How to choose the best financial advisor for you

Looking for a female financial advisor? At Carnegie Investment Counsel, we asked three of our female financial advisors for tips about how to find the best investment advisor for you. They emphasized that team members at Carnegie, male or female, focus on providing a customized and hands-on approach to services from financial planning to portfolio management. The point is to assess any advisor for the best fit when choosing a long-term financial partner.

As 2019 was ending, I was reading a few articles and blog posts recapping the last decade of stock market returns.

Throughout this period, there were many instances where you could have been scared out of the market or sought signals that would indicate a “top” in the market.

For example, remember in 2013 when actress Mila Kunis said she was going from cash into stocks? The S&P 500 is up about 140 percent since she made that announcement.

Or how about in 2016 when the cover of Barron’s (a popular financial magazine) boasted “Get Ready for Dow 20,000?” The Dow Jones Industrial Average is in shouting distance of 30,000 or about 57 percent higher from the date of publication.

How the new SECURE ACT rules may change how you save for retirement

In mid-December 2019, the “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement” (SECURE) Act was included as part of a massive spending bill approved by Congress.

Notably, this may be one of the most significant pieces of retirement legislation in years.  

The Big S-Curve

The most common things that typical market observers are currently worried about (partially fueled by the media) revolve around politics, the trade war, interest rates and the timing/depth of the next recession.

It is much less common to hear someone talking about the potential positives. Fears like this are nothing new, and in fact, I cannot remember a time in my career when there wasn't a slew of fears to worry about.

Anyone who follows the equity markets on a stock by stock (or company by company) basis (like me) has likely noticed that the market has experienced a clear shift in behavior since early September.

Some examples of this include:

• Significant strength in the Financial sector with many financial stocks hitting all-time highs
• Significant strength in Industrials, with many at new highs
• A clear shift toward value stocks and away from smaller/newer growth stocks
• A shift away from the previous winners and into the previous losers
• Many of the “S-Curve” plays – see blog from 11/4/19 – have declined
• Weakness in REITS, utilities and consumer staples stocks 
• All-time highs in the major market indices

As money scams proliferate, senior citizens are one of the most vulnerable populations. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau notes a four-fold increase in financial fraud reports in recent years. Suspicious financial activity that involves older Americans totaled $1.7 billion in 2017 alone, the bureau says.

Are you and your spouse preparing for retirement? Have you had a candid conversation about what that retirement will really look like? Here are some steps as a retirement planning guide to help you have a productive discussion as a couple. 

In the world of finance, we are continually learning and seeking high-quality data and information to help us make the best decisions for our clients' wealth.

Our advisors truly enjoy providing financial advice and guidance to those around them, but we were curious about the best financial advice they have ever received. We asked them to share one thing that has helped them achieve success.

So, here are eight valuable points to consider adding to your knowledge bank.

Just a few years ago, the terms “fiduciary” and “fiduciary advisor” had little meaning to the general public.

But knowledge of these words spread when the Department of Labor (DOL) issued the fiduciary rule and proposed all ERISA investment accounts be managed as a fiduciary.

The fiduciary rule would have required any advisors who offer retirement advice to act in their clients’ best interest. It had widespread ramifications for brokers and insurance agents who traditionally push self-serving, high-commission products, with little or no regard for the clients' best interest.

• 78% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck according to a 2017 report by employment website CareerBuilder.
• $6,741 is the average revolving credit card balance for U.S. households, according to a NerdWallet 2019 Survey.
• 42% of workers with adult children over 21 provide them with financial support and more than half are willing to sacrifice their own financial well-being to do so, according to a 2018 (PwC) PricewaterhouseCoopers survey.