If you’ve been wondering for a while whether you should be working with a financial advisor, here’s a thought to consider: Go meet with one. It could bring clarity to your finances, even if you decide you don’t want to take the next step to hire someone.
That’s the path my San Francisco-based colleague Lauren Schwahn took. It’s been a while since she wrote about her first visit with a financial advisor. I spoke with her recently to hear what still stands out about that experience.
Her story may sound familiar: She felt unsure of her family’s financial progress or their next steps, because they were caught up in daily life, trying to make good choices for today and for their future. What did she learn? Even just one conversation with a professional — and the process of preparing for that conversation — can help you organize your thoughts and figure out what matters most to you.
I appreciate that Lauren kept an open mind when meeting with an advisor and didn’t feel obligated to take it any further. The point of that first meeting is to get to know the advisor and what they could help you with. If you discover it’s not a good fit or your needs have changed, the meeting has served its purpose.
My conversation with Lauren has been edited for length and clarity.
Taryn Phaneuf: What were you initially hoping that an advisor would help you with?
Lauren Schwahn: I think part of it was reassurance. We wanted to see whether or not we were on the right track or if there was something glaringly obvious that we were missing when it came to handling our finances. Part of it was curiosity. I had talked to so many financial advisors for work, but I never really knew what that experience looked like on the other side. So I wanted to explore that further.
Back then we were also toying with the idea of buying a home. That was one thing we wanted to talk about with somebody who was in our area. We’re in San Francisco, which is like one of the worst housing markets in the country. Things have changed since then, but that’s where we were at the time.
TPh: So with talking to someone about the home decision in particular, were you hoping to get an unbiased opinion on something like, “Is that a smart move for us given all of our circumstances and where we live?”
LS: I think at the time it was more just can we make that happen and if we did, what would that look like? Would we be close to being in a position to actually save enough for a down payment or do we have some steps that we need to take to get there?
Search like a finance reporter
Lauren searched for a financial advisor using XY Planning Network — a resource she’d used often to find sources as a writer covering personal finance. “Everybody was always really trustworthy, responded really quickly. And so I felt good about using it as the consumer on the other side.”
XY Planning Network lists fee-only advisors, which are advisors who are paid directly by clients and don’t receive commissions on products they recommend. (A fee-based advisor, on the other hand, may charge clients a fee but also may get commissions or other fees from third parties if clients buy certain products or securities, which can create conflicts of interest.) Other useful directories include the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, which also lists fee-only advisors, and the CFP® Board, which lists certified financial planners.
TPh: How were you approaching money and money decisions prior to chatting with a CFP?
LS: The way we were really approaching it was monitoring bank and investment accounts. And my husband does that still almost daily and he enjoys it, which I’m glad he does because I don’t.
Outside of that, we really didn’t do a lot of forward-thinking planning, unless it was tax time. So I think the experience of meeting with a financial advisor was good to kind of shift that a little bit and remind us we probably could be doing more. We could be setting more concrete goals. We could be looking at this more often.
TPh: You decided to hold off on hiring someone after you had this initial meeting. Did you think that that was going to be a possibility?
LS: I did. Like I said, a big part of it was I wanted to get this experience and see what it would be like for anybody who wanted to reach out to an advisor. And that’s the whole point of these first meetings, right, is to get a feel for it. At the same time, we knew that there’s value in this. So it was a possibility, and we just talked it over.
But one of the big things that changed for us was we took a step back from our home-buying goal just because it’s so expensive here, and we’re in kind of a unique housing situation where we’re renting an apartment from my family and we’re paying below market rate.
We wanted to wait and see if anything would happen with the market or if [mortgage] rates would come down. We crunched some of the numbers, and for a house in the neighborhood where we want to live and the size — we would be increasing our monthly housing payments by almost five times. And so we just could not stomach that. We felt OK about, at least for the time being, staying put.
