Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Withdraw funds with penalty or bear high management fees for 10 years?
Most financial "advisors" are actually financial-product salesmen.  Their job is to sweet-talk you into parting with as much money as possible - either in management fees, or in commissions (kickbacks) on high-fee investment products** (which come from fees charged to you, inside the investment.)  This is a scrappy, cutthroat business for the salesmen themselves.  Realistically that is how they feed their family, and I empathize, but I can't afford to buy their product.  I wish they would sell something else. These people prey on people's financial lack of knowledge.  For instance, you put too much importance on "returns".  Why?  because the salesman told you that's important.  It's not.  The market goes up and down, that's normal.  The question is how much of your investment is being consumed by fees.  How do you tell that (and generally if you're invested well)?  You compare your money's performance to an index that's relevant to you.  You've heard of  the S&P 500, that's an index, relevant to US investors.  Take 2015. The S&P 500 was $2058.20 on January 2, 2015.  It was $2043.94 on December 31, 2015.  So it was flat;  it dropped 0.7%. If your US investments dropped 0.7%, you broke even.  If you made less, that was lost to the expenses within the investment, or the investment performing worse than the S&P 500 index.  I lost 0.8% in 2015, the extra 0.1% being expenses of the investment. Try 2013: S&P 500 was $1402.43 on December 28, 2012 and $1841.10 on Dec. 27, 2013. That's 31.2% growth.  That's amazing, but it also means 31.2% is holding even with the market.  If your salesman proudly announced that you made 18%... problem! All this to say: when you say the investments performed "poorly", don't go by absolute numbers. Find a suitable index and compare to the index.  A lot of markets were down in 2015-16, and that is not your investment's fault.  You want to know if were down compared to your index.   Because that reflects either a lousy funds manager, or high fees.   This may leave you wondering "where can I invest that is safe and has sensible fees?  I don't know your market, but here we have "discount brokers" which allow self-selection of investments, charge no custodial fees, and simply charge by the trade (commonly $10).  Many mutual funds and ETFs are "index funds" with very low annual fees, 0.20% (1 in 500) or even less.    How do you pick investments? Look at any of numerous books, starting with John Bogle's classic "Common Sense on Mutual Funds" book which is the seminal work on the value of keeping fees low.  If you need the cool, confident professional to hand-hold you through the process, a fee-only advisor is a true financial advisor who actually acts in your best interest.  They honestly recommend what's best for you. But beware: many commission-driven salespeople pretend to be fee-only advisors.  The good advisor will be happy to advise investment types, and let you pick the brand (Fidelity vs Vanguard) and buy it in your own discount brokerage account with a password you don't share. Frankly, finance is not that hard.  But it's made hard by impossibly complex products that don't need to exist, and are designed to confuse people to conceal hidden fees.  Avoid those products.  You just don't need them.  Now, you really need to take a harder look at what this investment is. Like I say, they make these things unnecessarily complex specifically to make them confusing, and I am confused.  Although it doesn't seem like much of a question to me.  1.5% a quarter is 6% a year or 60% in 10 years (to ignore compounding). If the market grows 6% a year on average so growth just pays the fees, they will consume 60% of the $220,000, or $132,000.  As far as the $60,000, for that kind of money it's definitely worth talking to a good lawyer because it sounds like they misrepresented something to get your friend to sign up in the first place.  Put some legal pressure on them, that $60k penalty might get a lot smaller.   ** For instance they'll recommend JAMCX, which has a 5.25% buy-in fee (front-end load) and a 1.23% per year fee (expense ratio). Compare to VIMSX with zero load and a 0.20% fee.  That front-end load is kicked back to your broker as commission, so he literally can't recommend VIMSX - there's no commission! His company would, and should, fire him for doing so.