How to Evaluate Financial Advisors: A Step-by-Step Guide

Stay Wealthy Retirement Podcast

Taylor Schulte, CFP®

Financialplanning, Retirement, Money, Taxplanning, Stocks, Wealth, Business, Investing, Retirementplanning

2.4 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Looking to hire a financial planner with retirement & tax planning expertise?

My team and I have availability for 25 Discovery Meetings over the next 8 weeks.

If you're seeking professional retirement planning help, we would love to have a conversation!

👉 Learn more about our process and grab one of the 25 meeting slots.

We intentionally limit the number of new clients we take on each year.

This ensures we can provide each family with highly customized investment, retirement, and tax planning services.

Once these 25 meetings are scheduled, we will not have availability to meet with new clients until later this year.

Schedule your Discovery Meeting.

***

Today I'm sharing the essential steps for evaluating and selecting the right financial advisor for your unique situation.

Specifically, I cover 5 important things:

► How to identify and document your financial challenges, needs, and goals before starting your search

► Critical questions to ask yourself about the type of professional you want

► Guidance for conducting background checks

► Non-obvious questions to ask potential advisors

► The importance of a well-defined evaluation process (and why you shouldn't rush your decision)

You'll learn how to navigate through the sea of 300,000+ financial advisors to find the right one for you.

Whether you want a short-term or long-term engagement, this episode provides actionable steps to help you make the right choice.

***

EPISODE RESOURCES:

📊 Get Your FREE Retirement & Tax Analysis!

✏️ Grab the Episode Show Notes

📘 Check Out the Retirement Podcast Network

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, happy new year and welcome back to the show. I have some really exciting things lined up for what will be the seventh year of hosting this podcast. Crazy. But before we kick off 2025 and get into today's episode, I just wanted to quickly share that my team and I have opened up our calendar for just 25 discovery meetings between now and the end of February. So if you're
0:23.8	searching for professional retirement planning help this year, we would love the opportunity to meet
0:29.4	with you and mutually determine if our expertise and services align with your needs. As many of you
0:36.2	know, we are not a high volume firm. Our team works
0:40.2	closely with just over 100 families around the country, and we intentionally limit the number
0:45.9	of new clients that we take on each year to ensure that we continue providing highly customized
0:51.5	investment, retirement, and tax planning services.
0:55.3	To help you evaluate our firm, we offer a free retirement assessment,
0:59.6	which includes an analysis of your tax strategy, investments, and the health of your retirement plan.
1:05.6	To learn more and grab one of the 25 meeting slots, just head over to free retirement assessment.com.
1:13.0	That's free retirement assessment.com. I'll also provide a link for quick access in the
1:18.6	episode description right there in your podcast app. Once again, getting finances in order
1:26.1	is at the top of most New Year's resolutions list this year.
1:29.3	As a result, the beginning of the year continues to be a popular time for retirement savers to consider changing financial advisors or hiring one for the first time.
1:37.8	With over 300,000 financial advisors in the United States, finding a financial advisor is easy. On the other hand,
1:46.3	properly evaluating a financial advisor and choosing the right one for you and your family
1:50.8	can be a more challenging task. Welcome to the Stay Wealthy podcast. I'm your host Taylor Schulte,
1:55.8	and today I'm sharing actionable steps to help you properly evaluate a financial advisor that you
2:00.8	may be considering.
2:02.1	More specifically, what questions to ask yourself before beginning your search?
2:06.6	How to find the background history of an advisor and what to look out for?
2:10.5	What a proper evaluation process looks like in practice?
	...

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