LOL! said:
I read this saluki9 and wondered if you could give a "for instance" of the "lot of value to be had in a good advisor". Should I worry that I am missing something? So far, I haven't seen any benefit from an advisor for me. OK, I can think of one thing: My spouse will not rollover an old 401k with assets of about 0.1% of our net worth and terrible funds. I can nag until the divorce papers are served, so maybe an advisor would be more diplomatic and actually get something done?
Because I was trying to be polite and avoid saying that there are a lot of "know it alls" here. It comes down to this, if you feel that you're an expert in everything, or that any topic can be learned by a few minutes of web surfing then you aren't a good candidate for hiring an advisor. That being said, you would be shocked at the variety of questions we get from people.
Should I leave my job?
Is this severance package fair?
What health plan should I take at work?
Can you help my kids with... (NAME ANYTHING)
Can you help me find a realtor
Should I buy a second home
Where should I buy a second home
budgeting
What company should I use for...
Bill payments
please charter me a jet to and from....
Should I contest my property taxes?
should I exercise my stock options?
Should I take this new job?
Will you meet my attorneys, accountants, etc and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to?
Can you arrange to have my car moved from one city to another?
Are my other advisors charging me fairly?
Should I invest in my (sons, BILs, FILS) business?
Can you find me a 1031 exchange property?
Should I keep paying my insurance premiums
should I have an insurance trust?
How should we divide our assets up among our kids?
Who should my trustee be?
Will you be my trustee?
Can you get me a mortgage?
Can you help my relative get out of debt?
Will you set up our Quicken files to download all of our accounts
will you run performance reports for our outside assets?
Can you help find insurance for my Florida, CA, NC, condo, ours has been cancelled?
That's a small list of the questions a good advisor gets. If the average person reading this thinks about what they have learned in this forum about planning and their investments, imagine what you learn when you looks at hundreds of people's personal finances? As for me, I'm just the money guy, so I sure don't have the answers to all those questions. I hit the planners up at my shop with questions almost as much as the clients do.