How To Get Free Help With Your Finances

October 08, 2015

Want free help with your finances? From the beginning of Oct to the beginning of Nov, the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING™ Board of Standards, the Financial Planning Association®, the Foundation of Financial Planning, and the US Conference of Mayors are offering Financial Planning Days in cities all across the country. At each event, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals will be volunteering to provide free one-on-one financial counseling and education sessions to members of the public without selling products, giving out business cards, or collecting contact information.

In fact, several of my colleagues at Financial Finesse and I will be participating in the LA day on Oct 17th from 10:30-2:00 at the Los Angeles Central Library. If you’re in the area, you can register to attend here. Otherwise, you can see if there’s one more convenient for you here.

If you miss out altogether, don’t worry. There are actually several other ways you can get free help with your finances. Here are a few:

Discount Brokerages

Some discount brokerage firms like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Scottrade have branch offices with representatives that can help you select mutual funds for no additional costs. Instead of commissions, they’re generally compensated based on the amount of assets you bring to the firm. However, the quality of advice can vary greatly from one representative to another and they may try to sell you an ongoing investment advisory service for a fee.

Robo Advisors

These computerized investment advisors provide low cost investment advice and some even offer it for free. One is Charles Schwab’s Intelligent Portfolios, which can manage a portfolio of index funds for you, including automatic rebalancing if you have at least $5k in your account and tax loss harvesting if you have at least $50k. It does use a lot of Schwab funds but they’re fairly low cost index funds.

A second is FutureAdvisor, which can provide free investment recommendations of index funds for almost any brokerage firm. You have to make the trades yourself but some people may actually prefer having that control. If you want FutureAdvisor to make the trades for you, you have to use one of their designated brokerage firms and pay an advisory fee.

Workplace Financial Wellness

Both of the services above are focused more on investing than general financial planning. For a more holistic approach, your employer may offer free financial wellness services as they have been shown to increase workforce productivity and reduce the costs of stress-related illnesses and delayed retirement. Just make sure that the program is truly unbiased and not just a means of selling financial products or services.

We all know the importance of financial advice and guidance but not everyone has the ability or the desire to pay for it. If you’re in that camp, hopefully one of these resources will be useful for you. Sometimes you really can get more than what you pay for.