Roth IRA and help other people I know with their retirement accounts. I even earn commissions off my own Roth IRA! When you get your securities license, you override the stock market. You get paid 12b-1 fees every quarter off your Total Assets Under Management. When the client buys new shares, you earn commission on that too! You won't earn lots of commissions at the beginning of your securities business. Sometimes you may run into large rollovers that can pay you lots of money. Not only that, the bigger your Assets Under Management, the bigger your 12b-1 commission.
Then tax season came around. Did you know that whatever you spend on your business (like food, gas, transportation, etc), you can deduct them from your income? For example, if you made $10,000 in PFS, you will owe taxes on it at the end of the year. If you kept your receipts and say you spent like $2000, instead of oweing tax on $10,000, you now owe tax on the $8000! At a regular job, when you get paid, tax is already deducted from paycheck. You might be able to make some tax deductions from it, but you can't use regular expenses as tax deductions. In a business, your income is tax at the end of the year. Whatever expenses you paid for the year, you can deduct that from your income.
I am now 25 months into my business and I have been building lots of activity. I still have no teammates, but I do have personal activities. I did my first FNA appointment for this year. I'm going to help this client save money on her debt and take 8 years off too! This is my first SMART loan I ever did. I'm also going to help her move some investments around. She has decent amount of money saved. Some of her investments has performed poorly over the years and some has performed very well. The only problem is that she has investments in 2 sectors instead of all 9.
Anyway, I'm not great at this business, but I'm still trying. In my first 2 years, all I did was go to training twice a week. I made some attempts to make my business grow by prospecting, but fear took hold of me and I couldn't do it. I don't know what happened lately, but all of sudden I started to do work. I started to have guests coming down again and have couple of appointments. "If you stick around long enough, something will happen."
To sum this up: You will deal with lots of crap at the beginning. You might not even make much money. You don't know everything yet about the business, therefore you need to attend training twice a week. Eventually someone you know will need help and hopefully you are still around to help that person. If you need help, don't be afraid to ask for it. If you want results, build lots of activity. Activity consists of going outside your home and talking to people about what you do. It consists of getting on the phone and scheduling guests and appointments. If you do quit, don't ever say to your kids that you were never given the opportunity to live a wealthy life style.
Answers:
I have a friend that does the Primerica stuff as a part-time job. His full time job is as a waiter (and he's nearly 40 years old)....not exactly my image of a financial "professional."
Sadly, the rest of the financial service community does not view Primerica with high regards. I think it has a lot to do with their "one size fits all" business model.
RUN! Run away as fast as you can. Primerica reps are undertrained to sell overpriced products AND recruit everyone that they know to become another Primerica Rep. They have a 'one size fits all" mentality for all clients.