Getting started in finding a financial advisor

What this book actually teaches

Charles Jaffe's "Getting Started in Finding a Financial Advisor" opens with a problem that most investing books skip: before you can benefit from professional financial guidance, you need to find someone competent, aligned with your interests, and suited to your specific situation. Jaffe, who spent years as a senior columnist at MarketWatch covering consumer finance, argues that most people pick advisors the wrong way — through a referral or a familiar name, without any structured vetting of credentials, compensation conflicts, or fit.

The book's most useful contribution is its advisor taxonomy. Jaffe maps out seven distinct types of advisors — brokers, bank representatives, insurance providers, financial planners, financial advisors, CPAs, and tax professionals — and explains how each is compensated, what regulatory obligations they carry, and what use cases they serve. This taxonomy matters because the type of advisor you need depends entirely on your situation, and hiring the wrong type is often worse than hiring no one. A broker optimized for commission revenue is not the same thing as a fee-only fiduciary planner, and the distinction has real consequences.

From there, the book provides specific interview frameworks: the questions to ask candidates, the credential checks to run (CFP, CFA, CPA, RIA registration, FINRA BrokerCheck), and the red flags that distinguish legitimate practitioners from rogues or incompetents. This is genuinely useful material that most investors never encounter in a structured form. Jaffe's journalist background gives him a consumer protection orientation that practitioner-authored books rarely achieve.

The target reader is someone newly considering professional financial help, someone who has been burned by a bad advisor relationship, or a DIY investor deciding whether to bring in help and how to evaluate it. The book also serves as a useful check for people who have had an advisor for years without ever formally vetting the relationship.

The limitations are significant for 2024 readers. The regulatory landscape has shifted substantially since 2010 — the SEC's Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI, adopted 2019) changed the obligations of broker-dealers in ways Jaffe's compliance guidance does not reflect. The fiduciary debate, which was ongoing at the time of publication, has since evolved. Readers should treat the credential and regulatory framework sections as a starting map, not a current guide, and verify current requirements through FINRA BrokerCheck and the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database directly.

Reviewers noted the book can feel shallow — a fair critique for a consumer-oriented guide that covers a legally complex topic in accessible terms. But for the reader who has never thought systematically about how to evaluate a financial advisor, the taxonomy and interview framework alone justify the read.

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About Charles A Jaffe

Read more from Charles A Jaffe and explore the full bibliography on ClearValue Books.