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When you are in the market to hire a financial advisor, you should consider your initial consultation as an opportunity for each of you to interview the other. During this time, you need to determine whether this advisor has the expertise, experience, and knowledge to provide effective management of your finances. An experienced financial professional will want to gain information from you about what your present financial state is, the types of savings and investment ideas that appeal to you and how you feel that they might help coordinate what you hope to do in the future, and what your financial objectives are.

Make sure you interview more than one professional advisor. Too many people hire the first person they speak with, out of discomfort with turning someone down or not realizing that they need to talk to multiple people. Would you walk onto a car lot, test drive one car, and then buy it at the sticker price? Shopping for a financial advisor is the same concept. You want to test drive a few people to ensure you’re getting the best manager for your finances available. When you invest your money there are many factors you cannot control, but the person you hire is the single thing you can. It’s vital to get the best match for your own goals and personality as possible.

In order to hire the right person, you need to know where you want to go financially. If you don’t know your financial goals, then how can you trust someone else to help get you there? Your money is hard-earned, so you don’t want to trust just anyone with it and you don’t want to trust chance to get you to the financial future you most want. Start with broad goals and then narrow down to more specific goals. Maybe when you begin thinking about your future, you may only know that you want to spend your retirement traveling, but as you spend time planning, you may begin to think about large future purchases, such as a new vehicle. The more you know about what you want, the more your financial professionals can help you get it.

In order to help you make a decision about which financial advisor can best meet your needs, you should go to your consultation armed with a written list of questions to ask them. By recording each advisor’s in-depth responses, you can then go back later and compare the information that you have obtained from each one. Here are a few suggestions for potential questions to pose to the financial advisors:

- What services do you offer?

- Please tell me about your qualifications and licenses that you have?

- How will you begin to plan for my financial future?

- Once you have formulated my financial plan, what ongoing services will you provide?

- Can you share some information with me about what your general client profile looks like, and how your advice and planning has impacted their finances?

- Explain your fee schedule to me.

Once you get these questions answered, you will have a basis to compare one advisor to another. You want to work with someone you trust, and someone who understands your goals. A one-stop shop is nice in theory, but beware of offices that offer services you will never need. The more services an office provides, the more their fees tend to run.

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