Being Smart with $$ - Firing Your Financial Adviser

When you fire your financial adviser, do you expect to be treated with respect and gratitude considering you likely paid him/her tens of thousands of dollars in fees over the last few years?  You may be surprised by the childish reaction you receive.  I have had multiple clients decide to work with me once they came to appreciate my hourly advice model where they are never sold a commission-based investment and they will not pay higher and higher automatic, annual adviser fees.  On multiple occasions when clients let their former adviser know they are moving to my client-friendly model, the adviser tells them to go…well, I can’t say it in polite company.   In some cases, these former advisers were considered good friends.  But if this is their reaction, are they really your friend or do they just like the $5,000 to $50,000 they take out of your account every year?  If you are paying thousands of dollars to have your account managed by a friend, but don’t think you are getting anything but average results, you may ask yourself whether you are maintaining this relationship just because you were classmates in high school.  But then ask yourself, how many other friends do you write a check to each year for $5,000 or more and since the answer is 0, you may consider that it’s time to move your account to a model that favors you rather than your adviser.  Then you will find out if this friend just sees you as an ATM machine.  And I promise you that if you fire me in the future, I will still want to be your friend.

Larry Pike, CFA

Client Priority Financial Advisors LLC
www.clientpriority.com