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Finance Gym Weekly Workout - Questions to Ask When Hiring a Financial Advisor

Welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life With Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell and if you're ready to not just know better but do better with your money, then you've come to the right place.
This little series that I'm doing right now is on Chapter 7 in the book, the grown-up stuff. I call it the grown up stuff because when you're done doing the stuff in this chapter, you're going to feel like an adult. If you want to hear more about that go listen to the first video in this little series. Today the adulating that we're going to talk about is hiring a financial planner. I get asked this question all the time and frankly this was one of the hardest parts of the book for me to write. I wanted to concisely explain to people how to make the decision of what kind of financial advisor to hire. If you've paid any attention then you know that the field is this wide. It's crazy, there's everything from somebody that works for your local bank to somebody who works at a big huge brokerage and really is just an investment advisor to brand new people who are just starting out and are calling themselves financial advisors and they're certified but they don't really have any experience yet to people who have put the time and effort in to become a certified financial planner or an equal certification. 
When people ask me, when my friends ask me who to hire, one of the first things that I always say is you want to hire somebody who is a certified financial planner. There are some other certifications that are equal but that's kind of my favorite go to. If someone has put the time and effort in to go to that level of knowledge, then they're somebody who's really committed to giving you the best financial advice possible. And i'm not saying that somebody just as a simple license or two sell you you financial products don't care I'm sure lots of them do care but if you're really kind of looking at  what is being offered out there you want somebody who has been through life cycles with their clients, emergencies and how that played out. Somebody who's walked through retirement, who have seen what financial decisions on this side of your life, how they impact that side of your life, and so you don't necessarily want somebody new out of the gate. The truth is some of you watching this video can't necessarily afford somebody who has ten years of experience. So then you're just gonna have to go with a little but of intuition. If you look int the book I have a list of eleven questions that I recommend you ask whenever you're interviewing a financial advisor. One of the base pieces of advise I give to people is interview three before you make a decision so that you kind of get a good feel for what's out there. I think my last piece of advise is you want to hire somebody who you feel like is going to be a teacher for you. You don't necessarily want to hire the person who was you know the math wiz and has a degree in business. Frankly, my go to advisor, the one that I sent my mother too and my closest friends - she was a i think anthropology major and museum studies like minor something like that. She's smart, she wasn't necessarily a numbers person, but what she really is is a teacher. She has learned everything she had to learn to become an excellent financial planner but more than anything she is patient and takes the time to teach people that i send to her what they need to learn. And so I hope for you when you go out looking to see who it is you want to hire that you find somebody like that.
So, this stuff isn't easy to do, if you want a partner in all of this, please come over to Facebook and join our private group called Team Do Better also sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.TheFinanceGym.com or subscribe to this video series. Thanks!