Choosing the Right Professional Advisor

We cannot stress enough on Adam Ginsberg’s advice on hiring a qualified professional to manage your finances, or to at least plan your investments for you to achieve your financial goals. As suggested in some of our posts in the past, it’s better to hire a professional simply because you will probably never be aware of the various ways that you can invest your money safely, for it to grow steadily and for maximum profitability. 

The next question or two that would probably pop up in your mind would be ‘how do I know who is the right person to advise me?’, or ‘what kind of a financial adviser do I need?’ Adam Ginsberg, the highly acclaimed internet entrepreneurship coach and author of “The Secrets of an Auction Millionaire”, offers a few pointers on how to choose the right financial advisor and the right kind of financial advisor to suit your investment needs.

Let’s talk about choosing the right kind of advisor first. When it comes to hiring someone to manage your finances and investments, you have two choices: hire a financial planner who will lay down the blueprint to achieve your financial goals by telling you where you should invest and how much, or hire someone who will not only plan your investments but manage them too. The first kind will evaluate your current situation, understand your financial goals in the short-, medium- and long term and formulate an investment plan for you to follow. These professionals usually charge by the hour, and you could always get your finances re-evaluated every few months, or years to check if you are on track with your goals or if you’d want to reset them. The second kind of finance professionals are the ones who do everything for you from panning your investments to building up and managing your portfolio in accordance with your pre-determined financial goals. These guys normally charge an annual fee of a few thousand dollars, or a percentage of your portfolio’s value to do the work for you. Walter Updegrave has provided some great information on how and where to find a good financial planner in his article on CNN Money.com. 

The next step is to choose the right kind of financial planner. In short, there are money managers who will charge you a fixed fee to manage your finances, and then there are those who will charge you a fee and also get paid commissions on the various products that they make you invest in. Adam says it’s a matter of personal choice what kind of an advisor you’d want to go with: one who’ll charge you for what he does for you, but without any vested interests, or one who will recommend his products but you may end up paying less from your pocket. Again, Walter Updegrave has offered some insightful information on this subject as well, which you may find useful while choosing your money manager.

Check out Adam’s blog and website for more useful tips and his eBay resources on how to make money online.