A New Paradigm for Investing: Can Your Financial Advisor Answer These Questions?

Everyone should be able to access the financial markets, but most are so inundated by information that it seems hopelessly complicated and intimidating. The goal of this book is to simplify the process. While I try to teach individuals how to invest money by themselves or with the guidance of a financial planner or fee-only investment advisor, I know that the vast majority of individuals feel more comfortable working with a traditional Financial Advisor. There is nothing wrong with this though. With that being said, I wanted to offer some background information and provide you with some tools and guidelines to utilize as you search for a prospective financial professional.

This book is meant to provide you with a list of questions that you can use to interview a prospective financial professional. While choosing a Financial Advisor can seem quite intimidating, the information I present will put you in the 95th percentile of all retail investors. You will have the confidence to walk into these meetings and understand what is being talked about or at least know that you are asking intelligent questions.

Additionally, the book goes above and beyond the normal discussion of investing. I have been investing for over 25 years, and I worked at a Wall Street firm for 10 years in a variety of roles. I take what I have learned through my own investing experiences combined with the knowledge I gained on Wall Street, and I meld the two together. I take complicated topics and concepts and distill them into layman's terms. Remember that the financial services industry tends to make investing seem so challenging and overwhelms you with information and statistics that you feel paralyzed. This book is meant to clear through much of the jargon used, give you some of the techniques utilized by institutional investors, and provide you with a better framework to understand the constant barrage of financial news on television and in print.

I have also included some valuable bonus material in the appendix section of this book. The appendix includes a discussion of how much you will have learned after reading this book, how a Financial Advisor’s background can bias them, information about Warren Buffett’s friend of over five decades: Charlie Munger, a discussion of why buying individual stocks is not recommended, and what investors can do in today’s rising interest rate environment.