WiserAdvisor Review
If you need a professional financial advisor to help you manage your investments, WiserAdvisor may have an answer for you. This is an online platform that tries to make it easier to find a money manager. Just how well does it do? Let’s find out.
WiserAdvisor was founded in 1998 and has successfully paired more than 100,000 clients with financial advisors. It is essentially a digital search engine that takes a variety of inputs and scans for investment advisors that meet the criteria. There is no obligation to hire a money manager, and every submission is completely confidential.
WiserAdvisor Cost
It is completely free to use WiserAdvisor to find a professional money manager. The company is compensated by the financial advisors who use the platform.
If you do decide to hire a financial advisor through WiserAdvisor, there are two pricing schedules: fee-only and fee-based. The primary difference is that fee-only advisors don't earn any commissions by selling financial products. Fee-based advisors, by contrast, could potentially receive compensation for selling certain financial products from the companies that sponsor those products.
Both types of advisors will be compensated via client fees, which may include:
- Hourly fee
- Flat fee
- Percentage of assets under management
Try WiserAdvisor
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Advisors on the Platform
Financial planners on the WiserAdvisor platform are registered with state or national securities agencies. Disclosures and licensing information are displayed on their profiles. The money managers must pass WiserAdvisor’s three-pronged screening process:
- Years of experience
- SEC/FINRA registration and records
- Compensation criterion
Advisors are located in 42 States. WiserAdvisor is not available in Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wyoming.
Using WiserAdvisor
It’s very simple to use WiserAdvisor. A good place to start is at the top of the website. Here, insert your ZIP code to begin the search process. It's possible to specify financial advisors within that ZIP code. It's also possible to search for financial advisors by other criteria. Required inputs include:
- Net worth
- Annual income
- Home status
A name and cell phone number must be entered on the online form. The cell phone number must be able to receive text messages, and WiserAdvisor and/or its financial planners may call the number as well.
After you complete the form, WiserAdvisor’s software will start looking for financial advisors and will return up to three candidates. According to our search results, it can take up to 24 to 48 hours for personalized final match results. We did not receive results right away, but we received text messages immediately for verification. In fact, we received a text message from WiserAdvisor after entering our cell phone number on the form but before clicking to continue to the next page. So this company really wants to contact its users.
Upon completion of the form, a website login is created. It is possible to log in later and check the status of the advisor request and scroll through and look over the advisor recommendations.
The next step is to interview a short list of financial planners. WiserAdvisor has downloadable pdf forms to help prepare for these interviews. There is no charge for these meetings if you tell the financial planners that you found them through WiserAdvisor.
Find an Advisor
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Educational Resources
WiserAdvisor publishes several financial resources worth taking a look at. These include financial infographics, information on retirement, and other financial articles. Examples of materials we found include:
- Facing and Managing Investment Danger
- Should You Gift Your Heirs Now? Or Wait?
- Estate Planning for Newlyweds
- Do You Really Need a Will?
Some of the articles are rather short, but they may be valuable, especially for beginners.
Resources are grouped by category for easy navigation:
- Portfolio Management
- Personal Finance
- Financial Planning
- Retirement Planning
- Wealth Management
- Estate Planning
- Business Finances
- Financial Trends/Government
And then there are the calculators on the WiserAdvisor website. It seems to us that if you're hiring a professional investment advisor, you shouldn’t need to use these tools. Nevertheless, WiserAdvisor users who want to do some of their own homework have access to the following tools:
- Retirement calculator
- Roth 401k vs. traditional 401k calculator
- Savings goal calculator
- And more
The 401k calculator takes a variety of inputs, such as total annual income and tax bracket, and calculates whether a Roth or traditional 401K would be more profitable at the time of retirement.
Find a Financial Advisor
If you are looking for a professional money management service in your area, you can
find a Financial Advisor on the Wiser Advisor
(or read
Wiser Advisor review).
Visit Wiser Advisor
WiserAdvisor Better Business Bureau
So just how has WiserAdvisor performed in the past with its users and financial advisors? According to the Better Business Bureau, the answer is pretty well. WiserAdvisor currently has a grade of A+ on its profile at BBB. Its profile has been up since 2005.
The Better Business Bureau uses a wide variety of criteria when determining the grade for a company. These include:
- Number of complaints filed with BBB against the business
- How transparent BBB perceives the company
- Regulatory actions against the company
- Problems with advertising
Sometimes customers complain about a company with the Better Business Bureau. BBB attempts to resolve these complaints to the satisfaction of the customer, and these cases are recorded on the analyst’s website. In the past three years, only one complaint against WiserAdvisor has been reviewed and closed by BBB.
WiserAdvisor Review Judgment
The WiserAdvisor website provides a good way to search for an investment advisor, either locally or in
other areas within the United States. There are other online platforms to do this, however, and some of
them may be available in states that WiserAdvisor doesn't operate in. Nevertheless, with no fee to use
WiserAdvisor, is definitely worth a go.
Try WiserAdvisor
Visit Wiser Advisor
Updated on 6/26/2024.
Ben Wright is an investor, a trader, an educator, and something of an explorer. He spends his days in the markets when he is not teaching or spending time with his family. Ben writes about stockbrokers, markets, investment vehicles, promotional offers, and tools that help investors make the most of their time in the markets.
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