Wealth management is often portrayed as an elusive or elite club; it can be hard to know how it actually relates to your life. From what services an advisor can offer to the best ways to find and evaluate prospective partners, many people feel overwhelmed by the prospect of choosing a wealth management firm.
This article compiles seven of the questions we hear most often when discussing the topic. By offering clear, candid answers, we hope to help you navigate the complex world of financial advice with greater confidence—and find an advisor who meets your specific needs.
Seven Common Questions About Financial Advisors
Q1. What Are the Core Services a Financial Advisor Offers?
While individual advisors and firms have unique service offerings, most can help you with:
- Financial planning: Creating a roadmap for your entire financial life, from budgeting to major purchases
- Investment strategy: Building and managing portfolios aligned with your goals and risk tolerance
- Tax strategies: Minimizing your tax burden through smart planning (though this may require working with a CPA)
- Retirement planning: Calculating how much you need to save and structuring withdrawals
- Estate planning: Ensuring your assets transfer according to your wishes
- Insurance and risk management: Protecting your wealth from unexpected events
- Legacy planning: Creating strategies for passing wealth to future generations or charitable causes
However, these are just the “concrete” benefits of working with an advisor. For most people, the real value comes from having a trusted partner that can help them understand and navigate complicated issues—often with heavy emotional elements.
Q2. What Services Do Advisors Offer Beyond Financial Guidance?
The best advisors do more than crunch numbers and rebalance portfolios. They help you understand complex financial concepts in plain language. They walk you through difficult life transitions—divorce, inheritance, career changes, loss of a loved one—when emotions run high and clear thinking becomes difficult.
This human dimension matters enormously. An advisor who understands your deep-seated fears about money or recognizes how your upbringing shapes your spending habits can provide guidance that resonates on a level spreadsheets never will.
Q3. What are the Different Types of Advisors?
Advisors vary based on how they’re compensated and regulated:
- Fiduciary advisors (RIAs or CFP® professionals) must act in your best interest.
- Broker-dealers can recommend suitable products, but aren’t always fiduciaries.
- Robo-advisors use algorithms to automate investing at a lower cost.
- Hybrid advisors blend digital tools with human guidance
Knowing the difference helps you choose the model that best fits your needs and comfort level.
Q4. When is the Right Time to Work with an Advisor?
While there is no “right” time, many people find advisors most valuable during either periods of transition or sudden changes in their financial situation; advisors can help navigate the complexity of these scenarios with greater confidence. Equally, advisors can be highly valuable when you have identified a specific goal, such as saving for retirement or selling your business.
Q5. Should I find a Local Advisor?
Many financial advisors now offer online services that enable remote support—eliminating the requirement for proximity. However, most clients still prefer to have an advisor they can meet in person and share knowledge of their surrounding areas and culture.
Q6. Will a Financial Advisor Save Me Money?
It is not possible to make promises of this kind; there is no guarantee of results when working with an advisor or planner. However, making more informed decisions about financial options—such as investment portfolios, retirement plans, and savings strategies—can help you make your money work harder for you.
If you are able to make fewer mistakes, waste less, and take advantage of more advanced tax and investment strategies, it would stand to reason that you would save money.
Q7. How Can I Find the Best Financial Advisor?
There is no universally “best” financial advisor. The right partner for you depends on your specific personality, financial complexity, and life stage. Someone in their 30s building wealth for the first time needs different expertise than a retiree managing distributions. A business owner selling their company requires specialized knowledge that a salaried professional might never need.
Identify Your Advisory Needs with Our Financial Self-Assessment
Matching your needs to an advisor’s strengths is the foundation of a successful relationship. But due to the range and complexity of financial planning, it can be hard to know exactly what you’re missing—and where an advisor might deliver the clearest value.
That’s why we created our financial preparedness self-assessment: through a series of simple questions, it helps you evaluate your financial situation across six key areas. This can help you to determine which specific services—and what kind of advisor—you wish to work with.
