Find a financial planner that charges a flat fee, not a commission. He's not going to be selling you some stupid investment vehicle because he's not getting paid to sell that, he's getting paid to help you. He also is going to devote equal time to you, whether you have just a bit of money or a lot, you are equally entitled to his time as his wealthier customers. The only downside is that his financial incentive is to gain more customers. So he probably isn't going to sell you expensive bonds but he might not be able to devote as much time to your specific needs.
What will stop him from doing both charging you a flat fee and recommending less than optimal products to get an undertable commission. He can take you for a ride before you realize the game.
I think this can work only if we as customer also learn to cross examine his reasoning and ask hard pointed questions.
Ensure that one of the first questions asked is whether or not he has a fiduciary duty to you. If he says yes, then ensure that this is part of your written agreement of services.
Once an advisor is acting as your fiduciary, it's not lawful for them to advise you to do anything but what is in your best interest. Further, they may not have any conflicts of interest. This was supposed to be the case for all US retirement accounts, but the Financial Services Industry fought tooth and nail to defeat the Obama era rule.
How will you prove they deceived you? Moreover they might not be as competent as they sound. By the time you realize the deception, you might have gone bankrupt. Only by learning the basics we can hope to protect ourselves against bad advise.
The fiduciary duty of care solves the problem of advisors having mixed or divided loyalties and motives for clients wondering about why this or that product is being recommended. The simple answer is that the advisor is legally required to act on your behalf — period. If they do not, there's full recourse in the courts.
Competence is a qualitatively different problem and has different solutions. Usually, one would look for past experience, performance, and educational credentials to gauge competence in those they hire.
I do agree that the more educated client, the better. But, personally, I can only have domain expertise in so many areas, and I only have so much time. Outsourcing is a logical strategy.
