Especially in today’s economic climate, many people are reassessing their financial planners. A large amount of people have been losing money in the market, so clients should not be unnecessarily harsh with their planner; however, individuals must find out if their planner is using this widespread downturn to cover personal mistakes. Here are three questions clients should ask their financial planners.

1. How many personal investment have performed? Clients should find out how their own investments measure up to the Dow and use the current situation to benchmark performance. Find out how these investment compare to relevant indexes or funds with similar strategies. These should be examined over recent months and years, not day to day activity. If it is found that an advisor is doing much worse than benchmarks, they may have made bad decisions. If it is much better, examine whether they got lucky on risky investments. Clients should get detailed explanations.

2. How do the current investments meet with personal goals? One of the top advantages of working with financial planners is that they should be choosing investments that fall within an overall financial plan and time frame. This is to keep long-term funds mainly in stocks for future growth without the need to sell in order to cover expenses. An advisor should know how much in emergency funds a client should have, where it is invested and how liquid it is.

3. What adjustments are being made for the current market. The best financial planners have plans in place for such market downturns. An advisor should not make rash decisions in a market downturn. This is especially true for well-diversified and properly time framed investments. An investor should recommend caution when looking at additions to equity exposure during a downturn.

Via EPR Network
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