Sort out your finances: Part 8, get fee-based advice
'Time,' as Mick Jagger once said, (actually it sounds more like "tie yie-ee-yi-ime"), 'is on our side.' And if you have been following the first of our short courses in sorting our your finances you'll realise that when it comes to investing one of your greatest assets is time.
But if you're a parent at work and have but a few minutes at lunchtime to sort such matters as your financial wellbeing, you'll know how scarce time can be. And because the secret of financial planning is to only invest in what you understand by doing your own research, the lack of time could be a problem.
That's why the final part of our this eight-part programme to a happy family, a roof over your head and walls to hold it up is, if you don't understand any of the issues we've talked about then pay for decent financial advice.
Financial advice is a potential minefield. But as long as you avoid the backroom bandits who work in collusion with certain finance houses and/or estate agents for their own gain and you ask the right questions, and preferably use an adviser based on personal recommendation, and you choose a fee-based adviser not a commission-based one you should be ok.
Research tools
1. Ask: friends and family if they can recommend a fee-based adviser
2. Play: with the Find an adviser tool - though funded by a variety of finance houses it can be a useful starting point. Choose 'fee-based'.
3. Read: General guide to taking investment advice
4. Print: Five questions to ask your adviser
5. Sign up: for free weekly money tips to help your research
6. Study: The expert answers from financial advisers
That's enough for one lunchtime. And that's the end of this eight-step guide to financial salvation - based on and translated from the work of American author and satirist Scott Adams.
Sort our your finances
Part 1 - the will
Part 2 - the credit card debt
Part 3 - the life insurance
Part 4 - the company pension
Part 5 - the house
Part 6 - the emergency savings
Part 7 - the get rich slow plan
Part 8 - the fee-based adviser
This is Not Work is where parents who work can get quick daily money tips and is brought to by the multi-award-winning This is Money team.
If all of the above is of no interest, why not pass the time reading the reviews of Scott Adams' greatest Dilbert book.
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