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Minneapolis Investment Advisor | Investment Advisor| Insurance Agent and Financial Advisor :
. Vince Oldre, certified financial planner here to talk to you about the differences between if you're working with an investment advisor, insurance agent, or a financial advisor. Now, the hard part with our industry is that most of us call ourselves, "Financial advisors," so how can you determine which one is better for you? How do you know when you're looking online, are you working with a financial advisor, or if you're working with an investment advisor, or a insurance agent? 
Minneapolis Investment Advisor:

Minneapolis Investment Advisor

Some of the key differences here that you might find when you're speaking with someone as a financial advisor, is that they might only sell certain products, or they sell only certain investments. Now, if you're meeting with an insurance agent what you'll find is that the only product that they'll be offering you to help with your retirement, is either life insurance, long term care, or annuities. Now, that doesn't mean those are bad products, but in my opinion usually, they're kind of forced down into your retirement plan, instead of looking at how those things might be better for you. They're not really looking at should you have these things versus other investments like stocks, bonds, or mutual funds, or exchange rate funds. They're saying the life insurance annuities, the long term care, the only thing that's for you, and you should stay away from the rest of them.

Minneapolis Investment Advisor

Minneapolis Investment Advisor :
Now, if you're meeting with an investment advisor, typically what we find is that you're only going to get the investment options available to you, such as stock, bonds, mutual funds, in exchange for your funds, and sometimes variable annuities. Now, what we know what that side is that those assets could be rather more ... Those investments could be more risky. That's where you want to be a little bit more careful when you're picking your financial advisor. Are they just going to offer you investment vehicles to keep you in the market, are they really going to protect you when it comes to your retirement planning, or are they going to put something together for you? 

Now in my opinion, what a financial advisor does is they put all those products out there for you, and based on your plan they will determine which one's to use for your own retirement plan. That's why I think it's important to find a financial advisor that will work with all products that are out there, and not have a bias toward one or another, because when it comes to your retirement plan, it's going to be different than any person that comes in that door, that you might visit with.

When it comes to trying to find a financial advisor, in my opinion anyone that's going to look at your goals, or needs, and desires first, is the right first step because your needs, your goals, and desires will help dictate what things to use within your plan. Once we have that plan available, a written retirement plan, and a written down income plan, and estate plan, then we can start putting the right tools into it. Whether it be life insurance, annuities, long term care. Or other types of investments like stocks, or bonds, mutual funds, exchange trader funds, or maybe real estate investment trust. All those things need to be put into the plan after you figure out what your needs, your goals, and desires are.
Determine for yourself are you working with an insurance agent, an investment advisor, or actually working with a financial advisor that can do all those things. Last but not least, as a certified financial planner, we can actually design retirement plans without having to get paid by the investments. If you want to make sure you're working with someone that has a fiduciary duty, that's going to look out for your interest before their own, sometimes working with someone that's just going to be working on a basis where they're going to put a plan together for you, instead of being incentivized by other products that are out there, provided by the mutual fund company, or provided by the insurance carrier, it might make more sense for you. One of the things you can do, is you can go to CFP.Net, which stands for, "Certified Financial Planner," and you can search all the different certified financial planners that are in your area. It will tell you how they're going to get paid if you decide to work with them. The other thing you could do is do a FINRA check, it's called FINRA, F-I-N-R-A, broker check. You can just type in, "Broker check," in Google, and it will pop up, and you can put that persons name in there. It will give you all the background information on them if they've had any disciplinary action.