How to Prepare for Your First Meeting With a Financial Advisor

Your first meeting with a financial advisor can feel intimidating. You may be wondering what documents to bring, what questions to ask, whether you have enough money to make the meeting worthwhile, or even what the advisor is going to ask you.

The good news is that you do not need to have your entire financial life figured out before meeting an advisor. In fact, one of the reasons to meet with a professional is to get help making sense of your financial situation.

But you can make the meeting much more productive by preparing ahead of time.

The best preparation starts with understanding where you are, where you want to go, and what questions you want answered. A retirement planning tool can also help you organize your information and create a starting point for the conversation.

This guide explains exactly how to prepare for your first meeting with a financial advisor, including what information to gather, what goals to think about, what questions to ask, and how to bring your own retirement plan into the conversation.

Why Prepare for a Financial Advisor Meeting?

A financial advisor meeting can cover a tremendous amount of ground. Your income, spending, savings, investments, pensions, taxes, insurance, retirement goals, government benefits, estate plans, and family circumstances may all be relevant.

Without preparation, it is easy to spend most of the meeting simply trying to remember account balances and basic financial information.

Preparing beforehand allows you to spend more of your time discussing the decisions that actually matter.

A well-prepared meeting can help you:

• Explain your financial situation clearly
• Identify your most important goals
• Ask more specific questions
• Understand the advisor's recommendations
• Identify potential financial risks
• Discuss your retirement timeline
• Evaluate different strategies
• Determine whether the advisor is a good fit for you

Your first meeting is not only an opportunity for the advisor to learn about you. It is also an opportunity for you to evaluate the advisor.

Start by Defining What You Want From the Meeting

Before gathering documents, ask yourself a simple question:

What do I want this advisor to help me accomplish?

Your answer might be broad, such as "I want to know if I can retire." Or it might be very specific, such as:

• Determine when I can afford to retire
• Develop a retirement income strategy
• Determine how much I should save
• Decide when to start government benefits
• Reduce retirement taxes
• Determine how much investment risk I should take
• Plan withdrawals from different accounts
• Review my existing investment portfolio
• Plan for my spouse or partner
• Understand whether I am on track for financial independence

The more clearly you understand your purpose, the easier it will be to have a productive conversation.

If you are starting from scratch, the process described in How to Create a Financial Freedom Plan can help you identify the major pieces of your financial future.

Gather Your Financial Information

The advisor will likely need a broad overview of your financial situation. You do not necessarily need every document from the last decade, but you should try to gather the information that describes your current financial position.

Income

Gather information about your current income and any other recurring household income.

• Employment income
• Self-employment income
• Business income
• Rental income
• Pension income
• Investment income
• Other recurring income

If your income varies significantly from year to year, note that as well.

Savings and Investments

Make a list of your major savings and investment accounts.

Depending on where you live, this might include accounts such as:

• 401(k) accounts
• Traditional IRAs
• Roth IRAs
• RRSPs
• TFSAs
• Taxable investment accounts
• Employer savings plans
• Cash and savings accounts
• Other investment accounts

You do not need to know exactly what every investment will be worth twenty years from now. You simply need a reasonable picture of what you own today.

Pensions and Government Benefits

Include any pensions you expect to receive.

Depending on your country and circumstances, this could include employer pensions, CPP, OAS, Social Security, or other government programs.

Government benefits can have a significant effect on how much investment income you actually need during retirement. Understanding this is one of the reasons it is useful to build a complete retirement plan rather than looking only at your investment accounts.

You can learn more about integrating these benefits into your plan in CPP, OAS and Social Security: How Government Benefits Affect Retirement Planning .

Debt

Make a list of significant debts, including:

• Mortgages
• Lines of credit
• Credit card balances
• Vehicle loans
• Student loans
• Personal loans
• Other significant debt

Include approximate balances, interest rates, and monthly payments when possible.

Insurance

If you have life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, or other significant policies, bring information about those policies.

Insurance can be an important part of protecting your financial plan, particularly if other people depend on your income.

Housing and Real Estate

Your home may be one of your largest assets and one of your largest expenses.

Provide information about:

• Current home value
• Mortgage balance
• Mortgage payment
• Property taxes
• Maintenance costs
• Rental properties
• Other real estate

Do not automatically assume your home must be sold to fund retirement. Instead, discuss the role housing could play in your overall plan.

Know Your Spending

One of the most important numbers in retirement planning is also one of the easiest to overlook: how much you actually spend.

Your advisor needs to understand your current spending and, ideally, your expected retirement spending.

Consider separating spending into categories such as:

• Housing
• Food
• Transportation
• Healthcare
• Insurance
• Travel
• Entertainment
• Taxes
• Charitable giving
• Family support
• Other discretionary spending

You do not need perfect precision. A reasonable estimate is much better than simply saying, "I think I spend about $50,000."

Your spending goal may also change after retirement. Some people expect to spend more in the early years of retirement and less later. Others have substantial healthcare, travel, family, or housing expenses that change over time.

Your retirement spending assumptions are a major part of determining whether your plan works.

Think About Your Retirement Goals

Retirement planning is not only about money. It is about what the money is supposed to accomplish.

Think about the life you want to fund.

You may want to:

• Travel
• Spend more time with family
• Work part-time
• Start a business
• Move to a different location
• Downsize your home
• Help children or grandchildren
• Donate to charities
• Leave an inheritance
• Simply have the freedom to choose how you spend your time

Your financial plan should support your actual goals rather than simply maximizing an account balance.

Know When You Want to Retire

You do not have to know your exact retirement date before meeting an advisor.

But it helps to have a starting point.

Consider:

• Your ideal retirement age
• The earliest age you would consider retiring
• The latest age you would expect to work
• Whether you would consider part-time work
• Whether you would continue working if you enjoy it

Testing several retirement ages can be more useful than trying to identify one perfect age.

This is also why testing your retirement plan before you retire is so valuable.

Estimate Your Life Expectancy

You cannot know exactly how long you will live.

That does not mean longevity should be ignored.

Think about a reasonable planning age and discuss the implications of living significantly longer than expected.

Planning to age 85 and planning to age 100 can produce very different retirement strategies.

A good retirement plan should account for longevity risk rather than assuming that retirement lasts for a predetermined number of years.

Build a Simple Retirement Plan Before the Meeting

One of the best ways to prepare for an advisor meeting is to create a basic retirement plan before you go.

You do not need to become a financial planner.

You simply want to understand the broad picture.

A useful starting plan might include:

• Current age
• Expected retirement age
• Expected life expectancy
• Current household income
• Current retirement savings
• Expected annual savings
• Current spending
• Expected retirement spending
• Pension income
• Government benefits
• Home and real estate
• Expected investment returns
• Expected inflation

Retirementize can help you bring these pieces together into one retirement plan and explore how they interact.

The goal is not to arrive at the meeting with a perfect answer. The goal is to arrive with a useful starting point.

Prepare Your Assumptions

Every financial plan contains assumptions.

These might include:

• Investment returns
• Inflation
• Retirement spending
• Retirement age
• Life expectancy
• Future income
• Tax rates
• Housing costs
• Government benefit amounts

You do not need to know which assumptions are correct. In fact, one of the best things you can do is identify the assumptions you are uncertain about.

Then ask the advisor to challenge them.

This turns your meeting from a presentation into a discussion.

Prepare a List of Questions

Do not rely on yourself to remember your questions once you are sitting across the table from an advisor.

Write them down beforehand.

Some useful questions include:

• Can I afford to retire when I want to?
• How much should I be saving?
• How much can I reasonably spend in retirement?
• What investment return assumptions are you using?
• How much investment risk should I take?
• How should I structure my retirement income?
• When should I claim government benefits?
• How can I reduce taxes in retirement?
• Which accounts should I withdraw from first?
• How should my spouse's finances be incorporated?
• What happens if markets fall early in retirement?
• What happens if I live much longer than expected?
• What assumptions concern you most?
• What would cause my plan to fail?
• How often should we review the plan?

You can also review 15 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor About Retirement for a more extensive list.

Ask How the Advisor Gets Paid

One of the most important questions to ask a financial advisor is how they are compensated.

Advisors may use different compensation structures, and the details can vary by country, firm, and service.

Ask the advisor to explain:

• How you will be charged
• Whether fees are ongoing or one-time
• Whether investment management fees apply
• Whether there are commissions or other compensation
• What services are included
• What services cost extra

You should feel comfortable understanding what you are paying for before entering into an ongoing relationship.

Ask What the Advisor Actually Does

"Financial advisor" can mean different things to different people.

Ask what the advisor's role will actually be.

For example:

• Do you primarily manage investments?
• Do you provide comprehensive financial planning?
• Do you create retirement income plans?
• Do you provide tax planning?
• Do you coordinate with accountants or lawyers?
• How often will we meet?
• Who will actually manage my accounts?
• Who will I contact when I have a question?

Understanding the service is just as important as understanding the investment strategy.

Bring Your Spouse or Partner

If your retirement plan is shared with a spouse or partner, consider attending the meeting together.

Retirement decisions can affect both people, even when their finances are not identical.

You may have different:

• Retirement dates
• Income levels
• Pensions
• Government benefits
• Investment accounts
• Risk tolerances
• Retirement goals

Having both people participate can make it easier to create a plan everyone understands.

Bring Your Retirementize Plan

If you have created a retirement plan with Retirementize, consider bringing the plan and the assumptions behind it to your advisor meeting.

This gives you something concrete to discuss.

Instead of starting with:

"I think I might want to retire around 60, but I don't know if I can afford it."

you can start with:

"Here is the retirement plan I built. This is what I entered, these are the assumptions I used, and these are the areas I am most concerned about. What would you change?"

That is a much more productive conversation.

The previous article in this series, Financial Advisor vs Retirement Planning Software: Which Do You Need? , explains why software and professional advice can complement each other.

Do Not Be Afraid to Have Your Plan Challenged

The purpose of bringing your own plan is not to prove that you are right.

It is to give the advisor something to challenge.

Your assumptions may be too optimistic. Your spending estimate may be incomplete. You may have overlooked taxes or government benefits. Your investment strategy may not match your risk tolerance.

That is useful information.

A good planning relationship should allow you to ask questions, disagree respectfully, and explore alternatives.

If you are interested in learning how to evaluate an existing plan, see How to Challenge Your Financial Advisor's Retirement Plan .

Think About the Questions You Want the Advisor to Answer

Try to separate your questions into three categories.

Questions About Your Situation

• Am I on track?
• When could I realistically retire?
• How much retirement income might I need?
• What are my biggest financial risks?

Questions About Strategies

• Should I save more?
• Should I retire later?
• Should I change my investment allocation?
• Should I change how I withdraw money?
• Should I change when I claim government benefits?

Questions About the Advisor

• What services do you provide?
• How are you compensated?
• How often will we meet?
• How will you monitor my plan?
• What happens if my circumstances change?

These three groups help ensure that you are evaluating both your financial plan and the professional relationship.

Understand That the First Meeting May Not Produce a Final Plan

Do not expect your first meeting to solve every financial question.

A comprehensive retirement plan may require additional information, analysis, documents, and follow-up meetings.

The first meeting is often about discovery.

You are learning about the advisor, while the advisor is learning about you.

The important thing is to leave knowing what happens next.

After the Meeting: Review What You Learned

Take some time after the meeting to write down what you learned.

Ask yourself:

• Did the advisor understand my goals?
• Did I understand the recommendations?
• Did the advisor explain risks clearly?
• Did I feel comfortable asking questions?
• Did the advisor challenge my assumptions?
• Did the recommendations make sense?
• Was the compensation structure clear?
• Do I understand what happens next?

Do not feel pressured to make a decision simply because you had an introductory meeting.

You Can Get a Second Opinion

Financial decisions can be significant and long-lasting.

If you are uncertain about a recommendation, getting another opinion can be reasonable.

Your retirement plan belongs to you. You should be comfortable with the assumptions, strategies, risks, and costs involved.

This does not mean that advisors should be treated with suspicion. It means that an informed client is generally in a better position to participate in important financial decisions.

Prepare for the Meeting, But Stay Flexible

Preparation is valuable, but do not become so attached to your initial plan that you cannot consider new information.

Your first retirement plan is a starting point, not a prediction of the future.

The purpose of planning is to understand the decisions available to you and improve your ability to make them.

That means your plan should be willing to change when better information becomes available.

How Retirementize Fits Into the Process

Retirementize is designed to help you play out your financial future before making important retirement decisions.

You can organize information about your savings, investments, pensions, government benefits, spending, taxes, housing, and other financial circumstances.

You can then explore different scenarios and see how changes could affect the overall plan.

This does not replace professional advice.

It can make professional advice more useful.

Instead of arriving at your first advisor meeting with only a vague idea of what you want, you can arrive with a model, assumptions, questions, and specific scenarios you want to discuss.

You can then use the advisor's expertise to improve the plan and test whether the assumptions make sense.

The process can become:

1. PLAN your financial future.
2. IMPROVE the areas you can control.
3. TEST different possibilities.
4. CONFIRM that the plan is reasonably resilient.
5. REPEAT as your circumstances change.

A Simple First Meeting Checklist

Before you leave for your first financial advisor meeting, make sure you have considered the following:

• Your household income
• Your current spending
• Your retirement spending goal
• Your savings and investment balances
• Your pensions
• Your expected government benefits
• Your debts
• Your home and other real estate
• Your insurance
• Your desired retirement age
• Your major retirement goals
• Your life expectancy assumption
• Your investment return assumptions
• Your inflation assumptions
• Your biggest financial concerns
• Your most important questions
• How you expect the advisor to help
• How the advisor charges for services
• Your Retirementize retirement plan, if you have created one

This checklist does not need to be perfect. It simply helps you walk into the meeting prepared to have a meaningful conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I bring to my first meeting with a financial advisor?

Bring information about your income, spending, savings, investments, pensions, government benefits, debts, insurance, real estate, and retirement goals. You should also bring a list of questions and, if available, your existing retirement plan.

What questions should I ask a financial advisor at the first meeting?

Ask about your ability to retire, expected retirement income, investment strategy, risk, taxes, government benefits, withdrawal strategies, fees, services, and how often the plan will be reviewed.

Do I need to know how much money I need to retire before meeting an advisor?

No. An advisor can help you determine what your retirement income and savings requirements may be. However, having a rough estimate of your desired retirement spending can make the discussion more productive.

Should I make a retirement plan before meeting a financial advisor?

Creating a basic plan can be extremely useful. It gives you a starting point, helps identify questions, and lets the advisor focus on evaluating your assumptions rather than gathering basic information from scratch.

Should I bring my spouse to the financial advisor meeting?

If your finances and retirement plans are shared, it is often useful for both partners to participate. This helps ensure that both people understand the goals, recommendations, risks, and decisions.

Can I use Retirementize before meeting a financial advisor?

Yes. Retirementize can help you organize your financial information, create a retirement plan, and explore different scenarios before meeting an advisor. The resulting plan can become a useful starting point for your discussion.

What if I do not understand something the advisor says?

Ask for an explanation. A good financial planning conversation should allow you to ask questions and understand the recommendations before making important decisions.

Fun Facts

Conclusion

Your first meeting with a financial advisor does not need to be intimidating.

You do not need to know everything about investing, taxes, retirement income, or financial planning before you walk through the door.

You simply need to be prepared to explain where you are, where you want to go, and what you want help with.

Gather your financial information. Think about your retirement goals. Estimate your spending. Identify your assumptions. Write down your questions. Understand how the advisor is compensated and what services they provide.

Most importantly, consider creating your own retirement plan before the meeting.

A Retirementize plan can give you a clearer picture of your financial future and help you identify the questions that matter most. Your advisor can then challenge the assumptions, provide professional guidance, and help you determine which strategies make sense for you.

The goal is not to choose between technology and professional advice. The goal is to use each where it is most valuable.

Prepare your plan. Bring your questions. Have the assumptions challenged. Improve the strategy. Then keep testing and updating it as your life changes.

That is how you can turn your first advisor meeting into the beginning of a much stronger retirement planning process.

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