Reply to Talk to me about why we should or should not use a financial advisor

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[quote=Anonymous]I think it all depends on what this advisor provides and how "good" they are.  We've found that there's a wide gap out there.

We started with an advisor that worked for one of the big firms and we stayed with him for way too long (over 10 years).  He "analysis" was no more detailed than any of the retirement calculators that you can find online.  Our $$$ was invested in SO many different things, we could barely keep up with it.  Many of these things not only accrued a fee to our advisor, but other managers of the funds (which made you wonder what our advisor was collecting a fee for).  And simple question (like, what do you think of this investment) was met with a 30+ minute ramble that left me more confused than I started with.  Over our decade plus with him, he never ONCE suggested that we max out our 401K or 401K (we invested enough each year, but he just had us put it in our brokerage account). He also never provided any advice on savings or anything beyond the stocks in our brokerage account. And on top of all this useless "guidance", he made a pretty large administrative error with on of our accounts that put us at risk.

When we left, we considered managing our assets ourselves, but luckily we also interviewed a few recommended advisors and found someone wonderful.  Not only is their fee much less than what I was paying before, they are an independent advisor (so unlike the big firms, no one is pushing him to sell certain things or make quotas...), who is simplifying our investments and can actually answer our questions quickly and with clarity.  I'm able to understand the direction we are going in with our assets and see the active management in my account.  This advisor also provides his clients with a weekly email that summarizes his thoughts on the current environment and provides savings/investment/tax tips.  He's more than just an investment advisor- he's helped us better understand and structure our finances from paycheck to retirement.  To me, this is where the value is.

In my experience, there are many more of the first types out there...

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