Book Report: How to Interview a Financial Advisor

The author, @choonpiaw, is a computer nerd who made good and didn't squander all his money. Maybe you're a computer nerd who just got lucky with an IPO… and in a few years you would like to be another computer nerd who made good and didn't squander all your money. Maybe you've heard enough about the odds on startups to realize your chances of being similarly lucky in the future are not great. Maybe you want to sock the loot away for future lean times. You started to learn about investing, but backed off when you recognized it as a flawed interface. Now you're thinking of using an advisor… but you've seen some of those people acting like irresponsible jerks. How to pick a good one? You'll probably need to talk to them. The book How to Interview a Financial Advisor is a book for nerds who want to find a financial advisor. It has questions to ask; more importantly, it's got things to look for in the answers, positive and negative.

Careful, this this book has a not-so-hidden agenda. It turns out that you can come up with a decent financial plan without a financial advisor. This book, along the way of telling you how to interview an advisor, will teach you enough to come up with such a decent plan. You'll probably overlook the next big fad in investment… probably wouldn't understand it even if you saw it… but most of those turn out to be not-so-great, anyhow. Disclosure: I've known Piaw for, wow, decades. I read an early draft of this book. Whenever there was something in it I didn't follow, I asked for more explanation. The final draft is clear to me, but your mileage might vary. Oh yeah, and I haven't actually tried interviewing a financial advisor based on the advice in this book. Hmm, maybe if things get slow around the table at Thanksgiving dinner I can try out some of these questions on my cousin. Hmm, actually they probably wouldn't liven up the discussion so much, never mind.