Having a financial advisor does not necessarily mean you have a complete financial plan.
I think that distinction gets missed more often than people realize.
You may have someone managing your investments. You receive statements and performance updates. You meet periodically and discuss what is happening in the markets.
That is important.
But then life gets more complicated.
Retirement gets closer. Your income changes. You accumulate more accounts. Maybe you have old 401(k)s in different places. Maybe your family responsibilities have changed.
Then the questions become bigger.
When can I retire?
Do I have enough?
How much can I spend without worrying about running out of money?
What am I missing?
Those are bigger questions than, “How did my portfolio perform?”
And if you are not getting clear answers, it may be worth taking a closer look at your relationship with your advisor or financial adviser.
Having an Advisor and Having a Financial Plan Are Not Always the Same Thing
Some advisor relationships focus primarily on investments.
Your portfolio is reviewed. Your accounts are monitored. Investments are adjusted when needed.
There is value in that.
However, investments are only one piece of your financial life.
This is where the conversation around financial planning vs investment management becomes important.
Investment management focuses on building and managing a portfolio. Comprehensive financial planning looks at how investments may connect with retirement, taxes, insurance, spending, estate considerations, and other major decisions.
As your financial life becomes more complicated, those decisions can start affecting one another.
For example, retiring earlier may affect how much income you need from your investments. A Roth conversion may have tax consequences. Helping a child financially may change your retirement projections.
You cannot always make those decisions in isolation.
Your Advisor Should Understand the Bigger Financial Picture
Your financial life is not just one account.
At some point, you may have retirement accounts, investments, insurance, taxes, estate documents, and family responsibilities that all need attention.
You may also have goals that are harder to put on a spreadsheet.
Maybe you want to retire at 55.
Maybe you want to travel more.
Maybe you want the freedom to work because you want to, not because you have to.
Maybe you want to help your children without putting your own retirement at risk.
Those goals matter too.
A comprehensive financial planning approach may help coordinate areas such as:
- Retirement and income planning
- Investments and risk
- Tax considerations
- Insurance and protection
- Estate and legacy planning
- Major family decisions
- Career and retirement transitions
You may work with several professionals, and that is perfectly reasonable.
However, somebody needs to understand how the decisions connect.
Otherwise, you can end up making several individually reasonable decisions that do not work particularly well together.
That is a problem I see more often than people realize.
Are You Getting Proactive Guidance or Only Reactive Service?
Here is a simple question:
Who usually starts the important conversations?
Do you call your advisor when something changes?
Or does your advisor regularly ask what is happening in your life?
A proactive financial advisor cannot predict every situation you will face.
But if I understand a client’s situation, I should be thinking ahead.
If retirement is getting closer, we should discuss it before the client walks into my office and says, “I gave my notice yesterday.”
If someone is accumulating more money than expected, we should discuss whether they are saving too much or unnecessarily restricting their life.
Yes, I said saving too much.
Not everyone needs to save more.
Some people need permission to enjoy what they have worked hard to build.
So, what should a financial advisor do?
I beleive that the answer goes beyond waiting for a client to ask the right question.
If I see an option that may improve someone’s situation, I believe I should bring it up.
It’s not about implementing it, but knowing the option exists.
Sometimes the most valuable conversation is about something you had not thought to ask about yet.
Do You Understand What You Are Paying For?
Fees should not be a mystery.
You should understand how your advisor or financial adviser is compensated and what you receive in return.
Depending on the relationship, that may include advisory fees, consulting charges, commissions, or other costs.
But I would not stop at asking, “What am I paying?”
I would also ask:
What am I getting for it?
Are you paying for investment management?
Are you also receiving help with retirement decisions, risk, spending, tax-aware planning, and major life transitions?
Are you getting behavioral guidance when markets become difficult?
Are you getting help understanding how one decision may affect the rest of your plan?
The lowest fee is not automatically the best value.
The highest fee is not automatically the best value either.
What matters is whether you understand the relationship and whether the services still fit your needs.
As your financial life becomes more complicated, you may need more than someone selecting investments.
All you need is someone to help you think through the decisions surrounding those investments.
That is a different type of value.
A Good Advisor Should Make Complicated Decisions Easier to Understand
I do not think clients should blindly follow recommendations.
You should understand why I am recommending something, the alternatives, and the tradeoffs.
That does not mean I am going to turn every meeting into a college finance class.
Nobody wants that.
But you should be able to ask:
What problem are we trying to solve?
What are my options?
What are the tradeoffs?
What happens if I do nothing?
Those are fair questions.
Financial planning is not always about finding one perfect answer.
Sometimes you have several choices.
You might be able to retire earlier, but it could mean spending less.
You might spend more today, but that could affect how much flexibility you have later.
You might take less investment risk, but that could affect long-term growth.
My job is not to pretend there are no tradeoffs.
My job is to help you understand them.
You are allowed to choose a different path.
You should simply understand what that path may mean before you choose it.
That is what good planning should do.
It should leave you feeling more organized, more informed, and clearer about what comes next.
It Is Okay to Ask Whether the Relationship Still Fits
You do not have to wait for something to go wrong before evaluating your advisor relationship.
In fact, I would rather see someone ask questions before there is a problem.
Your life changes, income changes, and family responsibilities change.
Your goals change.
The guidance you need may change too.
Maybe your current advisor relationship is still exactly what you need.
Great.
Maybe you need something different.
That is okay too.
A financial advisor second opinion can give you another perspective without requiring you to make an immediate change.
One of the biggest obstacles I see is change itself.
People often stick with the status quo because changing feels uncomfortable.
I understand that.
You made the best decisions you could with the information you had at the time.
But you do not have to keep making the same decisions forever.
Getting another perspective does not mean you made a bad choice.
It does not erase what you accomplished on your own.
Sometimes it simply gives you more options.
And I believe having more options is usually better than having fewer.
At Stonebridge Financial Group, we help clients look beyond individual accounts and consider how the different pieces of their financial lives work together.
You worked hard to build your financial life.
It is reasonable to ask whether all the pieces are working together.
And it is reasonable to ask whether the person helping you still gives you the clarity you need.
Stonebridge Financial Group, LLC (“Stonebridge”) is a Registered Investment Advisor (“RIA”), located in the State of Missouri. Stonebridge provides investment advisory and related services for clients nationally. Stonebridge will maintain all applicable registration and licenses as required by the various states in which Stonebridge conducts business, as applicable. Stonebridge renders individualized responses to persons in a particular state only after complying with all regulatory requirements, or pursuant to an applicable state exemption or exclusion.
The information provided is for informational and/or educational purposes only and is not, in any way, to be considered investment advice nor a recommendation of any investment product. Advice may only be provided by Stonebridge’s advisory persons after entering into an advisory agreement and provided Stonebridge with all requested background and account information.