How to Find the Best Financial Advisor

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By TheWriteGuy
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How to Find the Best Financial Advisor

If you want sound financial advice, you obviously want to find the best financial advisor. This can be difficult, however, because different financial advisers fit with different people. To find the best financial advisor for you, follow the steps below.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Step 1

The first step in choosing the best financial advisor for you is to understand your own personal finance situation. Where are you financially? Are you deep in debt? If so, how much? Are there any changes in your life that may happen so that may cause you financial strain or confusion, for example a marriage, or you're planning to purchase a home? These are all things you need to know in order to expedite the process of finding your best financial advisor fast, because these are the types of questions they will ask you.
Step 2

Next, you must know what you want to get from your financial advisor. Know that they won't just blatantly tell you to put X amount of dollars in X accounts for X days or months - rather, they will give you advice and tell you recommendations on how to proceed for your particular financial situation (as described above). So, in order to get the best financial advisor, you have to understand what it is you want from them. Do you want to be educated? Do you want them to recommend fund and stock allocations? Be specific so you can narrow down the best financial advisor for you.
Step 3

In addition to what you want to get out of your financial planner, you have to decide whether you want to go with an independent financial advisor, or someone from a large insurance or brokerage company. There are pros and cons to each, but it order to find the best one for you, you have to decide which type of financial advisor is best for you.
Step 4

Perform a Google search online for a financial advisor in your area. Keep in mind all of the criteria for the best one's that you've found out from the previous steps. You can narrow down your search results with various websites to get the type of financial advisor that you want. See the resources section below for a list of websites to find the best financial advisor for you.
Step 5

Schedule an appointment with your potential financial advisers. Usually, they will offer a free consultation on your first meeting, and you can always back out - but be aware they they will obviously want your business so they may be a little "salesman-like". Don't be discouraged, this is what they do.
Step 6

When you are at your meetings, bring a sheet of paper which all of your financial situations on it, such as your credit, debt, account balances and net worth. There's no need to bring statements, just the numbers. Also include things that you may want to accomplish or things you foresee in the future that may involve large amounts of money. These will all help the advisor know where you are coming from, as well as help you determine if it's something they can help you with.
Step 7

Ask a lot of questions, and be yourself. This is the only way to know if you're going to work well with your financial advisor, and it should be obvious if he or she is the best one for you.

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investmentmatch said

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on 2/3/2009 Some of the websites that you mention above as resources to find advisors are:

http://www.claroconnect.com
The Financial Planning Assoc. website
The home page for various financial firms