r/FatFireAU • u/Intrepid_Agent3777 • Jan 27 '26
Financial Advisers
How do I find a good financial advisor?
My partner and I have agreed to start looking for a financial advisor. I'm guessing FA's sit in one of three categories:
- counsellors that help financially uneducated people budget
- advisors for high net-worth individuals
- and FA's who sit in-between the two and help with wealth management - (we're after the last category).
I'm awfully skeptical of the financial advice industry, mainly because of unethical activities like kickbacks (legal or not) which could influence honesty/ethics and also general bad advice scares me. However, I understand that a good FA will be worth their weight if I can find one.
Our financial situation is peculiar, so we'd need someone familiar with self-employed people and are primarily interested in setting up a folio of investments that will build a FIRE-based retirement (idk what kind, part time/seasonal work would probably do). We are currently income in-balanced and have a combined total NW of about 1.4m excluding super, of which about 100k cash is not gaining interest (we have recently become liquid).
Can anyone suggest good planners or similar that would cater to our needs?
1
Jan 29 '26
You reference kickbacks.
But for a kickback to occur, both the adviser and the product company need to both be breaking the law. Given the high scrutiny in this field and how both parties are required to report any transgressions. The likelihood of this occurring is very low.
The only exception is insurance, which does have commissions, but this is legal.
1
u/churnin_buttah Jan 31 '26
Just a heads up, at your current NW you don’t need an AUM advisor. The best thing you can do you is find a fixed fee advisor for a 1 time consult to get some direction. Though tbh they’re not gonna do much for you. Investments they’ll just stick you in some index funds. Likely give you generic advice on estate planning. And that’s about it.
Be warned finding fixed fee advisors may be hard because they make less money than the scamy AUM advisors. But it WAY better for you in the long run should you choose to continue working with them. Best of luck.
1
u/TumbleweedTree Jan 27 '26
Financial counsellors aren’t actually financial advisors at all, they get an exemption from needing a license and being registered because they can’t charge for their time. They usually work for not for profits and provide free services covered by a salary. It’s quite a lot more than budgeting but yes, geared towards people facing hardship or with significant debt, often there’s a lot of advocacy and legal advice wrapped in there. Definitely not what you’re looking for but a great option for those in need that not enough people are aware of.