With the way the market has been for the past few weeks, one would wonder how useful financial advisors really are. It’s going to depend a lot on your expectations and needs.

There are two types of financial advisors out there; service fee or no service fee. Either way, the amount, or lack of amount, typically doesn’t give you a very good idea of what their abilities are. I like to relate this to my first experience of the bar scene in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Spending money on a cover was convenient to be in a bar with much less people, but the quality of drinks don’t change according to the cover, and neither did their price range.
Financial advisers can also only give you their best offer through the company that they work for. That means they are looking for the best they can do for their company, not the best they can do for you.
Brokerages, such as Charles Schwab, are a great alternative when they offer you the chance to take care of it yourself. These non-advisor firms allow you to play the market the way you want to for small fees in comparison to the service charges typically offered, which are usually a percentage of your earnings. Unless you feel the need to be constantly touching your money on a daily basis, you can put your money in the markets you know well and leave it to the market gods to see what happens.

Investment Education