What is the job of a Financial Advisor? If you were to “Google” this question you would probably get “a Financial Advisor provides financial planning and support to clients in order to help clients achieve their financial goals.” While this is not wrong, the actual job of a good Financial Advisor goes much deeper than that. To effectively assist their clients, the advisor should develop a relationship with their client learning more about their future goals and desires for life and their family. They need to be aware of their retirement timeline and what risk or apprehensions to risks with certain levels of investments they may have. An advisor also needs to be aware of other investments a client has. Knowledge of their savings, budget, and protections through insurance such as life, health, long term care etc.  All of these should be reviewed on an ongoing basis and adjusted as needs change and goals come within reach. Basically, a good Financial Advisor should not only have a strong knowledge of investments, regulations and economic factors but also know their client well enough to properly advise on how each of these should be specifically applied to their portfolio and ask questions that sometimes the client themselves don’t think to bring up. In my experience, the best value of a good advisor is in the knowledge they have of the client as much as it is of the investments for the client.

Written by Russ Pierce

Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor, Member FINRA/SIPC

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will enhance overall returns or outperform a non-diversified portfolio. Diversification does not protect against market risk.