Clearly, deciding to use a financial advisor is an important first step. Then, the question is which financial advisor. The 4 E’s, Education, Experience, Examination and Ethics have been the focus of many when is comes to choosing an advisor. Unfortunately a “sea” of so-called educational credentials have poured into the market. One way to obfuscate a disadvantage is to flood a conversation with meaningless data and information.
The WSJ piece entitled “Is your Advisor Pumping Up His Credentials” does a credible job and highlighting the designations that have the most strength behind them. For full disclosure, I personally have held the CFP designation since 1989 and all the people who work on planning in our firm have completed the CFP curriculum.
Picking an advisor is important work. For some helpful tools including questionnaires for interviewing advisors can be found at NAPFA.ORG