Late Bloomer Wealth

Fee Only Fiduciary Financial Advisors

Seven Benefits of Financial Literacy with One Bonus!

If you are thinking about hiring a financial adviser, you might be wise to read my experience of unethical “advisers” who took full advantage of my naivete to impose unorthodox legal commissions and high costs.

My financial story is remarkably simple. I have always given people the benefit of the doubt, even though I was taken advantage of when I was younger, which cost me $6000. I call this the youthful “tuition” of getting wiser and knowledgeable about everything financial, and now helping others. Some may regret this negative and costly experience for the rest of their lives. I do not. I did something about it—my suggestions about what I do now are contained in this blog post.

4 Straightforward Ideas to Help Locate a Trustworthy Financial Adviser

If you think learning to self-manage your 403(b) 401(k) or your 457(b) retirement plan investments is WAY over your head, you are kidding yourself. Locating a professional financial adviser with fiduciary standards, hourly fee-only with tiny management fee is not all that much different than finding a romantic relationship. Your relationship with a financial adviser is so much different than many other professionals which we hire. A financial adviser looks over your money for years involving trust. Trust makes this professional relationship MUCH MORE COMPLICATED!
In all areas of personal finance, investing and retirement planning, the most important professional person is a competent financial adviser. In this blog post, I will discuss what is already been written, spoken and discussed endlessly on the money related talk and radio shows, television, podcasts, websites, and financial blogs by smarter and more informed people than me. There is information EVERWHERE on the powerful decision of whether to hire a financial adviser. But all this information can be found on one of these four sources of information, one booklet, one blog post and one book, and 403bwise.com who already vetted financial advisers for you. ALL are FREE!
So, why am I contributing that has already been done by thousands of other folks smarter than me?
PLENTY! I AM A Role Model for Do It Yourselfers (DIYers). I have four ideas on how you can be so confident that you will want to be your own money manager.

Conversation with a Fee-Only Fiduciary

The blog post will go help you recognise on-the-spot a fee-only fiduciary financial adviser. It is my vision of what a conversation might look like between a client and an adviser who genuinely looks out for your best interests. If you read this blog post you will be doing yourself a great favor and reducing your anxiety about your success of finding a financial adviser that is genuinely helpful, knowledgeable, a good listener and is competent and confident enough to teach clients to feel confident in their decisions.

Book Review: Trusting Financial Advisers

Here we go again. That five letter word T-R-U-S-T leads directly to our emotions. Who can we trust with our investments? How do we know that a fee-only financial adviser is trustworthy? In my previous blog post (Trust and Investing), John Bogle wrote that the only thing you can trust is that the economies of the entire planet will grow over time. As a do-it-yourself investor, you can eliminate trusting an adviser. I thought I will take up this topic again through a book review because many of you want help, and there are trustworthy fee-only advisers. This book might provide clues by the language which reflect trust that these advisers use.

According to the authors, you are not the only one who might not trust an adviser again. Most Americans are still reeling over the 2008 stock market crash. Because of 2008, trusting a financial adviser and the industry has radically changed according to the authors. They wrote: “The roots of negative selling run deep. It has a long history of success. But our culture has changed, and negative selling is no longer consistent with who we are as consumers…Yet salespeople still often find themselves in that gray area between creating fear and illustrating a need-which in turn costs them sales.”

While the book’s primary audience is for the financial professional, my review might help you gain confidence on how to evaluate a potential adviser. Remember, you are interviewing potential advisers, not the other way around. My review of this book addresses the trust problem head-on and it’s for people who are looking for a trustworthy financial adviser.

Steve’s Book Review on the “Wild West.”

My friend Scott Dauenhauer wrote a great book. He is asking all fiduciary-minded financial advisers to take a look at servicing the public school educator market. He explains what you need to know and proceeds to show you in detail how to enter, grow and succeed in your private practice. As a public school teacher, my colleagues need you as the 403(b) market and teachers have been exploited, abused and monopolized for decades by the insurance industry. Public K-12 Educators are begging and screaming for advisers they can trust.

Garrett Encourages Reporting of Unprofessional Behavior of Advisers

Dear Readers, With 4,988 hits spanning 5 years, my article, “Did Garrett Planning Network Pass the Smell Test?“, has been my most popular blog post. I asked Sheryl Garrett to share what she and her staff did as a result of my report to them about one of their adviser’s unethical behavior. Sheryl gave me …

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Therese’s Story

The next financial coming of age story has a frequent theme. Many people have money in different financial institutions, different banks, different mutual fund companies, different asset classes, sectors, or individual company stocks. Therese, my guest author, had little idea what, where and who was minding her money! Her money was so convoluted that a Rubik’s Cube was easier to solve. Soooooo, there is plenty of room for simplicity. Discover how Therese’s portfolio evolved from a complex and incoherent mess to a simple Vanguard portfolio after one visit with a fee-only financial adviser from Garrett Planning Network.

Karen Shares Her Financial Epiphanies

An epiphany is defined by “a ​moment when you ​suddenly ​feel that you ​understand, or ​suddenly ​become ​conscious of, something that is very ​important to you.” Read this short story of my good friend’s financial epiphany and how all of her questions were answered by who she describes as an “independent financial adviser” she paid by the hour.

What Does Objective Financial Advice Look Like?

For a decade, I have listened to Paul Merriman’s podcasts. His list of financial topics spans every conceivable idea and common sense investing strategy. His understanding of the investing process and constructing a simple or complex portfolio is top notch. In this post, I recommend that you listen to one of his podcasts. Here’s why. …

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