10 Questions to Ask a Financial Planner Before You Sign Anything
A first meeting with a planner is also an interview you're conducting. These are the questions that surface how they get paid, whether they're a fiduciary all the time, and what happens if the fit isn't right.
Start With Compensation and Fiduciary Duty
Ask directly: how do you get paid, and is it a flat fee, an hourly rate, a percentage of the assets you manage for me, or a commission on products you sell? Follow it with: are you a fiduciary at all times when we work together, or only for certain accounts and recommendations? Some advisors switch fiduciary status depending on which hat they're wearing for a given product, and you want to know that up front, not after you've signed paperwork. Ask what a typical client's account size looks like too, since that tells you whether your situation is their core business or a side case.
Then Ask About Process and What Happens Next
Find out how often you'll actually talk after the initial engagement, whether that's quarterly check ins or a once a year review, and what triggers an unscheduled call from their side, like a market drop or a major tax law change. Ask what a financial plan means at this specific firm, because the term covers everything from a single retirement projection to an ongoing relationship covering taxes, insurance, and estate coordination. Ask how they get paid if they recommend a specific product, and what happens if you want to end the relationship. A clear answer to that last one tells you a lot about how the whole relationship is likely to run.
When to Bring In a Professional
If a planner is vague, defensive, or reluctant to answer any of these directly, treat that reluctance as useful information on its own, not a detail to smooth over. On the other hand, once you've found someone whose answers line up with what you need, that's the point to move from vetting into an actual planning engagement, ideally after you've also checked their FINRA BrokerCheck or SEC IAPD record independently rather than taking their word for a clean history.
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