u/Fancy-Security7244

Hi everyone,

I recently started working with Symmetry Financial Group / Cornerstone about a month ago. I got hired and started studying for my Life and Health Insurance state exam. I had to pay for the exam prep/practice material myself, and I just passed the state exam yesterday on my first try, which I’m really happy about because I studied hard for about a month.

The part that has made me uncomfortable is that I felt pressured from the beginning to move faster than I was ready for. Some of the people there kept saying that “successful agents” usually finish the course and take the state exam within about 14 days, and that if I wanted to be successful, I needed to do the same. My husband encouraged me not to let that pressure get to me and to just study at my own pace, especially because I know I am not the fastest learner. I’m glad I listened because I passed when I felt ready.

Now that I passed the exam, I was told the next step is something called a “game plan,” where we would go over how to get started, make sales, get leads, and move forward after applying for my license. But this morning around 7:30 AM, someone texted me saying I need to buy tickets for an out-of-state conference, and that going to this conference is a requirement in order to do the game plan.

This is the first time I was told I would need to fly to another state for this. The flights I found were around $800, and the conference tickets are about $200 each. So now I’m being asked to spend around $1,000 or more just to attend a one-day event, after already spending around $500 getting trained, licensed, and prepared.

What bothers me is that I got into this because I wanted to make money, not keep paying money to them before I have even started making sales. I understand investing in yourself, but this feels like a lot right away. I also feel like the same pressure tactic is being used again, where they say things like, “If you want to be successful, you need to be there,” or that it is “required.”

Has anyone here worked with Symmetry Financial Group or Cornerstone? Is attending these conferences actually required, or is this more of a pressure/sales tactic? Did you have to pay for travel, tickets, training, leads, and everything else before making any money?

I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just trying to understand if this is normal in the insurance industry or if I should be concerned. I feel pressured and a little manipulated, and I would really appreciate hearing from people who have experience with this company or similar insurance agencies.

Hey everyone,

I recently got my green card approved after one of the most stressful immigration experiences of my life, and now I’m trying to figure out whether hiring an attorney again for Removal of Conditions (I-751) in 2 years is really necessary or if people successfully do it themselves.

For context, I was previously married and later divorced. During my second marriage-based case, USCIS focused heavily on my prior marriage and issued a NOID basically implying my first marriage was not bona fide. What frustrated me the most is that our original application package was around 1,152 pages, and around 600+ pages were purely evidence-based (joint bank statements, leases, insurance, bills, photos, etc.). It honestly felt like they barely reviewed the full package and instead focused mainly on engagement photos they claimed looked “staged” because many were taken during the same photo session.

I ended up spending around $7,000 on an attorney to respond to the NOID. In the end, the response mostly involved:

quoting the law regarding INA 204(c), organizing the evidence better, adding sworn declarations, adding context/explanations to the photos, and re-submitting a lot of the same evidence that had already been filed.

Thankfully, both the I-130 and I-485 were approved, and I now have my conditional green card.

Here’s why I’m asking this question now: The day after my approval, the attorney’s office reached out wanting me to sign another contract for them to handle my I-751 Removal of Conditions in 2 years for around $4,000, even though I know the filing fee itself is around $750.

So I’m genuinely curious:

Did you file your I-751 yourself or with an attorney? If you did it yourself, was it difficult? Did anyone here have prior marriage scrutiny or a NOID before? Were you approved without issues? Is an attorney actually worth it for ROC if the current marriage is real and ongoing?

At this point I’m trying to balance peace of mind vs spending thousands again unnecessarily.

Would appreciate hearing real experiences from people who went through ROC themselves

I feel embarrassed even posting this, but I’m curious if this has happened to anyone else.

I’ve been working in finance for about 4 years. I use Excel all the time at work, building pivot tables, trackers, dashboards, and even using Power Query to clean data. I’m not an expert, but I’m definitely comfortable and get the job done.

Recently, I had an interview that was going really well… until they asked about Excel. I told them I had experience, and then they pulled out an advanced Excel test and asked me to share my screen.

As soon as it started, I completely froze.

I couldn’t do things I know how to do. Something as simple as returning a manager’s name using an ID and using an xlooup formula for it, I blanked. Ranking products by revenue, I blanked. Even splitting the text into first and last name, I couldn’t think straight.

It was like my brain just shut off.

They ended the interview due to time constraints, and right after they left, I went back to the file and was able to finish everything… XLOOKUPs, ranking, and a few more, except the text functions cuz I am genuinely not good at it, and I rarely even use that at work.

That honestly made it worse. I felt like I just sabotaged myself over nerves.

Has this happened to anyone else? How do you deal with freezing like that during technical interviews?