Do I need a financial advisor?

It sounds silly, but most people don’t know when to hire a financial advisor. The question, “Do I need a financial advisor,” is a very common one. Certified Financial Planner Larren Odom of Chastain Wealth Management breaks it down to four simple things. If you lack any of these four things, then you need a financial advisor.

Time

Lacking the time to adequately monitor your portfolio, make sure that you have right life insurance, employee benefits, estate plan for your kids, etc, is a good reason to hire a financial advisor. These are very important financial  areas of your life that should be a priority.

Interest

If you find financial planning topics like life insurance, estate planning, and taxes boring, then you need a financial planner who not only lives and breathes this information, but is engaged and up to date so that you are taking full advantage of your options.

Knowledge

If you are sort of interested in it, but you are intimated by all of the jargon of financial planning, then you probably need a financial advisor. A Certified Financial Planner has undergone the training and proven their ability to understand finances so that they can make well-informed decisions.

Discipline

If you are the type of investor who moves in and out of the market and you wake up and you feel like you don’t have adequate returns, it may be because you lack the discipline. You are too affected by the financial news and you make bad decisions in your portfolio. That doesn’t make you dumb. It makes you human. So if you lack the discipline, what a good financial advisor does is help you with that discipline. Just like a personal trainer helps you train better and holds you accountable, that’s what a financial advisor does.