4 Signs You Should Consider a Financial Adviser

Identify how, why and when you may need help with your comprehensive financial planning—and how and when to get it

When should you consider hiring a financial adviser or other financial professional? The answer is now or, well, maybe. Without a financial adviser or other financial professional to help, we usually get our personal financial and investment information from friends, family, or even worse…strangers on the internet. Yikes.

We all have limited time and energy. We can either spend that time learning as much as possible about investing and personal finance, paying someone to do it for us, or best of all, a little of both.

Bringing on a financial adviser can make sense for a lot of different reasons, like if you want help with things like: how your overall financial position may be impacting your taxes, retirement planning, estate planning strategies, business intricacies, investment guidance, college funding, or any number of other personal finance issues that take a lot of time and energy to understand. So, let’s take a look at 4 reasons why you might want to consider a financial adviser:

Reason 1: You’re extremely busy

Perhaps one of the most common reasons that people often outsource some, or all, of their financial lives to a professional is simply because they’re busy.

Being super busy, alone, doesn’t necessarily justify this. Think about it: someone can be busy and not have any need for financial assistance, either due to lower-income, or just a pretty simple situation overall.

So, if you happen to find that you’re both extremely busy and have a significant amount of money you need managed, or a more complex money situation overall, then hiring out some or all of this process might have a great ROI for you and your family.

Reason 2: Your business or investments are complex

There are many different business and investment scenarios in which it might make sense to bring a financial professionals on board. The larger and more complex your personal business or investment undertaking becomes, the more loose ends there are to tie, more risks involved, and overall just more work to keep your finances in order.

Some of the most prominent examples of complex investment strategies include angel investing, digital currency and real estate, all of which can be complicated and can come with both liability risk, tax impact and of course, profit potential. Scenarios such as these may call for assistance from a professional planner and can make the cost associated with a professional worth the expense.

Reason 3: You’re getting ready to retire or crafting an estate plan

Retirement and estate planning are two of the most complex aspects of the financial world, and are not easily navigable alone—especially for those of us with larger families, larger estates, or unique and complex situations.

Estate planning and retirement both have lots of underlying variables that require extra brain power. There’s a dizzying number of options to choose from. It’s like each variable has its own variables!

This process will involve everything from life insurance, taxes, trusts, wills, Medicare, assisted living expenses, asset transfers, and a lot, lot more really nuanced, obscure, niche stuff that is just begging to be handled by someone that does this for a living.

To top it all off, this can be a difficult, emotional part of the life of a family, especially for those who are doing the planning, and they’ll need all the help and support they can get throughout the process. With a complex estate plan, an estate planning attorney can work closely with a financial adviser to make sure everything is buttoned up and accounted for.

Reason 4: You can afford it and just enjoy the counsel

They say there’s wisdom in a multitude of counsel, and this proverb remains somewhat true in finance, too. There are lots of options out there to choose from, and a lot of complicated, nuanced financial scenarios you might come across.

Needless to say, there are plenty of scenarios in which having sound advice from a professional can help guide you through these various situations. Learning all you can about everything finance is a very prudent and admirable thing to undertake, but this doesn’t change the fact that we can surely never know it all, and having the wisdom of an experienced professional on our side is an invaluable thing.

Tying it all in

There are reasons ranging from big to small to consider when bringing a financial planner into your life. It might be something as simple as help planning for college or as convoluted as complex investment holdings such as real estate or angel investing, but both goals are to lighten the burden on you and ensure a high-quality financial outcome.

All-in-all, your financial well-being is one of the most important aspects of overall healthy life, and it should be treated as such. Financial planners can help with this, but you can help yourself too. How? By doing your to-do list items and spending at least 3 minutes weekly in the app. 😉 We'll help you create and stick to a comprehensive financial plan. And, we'll help you identify gaps in your plan—the very pieces we'll encourage you to unleash your financial institution and/or financial planner on!