What to Look for in a Financial Advisor

Finding the right financial advisor is a crucial step in securing your financial future. Here are a few things to consider from Commas advisor Josh when searching for a financial advisor:

1️⃣ Align your needs with their services. Make sure your advisor’s offerings match your financial goals.

2️⃣ Understand how they’re incentivized and how that impacts you.

3️⃣ Take your time to find the right fit, and don’t hesitate to interview a few advisors to ensure a strong rapport.

“I think one of the first things you should consider is: Are the services that they are going to offer you aligned with what you need? A lot of financial advisors do a lot of different things. Some do financial planning, some focus only on investments, some sell products, like insurance. Those are all technically financial advisors but what are you looking for and just making sure that you understand your own goals and expectations going in and that the advisor you’re ultimately going to work with is aligned with that.

Another thing to look for in an advisor is: how are they incentivized? How are they getting paid? And then taking that a step further: what does that mean for you? If your advisor is getting paid on a commission to sell a product, not to say that that’s bad, but you just have to consider that their incentive is going to be to continue to sell products. If your advisor is getting paid for a financial planning fee, they’re probably going to be more incentivized to continue working on that financial plan for you into the future.

Finally, and honestly the most important thing is just finding someone you’re comfortable with. Someone you can trust. That might take a couple meetings to figure out. You might have to interview two or three different planners or advisers to figure out who is the best fit and I think that’s fine. Actually, as much as I would love for everyone to just come in and say they want to work with me right away I would encourage people to ask around because not everyone is a great fit for every advisor so I think just having a conversation or two with someone and getting a feel for, “Can I be comfortable, can I trust this person, do we have a good rapport?” Because at the end of the day you know you want it to be something where it’s a weight lifted off your shoulders.”