Personal Finance

Let’s examine the most common ways you will pay an advisor, and the plusses and minuses to each method of payment. Method: Fee-Only Advice/Service How it works: Your annual fee is a flat percentage of the money that the advisor is responsible for, typically somewhere between 0.75 and 1.25 percent. Many advisors use a sliding
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Many people go into their search for financial help convinced that the one thing they know for sure is that they do not ever want to pay commissions, where the advisor gets a cut of the action, because that encourages the broker (typically) to make moves that generate fees. As a result of that public
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Nobody likes paying for something he believes he can do himself. Nobody likes paying for something if she can never be sure if she is getting her money’s worth. Nobody likes paying for something when he can’t see exactly what the provider has done to earn so much. And, thus, nobody likes paying for financial
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Financial planners like to compare what they do to doctors, as if managing money is somehow akin to brain surgery. It’s not. For years, advisors have hated me for comparing them to plumbers and auto mechanics, but that’s a much better comparison than a doctor. While you might be able to diagnose your own physical
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You’ve already looked at the cost, but affordability is a different issue. Some of the priciest financial planners in the world charge thousands of dollars for the same services that their clients could get for 90 percent less. There is financial assistance at virtually every price point, from ultra-discount to through-the-nose chic. On the low
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If you haven’t worked with an advisor before, you don’t truly know what to expect. Sure, you’ve seen financial planners and brokers on television shows, but you’re doing your own reality program here. Even if you think you know what to expect from an advisor, learn about everything available. One key place where consumers make
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Price is always a key consideration. No one, no matter how wealthy, has the ability to say “cost is no object” when it comes to his or her financial affairs; that is how large fortunes unravel in lurid tales of greed, fraud, or ineptitude. Just as you eyeball grocery prices before making a selection or
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Need is a critical factor in most of your other purchases, and it plays a direct role in your choice of advisors. If you just don’t want to deal with the hassle of filing your tax return, but you are a basic two-income family with a plain-vanilla earnings picture, you have a lot of choices,
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Most people know when they need help to solve one of life’s problems. Oh, they might pull out a plunger when the toilet backs up, or pop the hood and look at the engine when the car breaks down, or take a store-bought remedy or cook up chicken soup to try to heal themselves, but
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