How to Choose a Financial Planner

As you age, your financial needs tend to become more complex. This is often a result of taking on more responsibilities like having children, taking care of aging parents or owning a home, all while managing your own career, student loan debt and retirement savings. Naturally, it can be overwhelming to create a plan, update it and monitor it while maintaining a busy schedule. That’s where hiring a financial planner can be valuable.

Financial planners can help guide you through complicated financial situations and use their expertise to help make tough decisions and manage your emotions. A financial planner may have a variety of qualifications or certifications, but one of the most widely known and accepted is the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation.

The designation was created in 1985 by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board) to promote “the value of professional, competent and ethical financial planning services, as represented by those who have attained CFP® certification.” CFPs must have have between 4,000 and 6,000 hours of experience, maintain high ethical standards, complete a rigorous set of education requirements and pass the CFP exam.

Those who have obtained the designation have mastered several key areas of financial planning including: retirement planning, income taxes, investment analysis, estate planning, ethics and insurance.

As mentioned earlier, financial planners help guide you through some of life’s most challenging financial decisions. When doing this, most financial planners will generally perform the following set of steps with each client. For many planners, this entire process could occur over several meetings and will not be completed in one sitting.

First, the planner will gather information and key details about your financial situation. This often includes a discussion about where you are financially and where you plan to be. A planner may also ask for some documents, including tax returns, any investment statements, trust and insurance documents. Next, the planner typically analyzes the data and determines whether there are any changes that need to be made and will present their findings to you.

After discussing the data and potential changes, the next step is implementing the items in the plan. Depending on the scope of your financial plan, this could be done in one meeting or over several meetings.

Lastly, you and your financial planner will typically agree on how often to monitor the plan and make changes. You may re-evaluate the plan every year or once a quarter, depending on the plan’s depth and complexity. However, most planners ask that you come in when major life changes occur like getting married, having a child or a experiencing a significant change in income.

It can be tricky to pick a financial planner, including finding someone with the right credentials and experience at a cost you can afford. In the following sections, we discuss some of the biggest challenges consumers face when looking for a financial planner.

There is plenty of confusion around the term “financial planner” and “financial adviser.”

“Just about anyone can use the title ‘financial planner,’” said Dan Drummond, CFP Board’s director of communications. “There are also over 170 financial services designations out there — an alphabet soup of letters that may seem overwhelming.”

Not every person who calls him or herself a financial planner or financial adviser has the CFP designation, as the designation is optional and not required to practice. And someone who goes by the title, financial adviser can be a certified financial planner so long as they have completed the designation and are in good standing with the CFP board. CFPs will almost always have the “CFP®” behind their name.

Practically speaking, the differences between a planner and adviser are a bit more clear, though the terms are often used interchangeably. Typically, financial advisers spend the majority of their day focused on selling investment and insurance solutions to clients mostly (but not exclusively) for a commission. While financial planning is something that an adviser may do, it is often a service done on the side and not their main function. On the other hand, a financial planner’s main function is planning and less about selling products. Keep in mind that in this situation, both positions could still be called certified financial planners if they meet the board’s requirements.

Whether you need a financial planner or not will be determined by the complexity of your situation.

The people in the following situations tend to see the most value in a financial planner:

It can be difficult to compare the costs for a financial planner. This is because each planner may base their cost on different metrics (see below). In some cases, they may charge a flat fee based on a percentage of your total assets, also known as assets under management (AUM), or just a flat dollar amount. The important thing here is that your planner is transparent and upfront with their costs. One way to ensure this is by asking if your financial planner is held to the fiduciary standard. This standard requires that the planner act only in your best interest when providing recommendations.

Commission-based: These planners only receive payments through commissions on products they sell. These products could include life insurance, mutual funds or annuities. This can present a major conflict of interest. They’re incentivized to sell products whether or not those products make sense for you.

Fee-based: Fee-based advisers can earn commissions off product sales, but they also offer services for flat fees paid by their clients. While this eliminates some conflicts, fee-based service models still leave the door open for a planner to make a recommendation that isn’t necessarily the best for their clients.

Fee-only: Fee-only financial advisers are not the same as fee-based. Fee-only advisers are paid a set fee by their clients for the services they provide. They do not earn commissions off product sales. For this reason, there are inherently no conflicts of interest between you and your adviser if they’re fee-only. Fee-only planners are only getting paid by you to provide advice.

Choosing a financial planner goes beyond picking someone based on their credentials alone. Though the CFP is widely regarded as the gold standard, there are many designations that make it difficult to accurately compare one planner to another. You should also take experience and compatibility into account. Your financial planner should have experience with dealing with clients that fit your profile (e.g. income, business ownership, age) and needs.

Some also prefer planners who have had experience investing in down markets. Additionally, you should seek out a planner you trust — one you feel comfortable speaking openly with and one who listens to you.

The following questions are designed to help you not only understand your financial planner’s background but find out what areas they specialize in and if those areas fit with your goals.

Now that you know what to look for, your next step is to find a financial planner. Each of the following are all groups who feature fee-only financial planners that uphold the fiduciary standard.