Should You Trust Your Financial Planner?

photo credit: lumaxart

So you meet with your new financial planner, they give you a bunch of suggestions on how to invest your life savings and provide for your retirement and then leave you with a bamboozling pile of paperwork to sign. Is everything okay?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. An astute investor reported a bad experience recently when his new financial planner promised the investment plan costs would include just a 1.35% fee per annum for the financial planning consultancy. But when the investor took the paperwork home, he found a bunch of other fees listed, such as fees for entering particular funds, that the financial planner hadn’t mentioned. The investor didn’t sign.

This example goes to show that it pays to shop around for a financial planner that you feel comfortable with. The experts recommend you choose a financial planner who’s not only someone you like, but whose investing philosophy makes sense to you. Above all, don’t sign anything in a first meeting, and as tempting as it seems, don’t sign a pile of paperwork without taking it home to have a look at it. Be especially suspicious if your financial planner is pitching “no fees” packages to you, because if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.