Your first meeting with a financial advisor (2024)

FAQs

Your first meeting with a financial advisor? ›

It all starts with a conversation. The path to your financial future starts with your complimentary initial consultation with a financial advisor. Meeting a financial advisor is an opportunity for you to ask questions, talk about your long-term goals and current priorities and get to know each other.

It all starts with a conversation. The path to your financial future starts with your complimentary initial consultation with a financial advisor. Meeting a financial advisor is an opportunity for you to ask questions, talk about your long-term goals and current priorities and get to know each other.

Generally, having between $50,000 and $500,000 of liquid assets to invest can be a good point to start looking at hiring a financial advisor. Some advisors have minimum asset thresholds. This could be a relatively low figure, like $25,000, but it could $500,000, $1 million or even more.

Bottom line. While not everyone needs a financial advisor, many people would benefit from personalized advice to help them build a strong financial future. You don't need to have a lot of wealth to take advantage of a financial advisor.

Regardless of whether they work for a bank or a financial planning firm, your financial advisor cannot access your account without your permission.

"What Would You Love To Talk About In 5 Years?" Another effective icebreaker question that can help financial advisors gain valuable insights into their clients' long-term goals is, "What would you love to talk about during an update meeting with you in five years?"

In other words, you want to reserve 20 percent of your communications for conducting business, while the other 80 percent should be about building trust and offering value to your clients. This might sound counterintuitive, at first. After all, your clients are looking to you for financial advice.

Answer: From a regulatory perspective, it's usually prohibited to ever charge more than 2%, so it's common to see fees range from as low as 0.25% all the way up to 2%, says certified financial planner Taylor Jessee at Impact Financial.

If, however, you have some money you want to invest, maybe you run a business, or you come into an inheritance, a financial advisor is a good idea to help you navigate financial decisions. Their time might seem expensive, but consider the time you would need to spend to learn as much as they know.

Whether you should consider working with more than one advisor can depend on your overall goals and financial situation. If you're fairly new to investing and you haven't built up a sizable net worth yet, for instance then one advisor may be sufficient to meet your needs.

What are the cons of financial advisors? ›

Expensive to start: Starting an advisor practice can require a sizable amount of capital. Difficult to grow: One of the big struggles of many advisors is trying to find ways to grow their practice as it takes consistent work unless you're able to find the right solution.

But the benefits of meeting with a financial planner when you're young can make a difference. New graduates and people in their early careers should look for financial planning support as soon as they start earning an income, Hudnett Reiss tells CNBC Select.

They'll ask a number of questions to get a better understanding of your life – money, family and personal goals included. Don't be afraid disclose information about your assets, such as cash flow and investments. Additionally, be open about any debt you may have accumulated.

A good financial planner will ask you about your goals: What do you want to achieve? What's most important to you? What do you want your life to look like?

Industry studies estimate that professional financial advice can add up to 5.1% to portfolio returns over the long term, depending on the time period and how returns are calculated. Good advisors will work with you to create a personalized investment plan and identify opportunities to help grow and protect your assets.

Another request they have includes investment and bank statements. How extensive do we have to be in providing this? The documents you need to bring to the first meeting with a financial advisor are the ones you are comfortable bringing. But the advisor certainly isn't wrong to ask you to bring these documents either.