What To Expect When Visiting a Financial Advisor For The First Time with Jessica Cannella

Jessica Cannella: I’m Jessica Cannella, Co-Founder and President of Oak Harvest Financial Group. Today, I wanted to talk to you very candidly about what it’s like to come in and sit with a financial advisor.

Many of you might be working with an advisor already, so it’s not your first rodeo, but I know that there are people out there who are just intimidated by the prospect of even coming in to sit down with a financial advisor. Maybe it feels a little bit uncomfortable for you to think about what that might be like. Exposing your whole intimate financial picture to a perfect stranger, where do you even start with that? Well, I think I have some key information for you that might make it a little bit more relaxing for you to go ahead and initiate that conversation.

First and foremost, remembering that it is just a conversation can help eliminate a lot of the tension and intimidation around making it something so much bigger than it actually is. It’s just a conversation and it should be a conversation that is focused on you, a conversation that is helping you to get a good assessment of where you are financially. Many firms, ours included, will start with something that looks maybe a little bit like this. We call this our family questionnaire. We send this preemptively to our prospective clients before they come in for a meeting, and we ask that they take a stab at filling it out to the best of their ability.

This is really the framework that my colleagues, myself, financial advisors work through with our prospective clients to get a good understanding of what their financial picture is. Of course, it covers things like your contact information, your basic family structure. Do you have kids? We say, still on the payroll? Or congratulations, no kids on the payroll? We want to know things like that as it relates to your money. Grandkids is on there as well. If you have plans for legacy to leave any maybe like a fund for helping to pay for college for the grandkids, or you want to build that into a financial plan.

We are a holistic firm, so we are covering a lot of area, all things financial. We dig even deeper and go into your legal documents. It’s important for us to understand if you’ve had the opportunity to sit down with an estate attorney or a lawyer and see, “Do I have my will? Do I have my power of attorney in order,” things like that, “Do I need to trust?” We’ve got a little section on there for that as well. Any additional items that would fall underneath an umbrella of finance would be things like insurance policies, any type of long-term care insurance, umbrella policies on your house.

We consider those to be additional items that are worth having a conversation about. Cashflow. Very important. Getting a good understanding of what you have coming in for income and what you have going out for expenses. Basic questions like, is your current income regular, sufficient and comfortable for you? Have you had to take distributions out of your retirement accounts before retiring? Do you owe any loans on those type of things?
Of course, major life events that are going to be coming up. Do you foresee any major purchases happening in the next couple of years? Things like buying a car, or selling a home, retiring, or buying a house, buying a boat. Then, of course, any properties that you have, another external source of income, if you have a rental property that you get income from. Then we ask some basic questions about what your concerns are, your objectives, and your risk and financial goals.

This outline really helps to keep a financial advisor focus on you, focus on your situation and what is going to be going on in your life, and how you want to begin to plan for retirement. Having a little guide like this that you could preemptively take a look at really helps to keep the conversation on track and almost speed-track it, where we’re not reinventing the wheel, we’ve got a list of targeted questions that we can ask.

What I have found in my personal experience is that even from the prospective clients that felt a little bit intimidated to come in initially, that they feel better on their way out of my office than they do on the way in. That’s a personal mission of mine is to be able to take something that could be very complex, intimidating, maybe even some people are a little bit embarrassed about their financial picture and not seeing if they’ve saved enough, or some people want to be very close to the vest about it and, “Why am I going to tell you about this?”

That’s not usually a barrier that we have here at Oak Harvest Financial Group because the people that are coming in to have this conversation are very serious about where a firm like ours could be able to add value. They want to know and understand where are they currently, can they retire, can they stay retired, and one of the biggest question marks is how am I paying myself in retirement?

There are fixed streams of income like your social security, and rental income if you have it, or pension if you’re lucky enough but there’s a lot of questions around some of those sources of incomes that can be addressed on a secondary meeting to the discovery factor finding meeting which is really the first meeting that you’re having with your advisor. It’s a to get to know you. It’s just a conversation. Generally, 45 minutes to an hour. Sometimes a little bit more if you need to go into more detail.

I think one of the most important things as you are interviewing financial advisors is that you feel a connection with this individual, because finance is personal. It is intimate and your financial picture if we’re talking about you staying retired for the next 20, 30, 40 years, it’s going to change. You need to feel a level of comfort with the individual that you’re sitting across the table from that not only do they have your best interests but that they’re easy to talk to and that they’re not going to meet you from a place of judgment but just a place of where are you now and how can we improve and how can I be of service.

It’s important that you are really ascertaining as the interview is happening on both ends if this person feels like a good fit. Do you communicate easily with them? Does it seem like they have a genuine interest in your financial picture beyond what they could be collecting in fees as onboarding you as a client? These are all very important considerations to make as you’re going through the interviewing process.

I recommend interviewing two to three financial advisors as you make your decision. One of the things that I believe is crucially important as you’re interviewing, maybe not on a first session, that’s really just for you to get a feel if you even want to have a second meeting. A second meeting at my firm is generally a analysis meeting where we’re sharing the analysis from our team based on their specific portfolio, circumstance.

During that visit, I have a list of questions that I have put together as you interview other advisors that you can ask that are really centered around protection mechanisms for the consumer. Really digging deep about what fees are you paying, what are you getting in exchange for potentially paying a fee to this advisor, and what tools are available through the institution or the advisor or the practice that are going to help make your goals and objectives come to fruition in retirement.

I will link that in the description box so that you have access to that questionnaire. I’ve even left spaces that you can write the answers down in that questionnaire for your convenience. I’ll wrap it up by saying that if you’re feeling a little bit apprehensive or maybe intimidated about sharing your intimate financial picture with a perfect stranger and a financial advisor that it’s normal to feel that way. When you’re working with a professional, you shouldn’t feel that way.

An advisor’s job should be to make you feel comfortable about where you currently are and to really do a deep dive into what needs to happen to get you to where you want to be and to be able to pull off retirement and to stay retired. You should be as transparent as you can with this individual and feel like that is being reciprocated. I think it’s a great first step to take is to just sit down and have a conversation.