How to Find a Fiduciary Financial Advisor Before You Retire
Financial advice can get rather complicated. This guide should unravel some of the issues to help you find a fiduciary financial advisor before you retire. Retirement looms from about the time you turn 50. Suddenly, the road to retirement looks shorter, and there is less room for mistakes. So, that’s the time to get objective advice to make the most of your retirement options.
The key issues to consider here are objectivity and experience.
Objectivity
By definition, a fiduciary financial advisor is objective.
“Fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care,” says the Cornell Law Dictionary. Your fiduciary advisor always acts in your best interests, sometimes focusing on your beneficiary instead. This means recommending products for no compensation, except as they work as fee only financial advisors.
Many Americans falsely believe that every financial advisor must legally act in the clients’ best interest. This detrimental to investors unwittingly exposing themselves to costly, biased advice.
Only a fiduciary financial advisor is required to act in your best interests.
The best-known example of a fiduciary is the trustee of a trust. In the non-financial world, if you assist someone as they put their total trust and confidence in you, you have a fiduciary duty to them. Lawyers and real estate agents are fiduciaries. Shareholders require the company’s officers to be fiduciaries, too. But only some, not all financial advisors are fiduciaries.
As the beneficiary of a fiduciary relationship, you allow that fiduciary the discretionary authority needed over some of your assets. So, your fiduciary financial advisor might buy and sell securities on your behalf without you needing to painstakingly offer consent for every trade. Because your fiduciary has this discretionary authority, they are, therefore, held to a significantly higher standard than a non-fiduciary financial advisor.
Fiduciary Financial Advisor Fees
You pay for all the financial advice you receive. The question is, how. Sometimes your payments are explicit in that you can plainly see the fees. Other times the fees are just implicit, embedded within a financial product, so what you pay is less visible. But you always pay.
Fee only financial advisors are compensated directly by you for their advice, plan implementation and ongoing asset management. We must work within a strict Fee-Only structure. We accept no commissions or other payments for our work.
To receive the most objective financial advice, work exclusively with fee only financial advisors.
Experience
Now that you are sure you are working with a Financial Advisor looking out for your best interests, you will need someone with experience dealing with your type of situation.
A Certified Financial Planner professional (CFP) is a generalist in financial advice. They offer general personal financial planning, investments, retirement, income taxes, estate planning, insurance, and more. But many CFP professionals have backgrounds in specific areas, making them ideal for working directly with you. Check the website and make a discovery call before you make any decision to hire a Fiduciary Financial Advisor.
In Summary
Financial advice does not need to be complicated. Finding a suitable fiduciary financial advisor before you retire makes looming retirement look brighter. The road to retirement is short, and there is not much room for mistakes. So, it’s time to get objective advice from a fiduciary financial advisor to make the most of your retirement options.
