Guidance required

Copperfield_2

Not wishing to get the etiquette wrong, but I'm very inexperienced at this chatting game and am not sure I'm in the right place.

I have followed Martin's savings fountain, but am unsure what to do when ISA's are full.

My question is how is it best to get financial advice? I have benefitted from several tips and ideas from the newsletters, but have decided I ought to control my financial future and am not sure that savings accounts are the best way.

dunstonh

I have followed Martin's savings fountain, but am unsure what to do when ISA's are full.

That will depend on your tax situation, term you want to invest for, your age (being aged over 65, or close to age 65 can change the advice for those under 65), your attitude to investment risk and general personal goals.

My question is how is it best to get financial advice?

Certainly not a forum or website. Websites/forums are great for discussing ideas and opinions. However, what is right for one person may not be right for another. Also, you often get those who are opinionated and think they are right about everything and then go on to talk a complete load of tosh. Most will discuss options that suit their circumstances and not yours.

Advice costs money. Either it is paid via the provider who then charges you more or you pay for it in fees and get a cheaper product. For that advice, you also get consumer protection.

If you know what you are doing, you can sometimes save money (although sometimes you can pay more than advice based products or have no price difference). You have no consumer protection for mis-selling as you made the choice.

When getting advice, there are four different types of advisors (some of these dont apply until next month).

1 - Independent
2 - Whole of Market
3 - Multi-tied
4 - single tied

That is the order of priority where you should seek advice as 1 can do what all the other 3 can do. 3 may have a small handful of companies to select from. 4 can only do what their own company offers.

Whenver you seek advice, it is important to view the research and find out how that recommendation was made. This is your entitlement and any advisor not willing to share the research should not be used.

This could be where websites come in useful as you can discuss the advice. However, you will never get 100% agreement on anything as advice is as more about what they believe is best for you.