Your financial choices matter as much as anything you ever decide. A minor decision, like whether to get burgers or pizza for lunch, probably isn’t going to change your life dramatically. However, when you start making long-range financial decisions, you have to realize that a misstep can change your future in a profound way.
That’s why some people decide at a certain point that it’s time to contact and retain a financial advisor. When should you do it, though? No people are the same in this regard, but here are a few scenarios where you might decide to contact a financial advisor for the first time.
You Just Got a Big Raise
One instance where you might decide you want to bring in a financial advisor is if you’ve just gotten a big promotion, and you’re going to make a lot more money now.
Related to contacting a financial advisor: 5 Tips to Help You Find the Best Financial Advisor
Maybe you’ve been waiting for this opportunity for years, and now your company is promoting from within. Alternatively, perhaps you found a position with a new company, and they’re paying you much more than your last one was.
A financial advisor can tell you some investment strategies that you might want to pursue. You may even stay with the same advisor for years to come, starting from this point. Like retaining a lawyer, having the same financial advisor for years can benefit you, especially if their advice pays off and you come to trust them implicitly.
You Just Got a Large Inheritance
Maybe one of your parents just died. Perhaps it was a grandparent or a favorite aunt or uncle. This individual left you a large sum of money.
You’ll need to figure out what to do with that. Maybe you want to pay off some student loans or most of your mortgage. Where you are in your life will partially determine what you do with this windfall.
You may decide to bring in a financial advisor, though, if you feel like you want to invest some of that money rather than spending it all at once. Your financial advisor can talk to you about things like CDs, mutual funds, stocks, IRAs, or other places where it makes sense to put that cash.
You Want to Retire
You may need a financial advisor if you feel like you’re not far from retirement age. You might even talk to one far earlier than that. Maybe you don’t have very much money to put toward retirement yet, but any financial expert will tell you that starting with very little is better than never starting at all.
Whether retirement is close for you or still some years away, your financial advisor can tell you what to do with the money you have so you can retain as much of it as possible once you’re ready to conclude your career.
They might instruct you to diversify your portfolio, putting the money in several different places rather than just one. This is a sound financial strategy, since that way, nothing can ever happen that wipes out all of your funds at once.
If You’re Planning Your Will
Maybe you have a pretty decent amount of money now, and you are near retirement age. You want to figure out how much money you’ll need in retirement, but you also want to determine how to give your children or grandchildren some money as well when you pass away.
No one enjoys thinking of their death, but it makes sense to plan for it, especially as you get older. Assuming that you don’t die destitute, you want to look at how to give your loved ones your remaining money. You probably want to do it in such a way that the federal government does not take a big chunk of it.
This is just the sort of area where a financial expert can help you. They can tell you how to disburse your money so that the government gets as little of it as possible.
You’re About to Divorce Your Spouse
Everyone hopes their marriage will endure, but not all of them do. Maybe you never needed a financial advisor before, but rest assured, if divorce is on the horizon, you probably need one now.
You can talk to them about how to protect your finances as you go through this challenging period. You want to be fair with your former spouse, but you also don’t want them to take every cent you have.