And yet you find time to register on a website and then make a post to criticise. Perhaps you should focus on your clients best interests rather than post during working hours.

I am guessing that, as you have quoted that text, that your are not happy about my comments on that ridiculous charging method. Perhaps it is you that uses that daft method. Try and justify it to me and others if that is the case.

Hello,

I am after general advice for retirement planning (financial health check, affordability of early retirement) but also tax advice. My situation got slightly complicated since I have inherited this year from my father back in Belgium and now have cash, investment funds and part of a house over there, and need advice about the best way this to deal with it and declare it the tax office here.
Do you think any IFA would be able to help, or should I seek specifically someone specialized in tax planning and assets and investments abroad?
The problem is when I use the IFA search facility on the above article, and look at the individual IFA expertise, I don't seem to see anything about tax, or international assets.

Many thanks for any advice

Congratulations and the best of luck. I don't know any small IFA who would be fully au fait with your situation but they often refer part of the work to someone who is considered an expert in that particular field. I know hundreds if not thousands of IFAs in the UK so if you tell me where you are I can point you in the right direction.

I am confused about how much I should be paying for financial advice. I have been a given a quote fro advice and recommendations on my investments of 3% of their value , plus implementation fee of 1% plus managemnt service fee of 1%. As i am a cautious investor (risk adverse) i am concened that the amount I pay will end up being less than what i will gain from the investments. I am not looking to make huge income, just want to rationalise my investments as they are scattered and I havent had much advice. just dont want to lose what I have in unstable financial market. what are your thoughts?

Hello,
For some reason never got a "reply alert" for this! Thanks for replying! I am in Edinburgh.

Starting with the easiest, the ongoing tends to range from 0.5% to 1% depending on the amount invested (the more you have, the cheaper it gets).

Initial when using % needs to be context. 3% on £10,000 is cheap. 3% on £100,000 is expensive. With initial, you look to pay around £500 to £1500 for mainstream. Complicated stuff could be more.

Some firms may focus on high net worth and price smaller stuff high on purpose. City firms tend to be more expensive than rural. Some can be greedy. So, you do need to shop around a bit.

Hi guys,
I am getting worried regarding my finances, or lack of, is there anyone I can go to apart from CAB, as I need someone to personally take over my life, financially as I thought I could get myself out of debt but getting more and more into debt, I know the amounts may not seem a lot but it is in my eyes, I took out a loan to cover all debts but couldn't get a full one, I did pay off a few of the debts with the money and due to the payments I am paying back am back to where I started, they wont give me a whole amount to cover everything so I can make one payment a month for the loan and am stuck...I know there was a tv series regarding debt and going round to the people and getting them out of debt with the advice and correspondence and feel I need one of those people, preferably not on tv, but you know what I mean, please can someone help and advise me, I hope this is the right forum
Regards
Mark

You'll get some help if you start a new thread here

Good luck

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=76

Should be very grateful for any recommendations or advice in seeking an IFA in Edinburgh (or Glasgow). Also any tips on what questions to ask when having preliminary consultation. Seeking to have sum, c. £500000 invested in managed funds, also someone in family looking to set up personal pension (aged late 20s).

Charges are of course a concern, but results are far more important surely. How do you find that out?

By asking someone with the exact same financial circumstances as you, who used the adviser over the next twenty years, how they got on. Unfortunately it will take twenty years to get the answer.

You could ask for references from previous clients who had the same goals as you. But how do you know that those clients, who you don't know, know how to distinguish a good adviser from a bad one and would know whether the results were good or bad given the circumstances, economic conditions and tax law of the time (which will likely differ from the ones you face over the next decade or two) and whether the result was luck or judgment? You may need to interview a thousand happy (and unhappy) customers before you get a statistically useful sample of "results".

Whilst you make valid points, some assessment can be made. I dealt with an IFA a few years ago (he was employed to handle workplace pensions in the company I worked for) and he was clearly touting for more work. He released confidential information of many people, and would not listen to me when I described my attitude to risk, and my investment goals, and tried to impose his views which oddly enough involved a large role for him. I am sure you agree that I could reach an assessment of him, even though I have no idea if technically he was any good. Interpersonal skills, and client privacy, are surely worth rating? Yes, as you say, you cannot rate long term performance easily, but you can probably work out if he appeared to do a decent job, if he appeared to consider all options, and so on. That does require some knowledge of what an IFA should do of course.

I once had a visit from a chap to assess the installation of a woodburner. He gave me the creeps from the word go. Again, interpersonal skills were important. I had a visit from another company. The chap was pleasant. I spoke to several staff many times in the shop, lovely people. Guess who I went with? And they did a good job, I do think you can - to some degree at least - sniff out conscientiousness and competence.

And at the end of the day, if you like the chap/lass, then it makes it easier to pay the fees does it not? An honest sum for an honest job?

Visit Financial Service Directory to search for qualified local financial advisors. Simply google financial service directory.

Absolutely useless. I suspect it it is spam.
First of all, it wouldnt accept the spelling "adviser". It used "advisor".
Secondly, it returned no results in my test searches.

Stick to the main search engines. The PFS directory, MAS or unbiased (but turning off filter to show paying advisers only)

Im looking at a new build and the sales rep told me to contact a mortgage advisor to check if I can afford it. They obviously gave me a leaflet to the one they recommend but I'm not sure if they enforce who I have to use (will ask next time I go) but beyond that is it possible to have advisor tell me if I can in a 30min free session through Unbiased? I know exactly my deposit amount, salary, expected living cost and so on.

I have a house with a buy to let mortgage. The house is worth around £200,000 and the equity is £100,000.
I would like to transfer the name in the deed into my son’s and my ex-husband’s name. (I owe my ex some money).
I rang the mortgage lender, they will not let me transfer the name. They said I will have to sell the property.
My ex told me he and my son cannot find a new mortgage until the name in the deed are his and my son’s.
It sounds very complicated for me.
How can I transfer the name in the deed and not end up having a big mortgage to pay and not having a house.
I don’t have much knowledge in finance.
Do I need a financial advisor or solicitor for this advice?

A solicitor to arrange the transfer of the title and to advise you of the legal and tax issues on doing so, and a mortgage broker for the recipients if they need to borrow against the property as part of the conveyancing process, i.e. using new borrowing to repay the old borrowing.

I'm trying to help my mum and auntie who are struggling to keep track of their auntie's finances.

Its all very complicated and I think they need some quite specialist advice but I'm not quite sure where to being in terms of finding it.

The situation is as follows:

Their auntie lived in Canada most of her life and she saved away a relatively significant sum of money in all sorts of confusing Candian savings schemes.

She now lives in England and unfortunately has dementia so is living in a nursing home and my mum and aunt have power of attorney. She has a UK bank account which gets her Canadian pensions paid in but this is dwindling away over time with the fees for the care home being rather substantial.

They are also paying extortionate sums of money to Lloyds every time they do an international transfer.

All the while there are some large amounts of money earning measly interest stuck over Canada and my mum and aunt find it very difficult to find out more whenever they speak to the Canadian banks.

To my mind the most logical thing to do would be to try and withdraw it all to a UK bank where they can get advice over here, but I've no idea whether there is any impact on inheritance tax.

Can anyone give me any advice on where I should go next. I don't doubt we need to pay for some financial advice, I just don't know how to find someone with the correct knowledge and experience.

Many thanks in advance.

It sounds like you are already able to shift funds out of the Canadian accounts into Lloyds.

I'd consider talking to a specialist FX outfit to handle the international part of the transaction, at least get an idea of what they charge - Lloyds might do you a better price if they know they've got competition.

Basically, the FX outfit receive the funds into their C$ account, pass it on to their UK£ account and then on to you.

Usual caveats apply, do your own research into the FX outfit and, if you want to get a sanity check, come back here and ask.

If you do need further ideas, start your own thread - you'll probably get more attention with a more specific thread title.