As you probably know, a front-end load is a fee that you pay when you first invest in a fund. Front-end loads typically charge 1% to 5.5% of the assets you are investing, though they can be as high as 8.5%.

The first reason that you should try to stay away from funds that charge these fees is that they immediately decrease the amount of money you're putting to work in the market. This instant decrease has a large negative impact on your overall return.

Let's say you invest $1000 in a fund that charges a 5% front-end load. On day one you'll put $950 into the fund. If the fund returned 10% that year, you'll have $1045 at year end. You'd have $1100 if you had invested in a no-load fee (not considering other fees.)

The second reason to be wary is that front-end loads are typically paid to your broker or adviser, not to the fund. I don't know too much about your investment guy, but it's likely that he'll be the one collecting the front-load fees. You need to be sure that he's recommending these funds because they are the best ones for your portfolio and not because he'll profit. It's possible that his good advice is worth the extra fees though at least one FiLifer does not like Ameriprise.. I'd check out the funds on Morningstar, or read our mutual fund reviews.

Personally, I'd pay a financial planner a flat fee to create me an asset allocation strategy (or gleam info from FiLife for free) and then I'd invest in low-cost index funds. That's what a lot of smart people do.