5 Clues That you Need a Financial Advisor

In today’s age of soaring stock markets, rising bond yields, rapidly shifting global dynamics, outrageous prophecies about cryptocurrencies and what not, the role of a trustworthy Financial Advisor has become more critically important than ever before. You may have been investing your money unassisted for the past few years – but here are five telltale signs that it’s time for you to seek out the services of a Financial Advisor.

You Have No Idea How your Portfolio is Faring

When asked how your investment portfolio has fared returns-wise, over the past one year and three years, is your answer “I don’t have a clue!”? This may be attributable to the unprofitable accumulation of underperforming investments over the past few years. You need the support of an Advisor to help spruce things up, or it’s highly likely that your long-term returns will take a hit.

You Own Too Many Life Insurance Policies

ULIP’s, whole life plans, guaranteed savings plans, pension plans… name it, and you own it! Even worse, you don’t even understand half these plans and how they really work, and what their eventual payoffs are likely to be. The agents lined up at your doorstep for years, and you obliged. Or you walked into a bank, and the bank manager coerced you into buying a policy. Over time, you lost count of your basket of life insurance plans. Ironically, you’re still likely underinsured as you never really viewed life insurance as a risk transfer tool in the first place!

You’re Clueless About Your Financial Goals and How to Achieve Them

You have a vague idea of your future financial goals, but you don’t really know whether you’re on track to achieve them. That’s primarily because you haven’t gotten down to defining the goals concretely in the first place! Resultantly, you’re wracked with guilt each time that you spend money on yourself. Without the anchor of your goals to steady you, you generally feel a sense of anxiety every time you contemplate your family’s financial future.

The Bulk of your Investments are into Low Return Traditional Assets

Since bank FD’s and tax-free bonds were so much easier to understand, you blindly shoveled money into them year on year. Now, you discover that your funds have barely fared better than inflation. You tend to view mutual funds, equities, and other non-traditional asset classes with skepticism, but this habit could come back to hurt you and your financial goals eventually. You need to consult with a Financial Advisor on the best options that exist within your risk tolerance bracket.

You Tend to Dabble – and Burn your Fingers – Often

On the rare occasion that you have looked beyond the traditional and the low-yielding, you’ve done so based on tips. Resultantly, you’ve burned your fingers more than once. Perhaps you bought into IPO’s that sank without a trace, or invested into locked in mutual funds at the peak of the 2008 bull market. Perhaps you enthusiastically bought into Bitcoins when the prices hit $20K, only to be sitting on 35% loss today. These are signs that you need a Financial Advisor to counsel you to circumvent behavioral traps that are holding you back from generating long term wealth from high risk, high return financial assets.