Best Financial Advisor in Florida
Best Financial Advisor in Florida
A good financial adviser works with you to understand your needs, set your financial goals, and create a plan to help you achieve them.
Why You need a Financial Advisor
Before you get financial advice, decide what you want to get out of it.
This depends on your stage of life, how much money you have, and what you’re trying to achieve.
A financial advisor can help you make financial decisions and plan for the future.
This might include advice about budgeting, investing, super, retirement planning, estate planning, insurance and taxation.
How to choose the right financial advisor
A financial advisor can give you general financial advice.
This type of advice doesn’t take into account your personal situation or goals, or how it might affect you personally.
A financial advisor can also give personal financial advice. This advice is tailored to your financial situation and goals, and is in your best interests. It can include:
- Simple, single-issue advice — Help with one financial issue, for example, how much to contribute to your retirement plan.
- Comprehensive financial advice — Help to develop a financial plan to reach your financial goals. This covers things like savings, investments, insurance and retirement planning.
- Ongoing advice — Regular monitoring and review of your financial plan and affairs.
Good advisers inquire about your entire financial picture, including your debts, if you own (or want to own) a home, and whether you have a will and trust.
If you don’t understand or innately trust the person, don’t hesitate to move on. And by all means, stay involved even if you find someone reliable; remember that what happens to your money affects your quality of life, not your adviser’s.
Arrange a meeting with a Financial Advisor
Once you’ve settled on a promising candidate, you need to set up an initial meeting. There should be no cost for the meeting.
The aim of the meeting is to have all your questions answered and to get in writing what charges would apply if you did appoint the adviser and what would be delivered for that cost.
You should not feel pressured into making decisions in the initial meeting.
If the adviser isn’t giving you time to think, that is a major red flag.
Ask the right questions to your Financial Advisor
Here are some of the key questions to ask at your first meeting:
- Is the adviser independent, or restricted?
- Can they give you a summary of the services they provide?
- Who exactly will be advising you? What experience and qualifications do they have?
- Will the same adviser be handling you for the long term? What will happen if they leave?
- Can they provide testimonials from existing clients?
- Who are they regulated by?
- Do they charge fees, earn commission or use a mixture of the two?
- How regularly will you be able to speak to them?
- Do they offer personalized advice, or use generic planning models?
How regularly will they review your portfolio?
Will they update you on any changes that affect your financial situation, and how?
How do they conduct their research?
Do they have specialist expertise in the areas you require? If not, do they have links to specialists in the areas they do not cover?
How much should advice cost?
What you will pay depends on the complexity of the advice required and the charging system used by your adviser.
Remember, cheaper doesn’t automatically mean better value.
The value of the advice is what it adds after fees are taken away – this figure needs to be a positive for it to be worthwhile.
Some services come with a fixed fee, while some work will be billed on an hourly basis.
12 Best ways a good financial advisor will add value to a client relationship:
- Help their clients avoid costly mistakes– Not refinancing a mortgage can cost you thousands of dollars in interest over time. Supporting your favorite charities with cash instead of appreciated securities isn’t tax efficient. Putting too much of your savings into an illiquid investment. Money mistakes (or missed opportunities) come in many forms, some serious, some trivial, but it’s YOUR money and you should want to maximize its value to you and your family. A good advisor will help you discover ways to make your hard-earned money work harder for you, while avoiding mistakes along the way.
- Point out blind spots and hidden risks– Are you the sole breadwinner in your family? Do you have disability insurance? What about enough life insurance? Do you have the basic estate planning documents (will, POAs, etc.)? These are just a few of the blind spots and hidden risks we help uncover during our financial planning process.
- Simplify their clients’ financial lives– The financial services world continues to become more complex with each passing year. A good financial advisor will simplify any financial decisions you may face and explain financial concepts in plain English. Having a trusted advocate in your corner will help to relieve the burden of facing these decisions on your own.
- Minimize fees and expenses for their clients– Higher fees typically result in lower performance. Minimizing expenses and fees can result in a better bottom line for you. Some advisor business plans place more importance on this aspect than others. It’s important to know how your advisor is being compensated. Are they paid to sell products? If so, this can lead to conflicts of interest.
- Act as an emotional surge protector for their clients– This is perhaps the area where an advisor can add the most value. It also encompasses some of the other items listed here. Emotions and money don’t mix well. It’s far better to separate the two and be one of those rational economic beings your high school econ book talked about. Easier said than done, which is why you hire someone else to worry about your investments on a daily basis.
- Be a financial advocate for their clients– An advocate is someone who goes to bat for the person they represent and always looks out for and fights for the best resolution for them. This means always putting the interests of the client first. You want to work with someone held to the fiduciary standard, both when offering advice and when implementing their advice.
- Help clients maximize their net worth– While investment performance is important, a good financial advisor will help a client grow their net worth in many other ways. There are numerous ways to save on taxes, stretch your charitable dollars, manage your debt load, save for college, and avoid making money mistakes.
- Help clients maximize their life worth– Balancing saving for the future with enjoying the present is sometimes difficult. Okay, it’s difficult most of the time. But the point of saving and investing is to put yourself in a position to have options. This could mean a retirement lifestyle of leisure, a career change to a lesser paying more personally rewarding line of work, or just the peace of mind knowing you can do what you want to do in life. A good financial advisor will help you articulate and plan for your financial and life goals, and in the process, help you maximize both your net and life worth.
- Keep their clients focused on the big picture– There’s a quote we’ve all heard about not seeing the forest for the trees. In the world of investing, the trees are represented by short term market movements, while the forest is the long term. If you’re early on in your career and the market tanks, you should be happy for the opportunity to invest money at cheaper prices. You’ll do that, right? If you’re nearing retirement, remember you won’t need all your savings and investment money the day you retire, or for the next 10 years. Markets will recover. If you’re in drawdown mode, focus on what you can control (see below).
- Preach persistence and patience– These are two of the most important qualities for being successful in anything, and they definitely apply when investing. Persistence to continue investing in good markets and bad and the patience to have a long term perspective will reward you immensely.
- Help their clients understand what they can and can’t control– You can control how much you spend and you have influence over how much you earn. You can’t control what the market does. You can control how you react to market events, both bull markets and bears. You can control your financial goals. Did we mention you can’t control what the markets do? Focus on what you can control.
- Help their clients understand that time IN the market is more profitable than timing the market – If you own the market and continue to own the market, you will be successful at investing. If the stock market scares you at these levels, there’s a high likelihood it will scare you more at much lower levels. The problem with market timing is that it’s easy to get out of the market, but very hard to get back in. Choose a strategy, pick an asset allocation, and stick with both.
Best Financial Advisor in Florida
Mintco Financial Retirement Planning in Florida
Whether you want to quit working, scale back, or embark on a new venture, retirement planning is about having options.
We want to help you:
- Establish a safe withdrawal rate and decide which accounts to tap first.
- Determine the right Social Security withdrawal strategy & Medicare supplement.
- Analyze your retirement rollover options.
- Take care of your family and leave a legacy.
- Ensure your monies continue to work hard for you.
Mintco Financial Financial Planning in Florida
Whether by divorce or the death of a spouse, becoming suddenly single can be overwhelming on many fronts. This is especially true if your spouse was responsible for the family finances. Our goal is to lift your burden and allow you to breathe easier.
Have you sold your business or are you considering a sale? We can guide you through the complex financial decisions that result.
Contact us for a complimentary meeting at
813-964-7100 or email us at info@mintcofinancial.com