There are certain things an advisor should do if they’re going to help their clients. But we find that a lot of people don’t get the kind of advice and service from their financial advisor that they should be getting.
In a lot of cases, the advisor is only managing the investments but not providing any guidance in other areas. On this episode of The Retirement Huddle podcast, Mark Howard explains what a financial advisor should be doing.
Does your advisor review your tax returns? We think it’s a very important area where we bring value to our clients. First of all, we meet with our clients as often as they want to meet. Most want to meet quarterly or every six months or sometimes once a year.
“We ask them to bring their tax returns and that way we can look and help identify ways that we can do some tax planning and save them on taxes,” said Mark. “This is part of the value that we add.”
We are not CPAs or tax attorneys, but we can look at Roth conversion strategies and other strategies and identify ways to save on taxes in the future.
“We’re always looking in the windshield and not in the rearview mirror when it comes to taxes,” said Mark.
Does your advisor examine the fees and costs in your investments? We’ve got the ability with the software we’ve developed to not only do a stress test but also a fee analysis for anybody who wants it.
If you want to know what fees are built into mutual funds and different investments, we’ll evaluate all of those for you. For example, variable annuities are notorious for having high fees, some as high as 5% per year.
Listen to the full episode to hear more things your advisor should be doing or use the timestamps to jump to a specific section. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back for another show every other Thursday.
Today’s Rundown:
[1:28] – Reviewing tax returns
[3:06] – Evaluating fees and costs in investments
[4:36] – Discussing and planning retirement income
[6:22] – Clarify target and goal for invested dollars
[7:47] – Reviewing family goals and legacy plans
