What You Should Expect From a Financial Advisor

On the 66th episode of the Retirement Explained show, I’m talking to you about what you should expect from working with a Financial Advisor!

You are unique and not every Financial Advisor is created equal and with almost a 500,000 financial advisors to choose from, I wanted to take some time to equip you with the tools you need to make a good decision on what to expect from working with a Financial Advisor.

A Financial Advisor’s Alpha

Over the last 20 years, Vanguard published a series of studies about the extra return (or Alpha, if you’re fancy) a Financial Advisor adds to client accounts. They found that Advisors add, on average, a 3% additional return to client accounts (before fees).

A Focus on Retirement

You want to make sure that your Financial Advisor specializes in retirement planning, as obvious as that sounds. What I mean by that, is you want to make sure your advisor is adept, in addition to dealing with your investments, at helping you with Social Security, Insurance, Long Term Care, Medicare, etc.

One of the things we often do at Rasmussen Advisors, since we’re not Social Security specialists, is provide complimentary access to our third-party Social Security partners as part of our services. We do this also for Medicare planning. So if your advisor isn’t able to speak meaningfully to items, such as those, make sure they can connect you with the right person (and if you’re account balance is high enough, they really should be absorbing that cost on your behalf).

Tax Planning

Financial Advisors aren’t tax professionals but there is some overlap between managing your investments/retirement and taxes. Your advisor should speak the language and have the ability to do some basic stuff, like dealing with long term capital gains, Roth IRA conversions, etc.

I hope you enjoy!

-Brian