I was reminded of the old joke about there being more lawyers than people in the state of New York when I read this article from The White Coat Investor. The fact of the matter is, there are plenty of financial advisers in this country who have no idea what they're doing. While this is presumably true for every profession, it is particularly dangerous to have sophomoric financial advisers because the average American looks to them to guard and grow their life savings throughout their life and into retirement. It is in your best interest to become at least passably knowledge about key investment concepts--mutual funds, index funds, expense ratios, asset allocation, expected passive income generated, etc. so that your financial adviser doesn't even consider trying to pull one over on you. Generally speaking, you can't go wrong opening an account with a Fidelity, Vanguard, T Rowe Price, etc. and regularly contributing money to diversified assets--large cap, small cap, domestic, international, etc. If you can put $100 a month into a large cap index fund, $100 a month in a small cap index fund, $100 a month into a bond fund, and $100 a month into an international stock fund, and repeat this for multiple decades, you'll most likely come out ahead.
To get White Coat Investor's take on the matter, visit the link here: http://whitecoatinvestor.com/there-are-too-many-financial-advisers/.
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