Let’s face it. Unique investors want to be treated uniquely. They have unique needs and unique triggers on what matters to them. “What questions should I be asking an advisor?.”
I was recently asked this on the Suburban Folk Podcast. I get asked this question a lot - I get asked these questions a lot and decided to create a list so that people would have a healthy list to choose from depending on what matters to them. Here goes...
BUSINESS TRANSACTION QUESTIONS
1/ Are you a fiduciary?
2/ What is your investment philosophy?
3/ What asset allocation will you use?
4/ What investment benchmarks do you use?
5/ Who is your custodian?
6/ What tax hit do I face if I invest with you?
REAL QUESTIONS FOR A REAL ADVISOR
1) Who are you?
2) What is your actual value proposition?
3) How is your offering different than everyone else's?
4) What are you trying to build?
5) How do you add value to me?
6) What are your credentials?
7) Do you have client references for people like me?
8) Tell me about your personality
TACTICAL QUESTIONS TO ASK
1. Will I own funds that cost > 0.6%? If so, why?
2. Will I pay trading commissions? If so, why?
3. What do we earn on our cash? If not over 1%, why not?
4. Does our broker lend out our shares and earn revenue? Do we share in that revenue? If not, why not?
5. Do we own stock mutual funds in taxable accounts that are expected to pay capital gains? If so, why don’t we own tax efficient ETFs?
6. Will you show me how you allocate your own money with holdings? If not, why not?
7. For the fee I pay you, what do you consider your major value add is and will be in the future?
8. Do we have a home country bias in our portfolio (meaning you have less than 25% in foreign investments). If so, why?
9. How did you do last year?