THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FINANCIAL PLANNING IN LOS ANGELES
You’ve been doing your finances on your own, and things have become complicated. Trying to get a handle on all your financial areas is sapping your energy and time, and you’re not sure you want to do it anymore. What if you’re making mistakes? What if you’re missing out on opportunities?
You wonder if a financial advisor can help give you some certainty—and your time back. But how do you find one? Or more specifically, as a Los Angeles resident, how do you sort through the hundreds of financial planning firms to find the right one for you?
Consider this article as the ultimate guide to financial planning in Los Angeles, California. Read on for three steps to finding the right L.A. financial advisor for you.
STEP 1: DETERMINE IF YOU NEED FINANCIAL PLANNING
Start with your financial situation and whether it’s manageable on your own. You may be a young professional with an uncomplicated financial picture that basically consists of your paycheck—in which case, DIY financial planning may be fine for now.
However, you may want to consider working with a financial advisor if your financial picture looks like one of the following:
Your net worth is growing, and so is your financial complexity.
You need expertise in multiple areas, such as taxes, equity compensation, and real estate.
You face a significant life transition, such as retirement, and need to know you’re financially prepared.
The demands of career, family, or other responsibilities limit the time you can devote to preserving and growing your wealth.
You know enough to know you don’t know—that is, we can all be experts in something, but we can’t be experts in everything. You have other focuses in life, so you prefer to delegate your net worth to someone with financial expertise.
If any of these sounds like you, it may be worth your while to consider professional financial planning.
STEP 2: DETERMINE THE FINANCIAL PLANNING SERVICES YOU NEED
Understanding what you want is key to finding the financial advisor who can help you. People commonly have one of the following needs:
Investment management only: You want someone to advise you on your portfolio and provide investment management, including stock selection, monitoring, and rebalancing.
One-time financial planning services: You seek someone to provide a specific service, such as a financial plan that you implement on your own.
Ongoing financial planning and investment management (sometimes called wealth management): You want a relationship with a financial advisor you trust to oversee your finances and implement strategies to help achieve your goals. Your comprehensive financial planning would integrate all areas of your net worth, such as:
Retirement planning: Making sure you can retire without worrying you’ll outlast your money.
Debt management: Paying off your debt, such as education loans, while still saving toward your goals and enjoying life now.
Investment strategies: Using investments to achieve your goals while making sure you don’t take on too much or too little risk or pay excessive fees or taxes.
Equity compensation planning: Making the most of your employer benefits with goals such as retirement.
Risk management: Understanding how to protect your family and livelihood with the appropriate policy purchases from insurance companies.
Education planning: Selecting strategies to fund the educations of your children or grandchildren.
Tax planning: Planning across all areas of your wealth to reduce your taxes.
Estate planning: Determining the proper documents to help protect you while you are living and to tax-efficiently transfer your estate once you pass.
Once you know what you want, you can begin searching for financial advisors who will help achieve it, which leads us to our third step …
STEP 3: FIND THE RIGHT FINANCIAL ADVISOR IN LOS ANGELES, CA
The hunt is on, and you’re looking for an advisor. But L.A. is huge, and financial professionals are ample. How do you find the one that’s right for you?
You can start by asking family members, friends, and colleagues for recommendations. Consider asking people who have a well-organized financial picture and growing net worth. You may find that their financial advisor isn’t headquartered in Los Angeles—that’s fine as long as they have a meeting location in the area or will meet you virtually.
You can also search for financial advisors on the internet. You can use Google, of course. But you can also use advisor search websites like FeeOnlyNetwork.com and the CFP Board’s letmakeaplan.org. Just enter a zip code and search radius, and you will get a list of advisors in that network.
The benefit of using FeeOnlyNetwork.com and letsmakeaplan.org is that the financial advisors must meet certain requirements to help ensure you get ethical advice. FeeOnlyNetwork.com requires that advisors provide fee-only financial services—meaning they’re not getting commissions on the side for the advice they give you.
Letsmakeaplan.org provides the names of CFP® professionals. Financial advisors with the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification must serve as your fiduciary—meaning they have to advise in your best interest, not their own. CFP® professionals also have extensive education and experience requirements.
Once you have a handful of potential financial advisors, check out their websites to determine whether their services match your needs. Download their Form ADV or Form CRS for crucial information clients should know, such as fee structure (fee-only vs. commissioned/fee-based), whether they have a fiduciary obligation to clients, and if they have potential conflicts of interest.
Then schedule a complimentary call with the most promising advisors to get a feel for whether they’re a fit. Make sure to ask them any questions you are unclear about. Don’t be shy—it’s your hard-earned money you will entrust them with. You should feel comfortable that they will treat it with the same care they would their own.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You can make finding a financial advisor in Los Angeles a straightforward process by breaking it down into three parts:
Determining if you need financial planning
Figuring out what kind of financial planning you want
Searching for financial advisors whose services match your needs
For instance, our fiduciary, fee-only financial planning firm may be ideal for people with an eye on retirement. They’re unsure about how to turn their retirement savings into retirement income and appreciate the familiarity of a regular retirement paycheck—without using annuities.
We’ve been helping people in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the Southland achieve thriving retirements since 2003 and would be happy to talk with you. Schedule a call with a fee-only financial advisor today.
This material was prepared by Kaleido Inc. from information derived from sources believed to be accurate. This information should not be construed as investment, tax or legal advice.