Always Surprised To Have To Turn Down Financial Advisors

[The White Coat Investor]

I'm always surprised when I have to turn down a "financial advisor" who wants to advertise on the site. I have them fill out an application that basically reads like an open book test. It seems pretty obvious what I'm looking for from the questions. While there is no perfect financial advisor, I'm looking for someone with:

• Experience


• Multiple physician clients


• Fiduciary duty


• Fee only


• Primarily using passive mutual funds/ETFs


• Avoiding market timing, technical analysis etc


• Wary of cash value life insurance


• A higher level designation etc


• Lower than average fees

Why would you apply with me if you couldn't even check two or three of those boxes? It's like they've never read the site and can't read between the lines on the application. Interesting.

[Kamban]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Fee only

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This might be one of your major problems. Most financial advisors do not want a fee only consultation from a client. Many are so called fee based or want AUM so that whatever happens to the markets, they get their percentage. I am not saying that is wrong, just that it eliminates a lot of FA if you state Fee only.

[Kamban]

denisolivira22 wrote:

Morning Watchlist $MBOT $AMMA $CBIO $GNMK

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Have to admire you for the rapid fire spamming in multiple threads  :x

[jfoxcpacfp]

Kamban wrote:

denisolivira22 wrote:

Morning Watchlist $MBOT $AMMA $CBIO $GNMK

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Have to admire you for the rapid fire spamming in multiple threads

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Thanks for the head's up, think i got them all blacklisted  

[Craigy]

Kamban wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Fee only 

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This might be one of your major problems. Most financial advisors do not want a fee only consultation from a client. Many are so called fee based or want AUM so that whatever happens to the markets, they get their percentage. I am not saying that is wrong, just that it eliminates a lot of FA if you state Fee only.

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This.

*Most* of them are AUM.  I've seen several friends & colleagues go into the business driven by this interest.  If you're at it for long enough, before you know it you have $100M+ of assets under management and your percentage management fees are tremendous.

[The White Coat Investor]

AUM fees might be the best kind of passive income there is, but if you're only paid by AUM fees, you're still considered Fee-only. Fee-based are the ones charging commissions too. Now if they happen to do a little DI on the side, fine, but if they're using loaded mutual funds? You really think I'm going to send readers to you? Especially when you're also using technical analysis to pick stocks?

The most interesting thing is that I've never had an advisor admit to not being a fiduciary. I'm not sure there's an advisor out there who doesn't think he's a fiduciary, even if his client's portfolios are 50% NML WL insurance and 50% loaded 2% ER mutual funds.