List of reputable financial websites?

homersimpson_3

most of the questions on site seem to come from people who have little knowledge or are ill informed. savings and particularly investments are a minefield which you cannot afford to get wrong. some of best posters seem to be people who are financial advisors or work in related sectors. where do you get your knowledge from? can you please tell me what sites you refer to where you don't pay a fee? i think i read in one post from a financial advisor that you pay for certain software. is this software only to people who work in your profession? should Joe Public use it? etc

dunstonh

where do you get your knowledge from?

From training to be qualified for starters. However, experience and ongoing reading, research and monitoring is where it really matters. I can recall that after passing my advice exams, it still took another 2 years for a lot of that to sink in. Experience is valuable. However, if you dont keep up with current movements in financial services, then experience means nothing.

I heavily use research software and the bulk of that requires you to be FSA authorised to use it. My software bill is around £500pm and I couldnt do without it. I know advisers that run with no software or some very cheap options and there is no way on this planet that they can get the required data to give absolute best advice.

I rarely refer to any free website as the data and information is not as good as the sites/software that you pay for or the data is not available with the filtering and acessibility that you need when giving advice.

DocProc

One of the best free sites you can go to is really a bit of a competitor to this one. Some would consider it 'bad form' to mention a competitive site to the site you are posting on but I am an altruistic poster and I believe the Internet is about sharing knowledge so that we can all benefit. I also think that competition is a good thing as it makes the individual businesses try harder to be better at the job they do. Thus we all benefit even more.

Now my loyalty is firstly to this site, since I like its ethics, and so, since they would both earn money from 'click throughs', I would try to see that this site gained any Brownie Points that were going. I'd also like to encourage others to do the same. I mean like, "Come back to here and do your click through."

So if you can help this site, then do it, eh?

Here's the other site, which has lots of free comparative information:-

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/moneydefault.asp

Indeed, its current offering for 'Broadband Choices' is exceptional:-

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/