Local Financial Advisors for Growing Wealth
Unsure about whether local financial advisors provide enough value in their services? You’ve come to the right place. As an affluent investor, it’s natural to be more prudent about your wealth. You want to only use the best services and deploy the best expertise in managing your money because of the risks associated with it. For people with $10 million+, our exclusive guide provides a simple roadmap for finding and employing the best financial advisors. Once you’ve read this article and understood all the services of local financial advisors, it would be wise to give this guide a look.
STRATEGIES FOR FAMILIES WORTH $5 MILLION TO $500 MILLION
7 Secrets To High Net Worth Investment Management, Estate, Tax and Financial Planning
The insights you’ll discover from our published book will help you integrate a variety of wealth management tools with financial planning, providing guidance for your future security alongside complex financial strategies, so your human and financial capital will both flourish.
Clients frequently share with us how the knowledge gained from this book helped provide them tremendous clarity, shattering industry-pitched ideologies, while offering insight and direction in making such important financial decisions.
Table of Contents
Most local financial advisors only serve investors of a certain caliber because of the extra expertise and attention required. For instance, Pillar Wealth Management experts only offer their services to an exclusive number of people with $5 million to $500 million. We don’t take on more clients than we can handle because we realize that each of our investors needs a specialized plan to achieve their goals. Become one of our many satisfied clients by booking a chat with us today.
For those who want to learn all about financial advisors and their services, keep reading!
What are Local Financial Advisors?
Local financial advisors are usually smaller-scale setups that focus on serving a particular niche and providing a specialized financial advisory service. This is usually in contrast with the larger banks and financial institutions that provide a wider range of more ‘homogenized’ financial advisory services.
A financial advisor is a broad term that describes both registered and unregistered professionals with various financial backgrounds. These professionals provide varying types of:
– Financial advisory services
– Financial planning services
– Investment management services
– A combination of all the aforementioned services
A financial advisor could be a certified public accountant, an investment advisor, a financial planner, a wealth manager, and so on. Because there are so many different types of local financial advisors, it can often be difficult to find the best local financial advisors.
Since most financial advisory services don’t legally require individuals to be registered or licensed by the SEC, there can be a vast difference in quality between the services you might find in different organizations. Our ultimate guide on financial advisors provides more detail on the various differences between various kinds of advisors.
Most local financial advisors don’t have training in all areas, and they won’t offer a complete package. However, some registered fiduciary wealth managers, like Pillar Wealth Management, offer to take care of all the financial needs of their clients.
We help high net-worth and ultra-high net-worth families find financial serenity by creating comprehensive strategies to preserve and grow their wealth. Our wealth managers take the burden of financial worries away from you, so you can pursue your goals, build your legacy, or enjoy your preferred lifestyle. If you’re a person with $10 million+, read ourguide to learn all about wealth management.
To clearly list all the local financial advisors high net worth services, we’re now going to answer the question, “what does a local financial advisor do?”.
Is it better to have a local financial advisor?
Having a local financial advisor may be better. A local advisor is someone you can meet face to face; personal conversations and interactions will say a lot about the quality of your relationship.
Do banks offer free financial advice?
Yes, most banks offer free financial advice to their customers. They can help you build your savings to grow your wealth. They’ll guide you through the process of buying a home and getting a mortgage.
What to do before talking to a financial advisor?
Prepare for your first meeting by gathering your financial data, such as income and expenses, tax returns, and insurance policies. Do some research on the financial services you may need.
How long should you stay with a financial advisor?
The short answer is—as long as possible. The longer your relationship, the better the advisor will understand your unique financial circumstances, your values, and your goals.
Do financial advisors have access to your bank account?
No, financial advisors that make trades on your behalf can access your investment accounts but not your bank accounts. You control moving your money to and from your investment accounts.
What should I bring to my first meeting with a financial advisor?
You should bring a detailed view of your budget (income and expenses), bank account balances, recent tax returns, insurance policies, and the details of your retirement and investment accounts.
When should I meet with a financial advisor?
You can avoid stress and worry by not checking your investments more often than on a quarterly basis. You should meet with your advisor every six months to review your progress.
What is better than a financial advisor?
Financial advisors have certifications or designations that may reflect a specialization, such as retirement planning or taxation, which may better suit your requirements than a generalist focus.
Do millionaires use financial advisors?
Wealthy individuals may need an advisor to help them with saving more for retirement or making smarter investment decisions, such as building a balanced portfolio of assets.
How do I find a financial advisor near me?
An internet search will display a list of advisors near you, which you can contact to determine if they can provide the services you need, such as tax filing or retirement planning.
How to Find Financial Advisors Near You
- Online advisor matching service
- CFP Board website
- Robo-advisors
- Garrett Planning Network
1. Online advisor matching service
You can find a financial advisor through a matching service such as Zoe Financial or Harness Wealth. The advisors pay the service to be matched with new customers, and they are vetted by the service.
Zoe advisors are certified planners or accountants and charge a fee between 0.50% and 1.5% of your assets.
Harness Wealth connects you with equity-focused financial and tax advisors. Fees start at 1% or lower for the first $1 million in investable assets. A flat fee of $1,000–$5,000 is charged for a financial plan, tax planning and filing, or estate plan.
2. CFP Board website
The CFP board is the certifying body for certified financial planners (CFPs). The Board website provides a detailed description of the CFP’s qualifications, training, work experience, and code of ethics. The site includes a search function to find a CFP in your area (click on FIND A CFP PROFESSIONAL at the bottom of the home page).
3. Robo-advisors
Many popular investment firms, such as Vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity, offer low-cost investment services using a robo-advisor. Other highly ranked robo-advisors are Betterment and Wealthfront. A robo-advisor uses your details to make financial recommendations through computer algorithms.
Robo-advisor fees are significantly lower than those of human advisors, but these digital advisors cannot provide the customized, personalized services of a traditional advisor.
4. Garrett Planning Network
The Garrett Planning Network is a network of fee-only fiduciary financial planners. Sheryl Garrett’s mission is to make competent financial advice available to everyone.
Network members pay an initial fee and an ongoing monthly or annual fee for their membership in the organization.
Member advisors offer financial planning and investment advice on an hourly, as-needed basis. They must be accessible to individuals from all walks of life, with no minimum requirements for income, assets, or net worth.
They are either a CFP or a licensed CPA with the Personal Financial Specialist (PFS) credential, and they adhere to the Fiduciary Oath.
5. Recommendations
Check around with your personal network of friends, at work, or in your family, where someone with similar financial advisory needs has already found an advisor with whom they have developed a fruitful relationship.
Factors to keep in mind when looking for a local financial advisor
First, consider your financial situation and determine in what areas a financial advisor can help you progress toward your financial goals. You may want help saving for retirement, managing debt, or building a portfolio. Whatever your goals, you want an advisor who is competent to help you reach them.
The advisor you choose to work with should have the appropriate certification, such as CFP or CFA (see the FINRA website for the many other designations). Their certification reflects their training, competencies, and code of ethics.
Because you are paying for financial services, you’ll want to know how your advisor is compensated and what fees you’ll be asked to pay. Some advisors are paid commissions, which can create conflicts of interest. As a result, ask the advisor you’re vetting how they deal with such conflicts.
What Does a Local Financial Advisor Do?
Before we get started on discussing the various services offered by local financial advisors, it’s important that we make sure you’re getting the full value with your time. We feel that ultra-high net worth personnel would benefit from more focused information from starting our hardcover book, The Art Of Protecting Ultra-High Net Worth Portfolios And Estates, Strategies For Families worth $25 Million to $500 Million. It’s exclusively tailored to explaining why financial advisory services need to be different for ultra-high net-worth families.
A decent financial advisor will always talk to you about your goals first. They will understand what exactly you want to achieve with your life and then create a roadmap of how their services can help you do that. Whether your priorities are about having enough savings for a rainy day, preparing for a business exit, or growing your wealth via investments, the focus should always be your goals.
Without further ado, here are the various local financial advisors high net worth services you may find.
Investment Management
Investment management is one of the most popular financial advisory services availed by most clients. As the name suggests, it’s a service where the manager or advisor handles your investment portfolio on your behalf.
Though many people feel that investment management services only offer the buying and selling of securities, there’s often a lot more on offer from the best local financial advisors. Firstly, there is a whole element of investment planning that goes into this process.
To begin investment planning, the financial advisor will first gauge your goals and priorities. They will wish to know what exactly you want your investments to achieve for you. This isn’t just about describing going for the highest return possible. Rather investment planning will be more about balancing your risks and returns in a way that you get the right performance out of your portfolio without putting yourself under undue risk. This concept of financial security via an investment plan is better discussed in our portfolio performance guide.
When it comes to Pillar Wealth Management, investment management is a big part of our wealth managers’ roles. They understand that investments are the main tool that allows investors to truly grow their wealth and earn the income they might need. Thanks to our combined six decades of experience in this field, we have in-depth knowledge on how to make the most of your investments for you while making sure you don’t lose your money. Interested affluent investors can get in touch with us for a discussion via our website.
Tax Optimization
Since high net-worth and ultra-high net-worth personnel are already in the highest tax brackets, this service is often vital to making sure you save as much of your wealth as you can. There’s no point in earning high returns if you lose most of them in taxes. Not only is it a waste of time and effort, but it’ll also make you feel quite depressed.
Tax optimization services are provided by only a few types of local financial advisors, including wealth managers and some others. These experts help you with the timing of your income, the balancing of losses and gains, and the sort of investments you make. They’re always on the lookout for an opportunity to help you save money on taxes.
There is no singular magical tax minimization technique that can work for every client out there. That’s why our experts focus on customizing tax reduction strategies.
Risk Management
Investors face a lot of risks when they start investing money or when holding assets or wealth. These risks are multiplied when the investor is a high net-worth or ultra-high net-worth person. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has identified at least six types of risks faced by most investors. These include
– Business risk: this refers to the uncertain factors that can cause a business’ profits to fall.
– Market risk: this refers to the possibility of losing money due to factors that affect the overall financial markets.
– Currency risk: this comes from the possibility that the changes in currency value can negatively affect the value of your wealth, assets, and investments.
– Political risk: political instability or changes can often impact financial markets or your investments specifically.
– Concentration risk: when your investments are concentrated in one type or sector, the risks are higher.
– Liquidity risk: the risk that you cannot trade your security quick enough without affecting the market price.
It’s easy to see that handling all these risks by yourself is a big task. You need the experience and expertise of a financial advisor to able to efficiently minimize them and maintain the right portfolio performance.
Retirement Planning
Retirement income planning will not only allow you to make a safe transition into life after work, but it will also enable you to make it more enjoyable, relaxing, and comfortable. The thing is, you need to start planning today to be able to do this effectively – especially if you’re above 50.
Quite often, passive income from investments is the only way in which retired individuals can sustain the lifestyle they want. However, it won’t help if you burn through all your savings or put them into very risky investments early on after retirement. This is where local financial advisors come in.
Pillar Wealth Management experts specialize in helping personnel with $5 million to $500 million make a smooth transition into retirement and maintain the lifestyle they want. Our aim is to provide you with a financial plan that throws all your financial worries out the door and allows you to enjoy a stress-free retirement. We highly recommend that you read our guide on 5 Critical Shifts for Maximizing Portfolio Growth Strategies for more details on having a better retirement.
Estate Planning
Estate planning is quite a complicated process, and one of the most commonlocal financial advisors high net worth services offered. It allows you to identify the heirs to your fortune after you pass and enables you to create a process that allows for a smooth transition of ownership.
The most vital part of estate planning is making sure that your heirs get their inheritance without paying any more taxes (income tax, estate tax, gift tax, etc.) than required. Yes, there are taxes on inheritance.
Most individuals don’t realize how many problems can crop up in the process of inheritance and how much their beneficiaries can end up losing to taxes without the right planning. Your family shouldn’t have to face such difficulties in such vulnerable times.
The best local financial advisors help you leave a better legacy and a brighter future for your family by going through every detail possible. Pillar Wealth Management professionals have created numerous estate plans for clients using different financial planning tools, like creating a succession plan, creating a trust, finding suitable life insurance, and so on. Thanks to our vast experience, we know all the ways your family could potentially lose money and all the ways to counter them.
Don’t delay estate planning for when it’s too late. Get started now by booking a consultation with our wealth managers.
How Do I Hire Local Financial Advisors?
After learning about all the useful services offered by financial advisors, you might be wondering, “how do I hire local financial advisors?”. Let’s start answering this question right here.
The very first step will always be to identify what kind of financial advisor you need. You can choose from:
– Investment advisors or managers
– Investment brokers
– Certified financial planners
– Financial consultants
– Asset managers
– Robo advisors
– Wealth managers
Though each of these options provides unique value to investors, our recommendation to affluent investors is to go for wealth managers. This is because the services provided by these professionals are tailored to suit the needs of wealthy clients. They provide convenience, expertise, and collaboration in one package. You can get all your financial needs fulfilled by working with wealth managers.
Besides that, follow these steps to find a suitable wealth manager from the local financial advisors available.
1. Find Some Potential Candidates
The simplest way to do this would be to do a Google search for “the best local financial advisors” or something similar. A better and more reliable way to go about this would be to ask your family, colleagues, and friends about their experiences with wealth managers or financial advisors. You can also talk to other high net-worth and ultra-high net worth personnel in your social circle to learn who they’ve worked with.
Finding advisors that have already shown that they can do well with similar investors is a good place to start.
2. Learn Everything About Advisors
Now that you have a fairly long list of potential advisors, you should start cutting it down. Focus on the qualifications of the advisors you’re researching.
Are they RIAs? Are they fiduciaries? Are they listed on trusted local or national financial advisor databases like NAPFA?
Check out their online presence too, and examine the content they’ve posted. Do they seem knowledgeable enough to handle your case?
3. Ask for a Meeting
Once you’ve a shorter list, you can start setting up meetings. These will help you separate the best from the rest. Keep a list of questions lined up, and make sure to only go for wealth managers that can confidently and reliably provide objective answers to them. They should also be able to show you how they can fulfill your requirements.
Some questions you might want to ask are:
- Have you successfully worked with affluent clients before? Tell me about their success.
- How much experience do you have in the industry?
- Are you a fiduciary?
- What are your costs? (They should not charge anything other than a fee)
- How can you protect and grow my wealth?
Don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions, and don’t go for an advisor unless you are 100% confident in their abilities.
Last Few Words
Hiring local financial advisors is a long but important process. Take your time with it and make sure you’re able to get the maximum value out of the services you opt for.
Personnel with $5 million to $500 million would usually need fiduciary wealth managers to cater to their special financial needs. A company like Pillar Wealth Management can help affluent investors in this regard by smoothening out all aspects of their finances. You can discuss all your worries with us by booking a free chat.
To be 100% transparent, we published this page to help filter through the mass influx of prospects, who come to us through our website and referrals, to gain only a handful of the right types of new clients who wish to engage us.
We enjoy working with high net worth and ultra-high net worth investors and families who want what we call financial serenity – the feeling that comes when you know your finances and the lifestyle you desire have been secured for life, and that you don’t have to do any of the work to manage and maintain it because you hired a trusted advisor to take care of everything.
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