There are many people offering financial advice, but not all that advice is what it is cracked up to be. Finding the right financial planner, one who truly has your best interests at heart, is not an easy or a quick process. It can take quite some time to track down the perfect financial planner, but this article gives you an idea of what to look for.
The interview you conduct with a prospective financial planner may well be the most important interview you ever conduct. After all, your financial planner will be entrusted with your most valuable assets, and with your most personal information. It is vital to choose someone who upholds the highest standards of ethics, and who has a great deal of experience in the financial planning world.
In fact, it is absolutely vital to ask any prospective financial planner how long he or she has been in the business. Experience is one of the key factors to success in investing, and while a newly minted financial planner may have the best of intentions, he or she may lack the perspective necessary to serve their clients properly.
It is also important to find out where the financial planner you are considering received his or her training. Training is essential for any type of investment professional, not just college courses, but specialty financial planning courses as well. It is important to ask thorough questions, and to check the references the financial planner gives you.
Perhaps the most important consideration, however, is to know how the financial planner gets paid. Financial planners who work on a commission basis can still provide stellar advice, but it is important to remember that their advice may be tainted by their own financial interests.
Fee only financial planners, on the other hand, are not paid by the holders of the products they sell, and they can provide advice that is truly independent and unbiased. The downside of a fee only financial planner, or course, is the fee. Each investor will need to decide for himself or herself if the benefits of the unbiased advice are worth the upfront cost.
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