I’ve been a DIY investor for nearly three decades, and a financial advisor for almost three years. I’ve always enjoyed learning about investing and managing my own finances and, honestly, never seriously considered hiring a financial advisor before I became one myself. So why the career pivot? After many years in emergency medicine, I wasn’t mentally ready to retire — but I was ready for something different. I decided to dig deeper into my passions and see where that led. For

This is my third post in a series about what to look for when choosing a financial advisor. In the first one, I talked about different billing models and why it is important to know how your advisor gets paid. The second post was about trying to understand what their credentials and designations were all about. In this post, I am going to dive a little deeper into what it means to be a fiduciary and why it should be an important distinguisher when you are deciding what typ

If you are in the process of looking for a financial advisor and have been looking through the "about us" pages of advisory websites, you have probably noticed that most financial advisors have letters behind their names—and if you’re wondering what they all mean, you’re not alone. Many people find themselves asking: What do those letters stand for? Which ones actually matter? Are they meaningful in helping me find an advisor I can trust? In this post, I am going to try to d

First, a disclosure. I have never used a financial advisor. I am a DIY kind of guy at heart and have always been that way, even for things that I would have saved myself a lot of time by using an expert, whether it's with home improvements or finance. A lot of the reason for that is that I like learning new things and am not afraid to make mistakes during the process for the sake of gaining fresh skills. And for the most part, it has all worked out. My own history of le