My portfolio is fine. I don’t need advice on retirement. It seems these days, that it is almost impossible to get general financial advice from anyone.
If one can find a person whose profession is financial advisement, how would one weed out those that either cater to investors or people needing to control their debt?
More clearly: I need someone to look at my financial situation and give me advice. Every time I search for said person, all I get are people that either want to sell me stocks, alter my portfolio, or help me consolidate debt.
I need someone who can look at my overall situation, analyze it, and give me a solid, educated analysis of it. That’s pretty much it.
If one were to search for these people (I’m sure they exist), what keywords would one use?
The “title” for what you’re looking for is “Certified Financial Planner”. The only problem is that CFPs at some firms are nothing more than glorified stock pimps who amount to commissioned salesmen. When I interviewed for a position like this with AmEx, I was told point blank that we didn’t want clients with assets under $100K.
Tell you the truth, I’d have trouble finding someone unbiased myself who wanted to talk to me with my level of assets.
My only lead for you would be to try someone from Dave Ramsey’s organization. I can’t vouch for them, but the principles of the organization are at least sane. http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/counseling/
financial advisors are the used car salesman of the financial world.
CPA are probably biased toward conservative inestments (imho a good thing compared to all the bottom feeding commission sales out there). a good advisor will walk you through risk classes, asset classes, and help you figure out what is a good mix for you at this stage in life and what your appetite for risk is.
i was on the institutional sales desk in tokyo & hk for 8 years. the whole banking industry is built on getting investors to buy. you can’t make a living on ‘hold’ or ‘sell’. no matter what it’s maximum bullish
This is dangerously near GD, but if your lawyer or doctor behaved like your “financial advisor” he’d either be disbarred or imprisoned inside of the fiscal quarter.
I read criticism of CPAs once that they tended to focus overmuch on tax issues versus the pursuit of actual profit when advising businessmen. That being said, I’d trust a CPA with my future ten times before consulting a broker type.
Besides what other people have said, wanted to add that investment bankers don’t deal with private individuals. They provide financing for institutional clients for M&As or securities transactions. Goldman Sachs, for instance, is an investment bank.
To add to what missbunny said, investment bankers have little more to do with individual accounts than the average person on the street. My wife is an investment banker, and I make more of the decisions regarding our personal investments (and I have no background in finance) than her because being an investment banker has little to do with such issues.
You may be able to do something through your credit card company actually. We used a financial advisor through AMEX a few years ago who looked at our investments and ran some numbers and suggested different asset allocation. He said nothing of individual stocks, but told us that we had too much money in sector X and could bolster our investments in sector Y. I think that’s what you’re looking for.
Dewey Finn is steering you in an important direction. The nature of the person’s income with respect to the type of help you want will indicate the type of assistance you are going to get. If this person’s fees are going to be contingent upon the “products” that you purchase from him/her, then you will clearly see that you are in the offices of a sales person, not an advisor. If, on the other hand, someone is going to charge you x dollars for a consultation - a fee for services - then you are more likely to get a reading on the decisions you have made and a judgment on the nature of those decisions, which is, apparently what you are seeking. Check out ahead of time what the fees will be based on, and you will have a much clearer idea of the type of relationship you are in for. xo, C.