What Should I Expect If I’m Looking for a Good Financial Planner and I Do a Web Search for “A Good Financial Planner Near Me?”

Posted on September 14, 2024 by 40 Years In The Industry

Searching for a financial planner online can be a convenient way to find professional help for managing your finances. However, it’s important to know what to expect and how to navigate the results to find a reputable planner. Here’s a guide to help you through the process.

1. A Variety of Results

When you search for “a good financial planner near me,” you’ll likely see a mix of results, including individual financial planners, financial planning firms, and directories of certified professionals. Be prepared to sift through these options to find the right fit for your needs.

2. Advertisements and Sponsored Listings

Many of the top results may be advertisements or sponsored listings. While these can be legitimate options, it’s important to look beyond the ads and consider other factors like credentials, reviews, and personal recommendations.

3. Professional Directories

You’ll likely come across directories from professional organizations such as the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) Board, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), and the Financial Planning Association (FPA). These directories can be valuable resources for finding certified and reputable financial planners.

4. Client Reviews and Ratings

Online reviews and ratings can provide insights into the experiences of other clients. Look for planners with consistently positive feedback and take note of any recurring issues mentioned in negative reviews. Websites like Yelp, Google Reviews, and Better Business Bureau (BBB) can be helpful.

5. Detailed Profiles

Many financial planners and firms will have detailed profiles on their websites or on professional directories. These profiles often include information about their credentials, areas of expertise, services offered, and fee structures. Take the time to read through these profiles to understand what each planner can offer.

6. Educational Content

Reputable financial planners often provide educational content on their websites, such as blog posts, articles, and videos. This content can give you a sense of their expertise and approach to financial planning. It can also help you learn more about financial topics and make informed decisions.

7. Contact Information

Most financial planners will provide contact information, including phone numbers, email addresses, and office locations. Use this information to reach out and schedule initial consultations. Many planners offer free consultations to discuss your needs and how they can help.

8. Fee Structures

Expect to find information about different fee structures. Financial planners may charge fees based on an hourly rate, a flat fee, a percentage of assets under management, or commissions from financial products. Understanding these fee structures will help you choose a planner whose compensation aligns with your interests.

9. Fiduciary Responsibility

Look for planners who act as fiduciaries, meaning they are legally obligated to act in your best interest. This is an important consideration to ensure you receive unbiased advice.

10. Next Steps

After gathering information from your web search, create a shortlist of potential financial planners. Schedule consultations to discuss your financial goals, ask questions, and assess whether you feel comfortable working with them. Trust your instincts and choose a planner who meets your needs and earns your trust.

Conclusion

Searching for a financial planner online can be a great starting point, but it’s important to know what to expect and how to evaluate your options. By considering factors like credentials, reviews, fee structures, and fiduciary responsibility, you can find a reputable financial planner who will help you achieve your financial goals.

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Before You Google…

Posted on October 22, 2017 by 40 Years In The Industry

If you’ve decided you need help with your finances, finding the right advisor for your situation starts with a conversation.  But not where you might think.  It starts with having a conversation with yourself, and your partner if you have one, that engages in some introspection, research, and outlining about what your life is about.

What are you looking for in your relationship with the person, or persons, that you invite into your financial life?  And where are you in your financial lifespan? Are you a good planner and have a budget and are looking for assistance in just managing your assets?  Or are you like so many of us that spend large blocks of our time in our career and recreational endeavors that we find our financial planning either doesn’t exist or is in shambles?  Are you at a point in your life where you’re thinking about retirement, funding college for your kids, and catching up or maximizing your contributions to your IRA or 401(k)?  Or are you worrying about digging out from under a mountain of student debt, buying your first house, or getting started in your first career?

Retirement will look different to Gen X and Gen Y investors than Baby Boomers.  Those of us in the Boomer generation are looking forward to Social Security, potentially the last of defined benefit pension plans, and years of stable employment that hopefully has resulted in a fully funded 401(k).  The next generation of retirees may very well not have the same benefits to look forward to.  Social security is a bankrupt political football.  401(k)s have made the news in the new Trump tax bill with the idea that the current limits on non-taxable contributions will be dropped significantly and people will have to move to Roth investments where the money deposited is taxed going in, but not taxed coming out.

Health advances mean that average life expectancies are increasing and there are many ways this can impact your planning, and the kind of advisor you will be most satisfied with.

Before you sit down with an advisor, and begin the vetting process, it’s important to reflect on what  you want out of your life – as best as you can.  Setting goals is part of the planning process and it’s far better you know what you want, than to have your advisor telling you what you want.

When financial planning is brought up, the first thing many of us jump to is the retirement scenario.  But for a large part of our population it is about much more.  Of course it will be about retirement, in a sense, but it will also be about things like serial careers or pursuing a passion that isn’t classically profitable.   Although the government needs to push the official retirement age back to reduce its liabilities, many of us are talking about getting to the point where we are financially self sufficient and can retire much earlier!  Just look at the number of articles in the press about the stories of individuals or couples that saved half or more of their incomes and no longer have to suffer with a required 9-5 job, effectively retiring in their 40’s or 50’s.

Like most planning, getting the steps in the right order is critical.  And having your own internal conversation with yourself and  your family is the right first step before beginning the search for a financial planner you can trust with your future.

Next: what kind of risk do you prefer?

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Change is Inevitable

Posted on September 15, 2016 by 40 Years In The Industry

It’s been some time since I posted my last piece, and I’ve made a promise to myself and anyone reading this to do a much better job.  A project came up giving me the opportunity to really dig into Financial Technology (FinTech) and marketing, and I jumped at the opportunity to explore first hand this area that has been a passion for me most of  my life.  Now that this is mostly finished, I’ve decided to refocus my time mapping out what I’ve learned in my 40 years as a part of the infrastructure of an industry that can be critically important to an individual’s financial well being and successful retirement.

The ending of my last post gave direction to where I wanted to take this blog:

My singular goal is to give anyone that has an interest in thinking through the decision process of how to manage their financial future, my experiences and expertise as an insider for over 30 years in the industry.   If, after thoughtful review, you decide you would benefit from professional help, I hope and believe that some of the insights I’m going to share will help you find the right professional for you, that has an organization whose purpose in life is on maintaining and perfecting the talents necessary to assist you in your journey toward financial independence.

Without a doubt this is still my goal, but with a degree of change.  Initially I wanted to chronicle the traits I’d come to value in the many advisors I’ve worked with, and that separated the great from the good and the not-so-good. However, in the last three years, there have been many new processes and technologies introduced into the planning space, and the discussion of finding a trusted advisor has expanded significantly.

As an example – One of the most critical to call into question is the compensation model.

Across today’s financial services industry it’s been a long held standard that an advisor will charge north of 1% (often approaching 2% or more), for managing our money, hopefully advising us on financial planning and retirement issues, and holding our hands through the valley of despair that strikes with regularity as the market swings up and down.  (There’s tons of stats produced by the industry that displays that the unaided investor will almost inevitably buy high and sell low, making a fraction of what the same investment would do if left alone, so this is a good thing.)

Most of us, however, don’t think about what that 1 or 1.5% really amounts to. When you consider that a family investing $500,000 using the classic model, could pay that advisor almost $100,000 over 10 years for his or her guidance, it’s very important to understand what you’re getting for this guidance!

A few years ago, other than doing it yourself, there was really few options for the average family to receive professional financial planning and asset management guidance.

But things have changed!  You aren’t likely to hear it from your financial advisor, however, since it impacts their compensation and business models.  But time and technology are bringing change.  

One example – new technologies have brought down the cost of managing money and the argument can be made that it costs almost nothing more incrementally to manage your $1,000,000 than it does your neighbor’s $500,000.  Despite this fact, in most cases you’ll pay considerably more – often twice as much!  To be fair, most fee schedules have what are known as break-points that reduce the fees somewhat as you put more money with an advisor or firm).  The question at hand, however, is why does any real increase make sense?  After all, more and more advisors either outsource the money management to a third party who charges them a small fee for managing all of the money sent their way, or they do it themselves using computer models that aggregate your $1,000,000 with your friend’s $500,000 and simply manage it as one large account.

All of the above, and much more comes down to the value equation – what do you get for the money you spend on a professional advisor?  In all honesty it may be the best $100,000 you spend over 10 years if  your advisor helps you organize your finances, works with you to do much needed planning and budgeting, and keeps on top of your money (look back at my post on what it takes to be a good money manager), with the result that your $500k grows to $800k over those 10 years, even with the fees!

There are other options now, and like most change, they are slow to come because they disrupt to fabric of the “way things have always been done.”  My goal, however, is to talk about many of the changes and their impact, both pro and con, and let the reader make an informed decision about what’s good for them.

So now we not only need to address how to find an advisor you can trust with your life savings, but what pathway you’re going to take to get to where you reach your financial goals.  Stay tuned…

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(and do you need an advisor to accomplish it?)

I started this blog over a year ago, and then got sidetracked working with a firm that was contracted to completely revamp the wealth management process at a large accounting firm.  I learned a lot, and am glad for that.  It will help with the message I’m developing in this blog about how to find a financial advisor you can trust. (Interestingly, from a philosophical standpoint, if you use a CPA for taxes, they probably know more about you than any other financial professional, and using them for wealth management would seem logical.  Unfortunately,  from my experiences, their culture, temperament and processes, or lack of process, sometimes makes finding the right advisor challenging.  But that’s a story for another time.)

There is nothing more fundamental than an individual’s right to be financially independent.  A good friend and advisor once outlined being financially independent as “being able to do what you want, when  you want, with whom you want, and knowing you can afford it”.  This may be a bit utopian, but it’s certainly a good goal!

There is also nothing that requires as much dedication to purpose, nurturing, perseverance and expertise.  So I think the very first question that any of us should address is –

“Do we need an advisor to achieve our financial goals?”

There are a lot of opinions about this question, but from my personal experience, I’m going to take a leap and say that many of us would benefit from connecting with someone we can trust and develop confidence in, so they can help us manage a very complex part of our lives.

As money has become more complex, the time, energy and expertise necessary to manage it have become more intensive.  I read an article by William Bernstein and I really love the way he outlined his answer to the question.

He proffered that to invest and plan successfully, you need at minimum four talents:

  • A real interest in investing and planning.  Just like any other hobby or passion you need to have a passion and interest – otherwise you’ll do a poor job of it.
  • The capability to do the math – fractions are a challenge for many, let alone standard deviation and correlation analysis!
  • The knowledge base and the ability to stay current – markets are very complex and require both a current understanding of investment vehicles available, as well as the ability to stay connected to what’s happening.
  • The emotional fortitude to stick with your plan faithfully.  It sounds easy but look back on the emotions you experienced in the 2008 Great Financial Disaster and measure your strength and fortitude against that!

Bernstein put forth the premise that less than 10% of the population would get passing grades on each of the above points and he suggests that to succeed you must have all four.  Thus, in a state of nature, just 0.01% of us overall have what it takes to truly succeed over time. Even if you assume that 30% of us are successful in each count, only about 1% of us would possess all four (if my math is correct)!

If you are in the 1% I applaud you.  You’ve probably already amassed a fortune and certainly don’t need any guidance! (Although you may want someone to manage your wealth so you can do other, more interesting things).   If not, then I think what follows over the next few weeks or months will be of interest as you either search for a professional advisor, or evaluate your existing relationship.

My singular goal is to give anyone that has an interest in thinking through the decision process of how to manage their financial future, my experiences and expertise as an insider for over 30 years in the industry.   If, after thoughtful review, you decide you would benefit from professional help, I hope and believe that some of the insights I’m going to share will help you find the right professional for you, that has an organization whose purpose in life is on maintaining and perfecting the talents necessary to assist you in your journey toward financial independence.

Posted on January 6, 2014 by 40 Years In The Industry | Leave a comment

Hello world!

Posted on March 21, 2012 by 40 Years In The Industry

Welcome to my new Finding A Trusted Advisor blog.  I’m a 30 plus year veteran of the financial services industry.  I’ve held many senior positions in the life insurance and investment community and now I’m taking that experience and writing a book on how the consumer can find someone who they can trust – literally – with their life savings.  And unlike so many of my associates in the industry, I’m not writing a book so you’ll see the wisdom in investing with me and utilizing the investments that I manage!

Over the years I’ve always tried to follow a fiduciary standard of putting the client first – most certainly a “do for others what you’d do yourself” approach.  But as you can imagine, this isn’t always the number one thought within a small segment of the investing community! (And this is excepting the likes of Madoff and Stanford.)  And many times it’s not out of malice or greed, but simply not knowing the right questions to ask to get good answers about how things work!

My goal in starting this blog is to share, with the public, what I’ve learned in my many years of being an insider within the financial services community.  My hope is to arm individuals and families with the right questions and tools so they can find a talented, competent financial advisor, or  more likely an advisory firm to assist in achieving their cherished and hoped for financial goals.

Financial service is a very complicated industry, and the dot.com bubble, and the GFD (Great Financial Disaster of 2008) really highlighted, for me, where many of the shortfalls are in this service industry.  It’s not brain surgery or rocket science, but it encompasses both science and art, mathematics and behavioral psychology, and requires a good deal of commitment to stay on top of a huge flood of information.  And a much greater commitment to assimilate the data and assemble it into an action plan that can be implemented and used successfully.  Many of us have other goals in life that are more important, personally,  than becoming a full-time student of finance. Thus I see a real need for members of the public to be well-informed so they can be confident in their ability to find a “trusted advisor” in the financial services arena to work with in planning for a strong and secure financial future.

Investing in the market, with or without a financial planner, may not always be successful.  No one knows what they markets are going to do on a day-to-day basis.  But there’s good evidence that doing certain things can significantly increase you chances of success without devoting your life to the process.  Finding the right professional to help you is a good step – just like finding the right doctor, lawyer or plumber.  And you need to remember that financial services is a business – and a “for-profit” business.  Talent goes where the money can be made, and you should expect to pay a reasonable amount for the education, experience and track record a good adviser will have.  But finding the “right one” can be a challenge!  There are literally thousands of “financial planners” in the phone book and on the web.  There’s a smaller number of individuals that follow the fiduciary path to put the client’s needs first and foremost.  And there is an even smaller number of advisors, in my opinion, that have the knowledge, expertise, wisdom and experience coupled with a fiduciary standard of always putting the client’s needs first that I would want to work with, or share with a friend or family member.

I welcome questions and certainly hearing from you about your experiences in trying to get competent advice in the financial planning area.

Thank you!

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