Pam Krueger shares her unfiltered advice on how to find and vet a financial advisor that fits your needs, wherever you are in life.
Let’s be honest: The world of financial advice can feel like alphabet soup: CFP, RIA, CPA, fiduciary, broker, fee-based, fee-only; it’s enough to make your head spin. But beyond the acronyms and titles, there’s a bigger question lurking: What’s really in it for me? What will a good financial advisor actually help me with? And how do I know if someone is genuinely acting in my best interest — or just selling me a product?
This week on the HerMoney podcast, Jean Chatzky sits down with Pam Krueger. Pam is the founder and CEO of Wealthramp, a referral service that connects consumers with vetted, fee-only fiduciary advisors — no commissions, no strings, just real guidance.
Pam has spent her career empowering people to make smarter, more informed financial decisions, and she’s giving us the inside scoop on what a great financial advisor should actually do for you — and, most importantly, the key questions to ask before you say yes to working with one.
What Does A Financial Advisor Do?
Jean Chatzky: Pam, we’ve talked here before about when people should hire an advisor. Today, I want to start with a simple but often misunderstood question. What does a financial advisor do?
Pam Krueger: When I think about all the years of TV commercials that I’ve ever seen about what financial advisors do, the focus is always on a financial advisor’s role to help me with the best and latest hot investment ideas so I can make money. Now, in reality, when you find the right financial advisor, it’s going to be about every money decision you face. It’s going to encompass every asset and every debt that you have. Financial advice has to be holistic. In other words, advice can’t be ‘advised’ without context. It’s your estate, it’s your family, and yeah, it’s your investments, but it’s all in context. So, your advisor has to start out by listening to you describe what it is you want to accomplish.
Red Flags: How to Spot a Bad Financial Advisor
Jean Chatzky: You interview a lot of advisors who do not make it into the database of people that you refer to. What are the red flags that make you eliminate people?
Pam Krueger: The bright red flags are disclosures. Any advisor that you’re going to consider working with will have background records, and the way you check their background records is by going to brokercheck.finra.org.
On that record, you’re going to see where there’s a red disclosure. If there are any complaints, those are actually complaints that made it to the point of being so serious that they wound up on your background records. So when I see that, that worries me.
How To Decide When To Hire A Financial Advisor
Jean Chatzky: Let’s talk a little bit about do-it-yourselfers for somebody who feels confident managing their own money. When does it make sense to go ahead and bring in an advisor? What are the life events where you might say to yourself, now’s the time?
Pam Krueger: I’d say that 80% of my audience are self-professed, do-it-yourselfers who are now saying, you know what, something’s changed. It’s either an event like a divorce or it could be the death of a loved one who left you an inheritance. It could be anything that comes up that triggers you. But you don’t need to dive into the deep end of the pool. Start with a one-time engagement with an advisor. Ask them how you’re doing against what you’re really trying to accomplish. You can just take it slow and hire that advisor for a fee to look at everything under the hood: your insurance, your family, your aging parents, your long-term care, everything that keeps you up at night.
📈 … Looking for a financial advisor?
HerMoney has partnered with Wealthramp to help members of our community find vetted, fee-only fiduciary advisors — no commissions, no strings. Just real guidance.
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