Be your own financial advisor

Of all the personal-finance problems that readers mail me about, the one category of queries that I find impossible to answer with certainty are the ones about needing a financial advisor. As someone said in a movie, the answer to that question is a definite 'maybe'. Actually, it's even more complicated than that. The theory of what a financial advisor can do for you is straightforward. He asks you a set of questions about your savings needs and recommends a set of investments that will fulfil those needs. Then the advisor should tell you how to monitor those investments, or depending on the level of service, he should monitor them for you. If any of the investm