What questions should I ask a retirement adviser?

Why do these questions matter more at retirement?

Because the decisions made in the five years around retirement are the least reversible of your financial life. When you claim Social Security, how you handle a 401(k) rollover, whether an annuity belongs in your plan, how much you withdraw in a bad market year — most of those choices are expensive or impossible to unwind once made.

The person guiding those choices deserves more scrutiny than the one who helped you pick funds at 45.

Here’s the encouraging part: vetting an adviser — any adviser, including us — is not detective work. Regulators publish the records, the disclosure documents are mandatory, and the questions that matter fit on one page. Five of them do most of the work, and each has a verifiable answer.

Are you a fiduciary on every recommendation — and will you put that in writing?

Financial professionals in the United States don’t all answer to the same rulebook, and job titles won’t tell you which rulebook you’re facing.

An investment adviser owes you a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act — in the SEC’s words, a duty that “applies to the entire relationship between an investment adviser and its client.”

A broker recommending securities answers to Regulation Best Interest, the 2019 rule that strengthened the older, looser suitability standard: the firm may not place its own interests ahead of yours when making a recommendation. A real obligation — but one that attaches to each recommendation, rather than to the relationship as a whole the way an adviser’s fiduciary duty does.

And in Texas, an insurance agent recommending an annuity carries a separate legal duty under Chapter 1115 of the Texas Insurance Code: act in the best interest of the consumer, with four named obligations — care, disclosure, conflict of interest, and documentation.

Many professionals wear two of those hats. Some wear all three. So skip the label debate and ask the sharper version: “Which standard of conduct applies to each recommendation you’ll make me — and will you put your answer in writing?” CFP Board puts the written fiduciary commitment on its own ten-question checklist for consumers, and for good reason: an answer in writing survives the meeting.

How exactly are you paid on my account?

There are only a handful of ways any adviser gets paid: a percentage of the assets they manage for you, a flat or hourly planning fee, commissions on products, or some combination. No model is automatically good or bad for you. Each pays for something real, and each carries a conflict of interest worth understanding.

So the useful question is never which model — it’s whether the adviser will show you theirs, plainly, before you commit. The SEC’s investor guidance hands you the exact wording: “How do you get paid? By commission? Amount of assets you manage? Do I have any choices on how to pay you?”

A straight answer names the model and the numbers, points to the document where both live, and volunteers the conflict without being cornered. Here is ours, word for word, from our own disclosures:

“Asset Lift’s Investment Adviser Representatives are also separately licensed insurance producers and may receive commissions on insurance products — a conflict disclosed and managed under their fiduciary duty as Investment Adviser Representatives; on insurance and annuity recommendations, Texas law requires them to act in your best interest, and Asset Lift holds its representatives to that same fiduciary-level standard as a matter of practice.”

Ask every adviser you interview for their version of that paragraph. Any legitimate compensation model can be stated that plainly — and if the answer can’t be, keep asking until it is.

Where can I verify a license and check disciplinary history?

Two public databases hold the records. Both cost nothing, and both take about five minutes.

FINRA BrokerCheck (brokercheck.finra.org) covers brokers and brokerage firms: registration status, ten years of employment history, current licenses, and a disclosure section listing customer disputes, disciplinary events, and certain criminal and financial matters.

The SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database (adviserinfo.sec.gov) covers investment adviser firms and their representatives. The document to read there is Form ADV — especially Part 2, the plain-English brochure every registered adviser must deliver, describing services, fees, conflicts of interest, and any disciplinary information.

Ask for the firm’s relationship summary too. Broker-dealers and SEC-registered advisers must give retail investors a Form CRS — a short document covering services, fees, costs, conflicts, standard of conduct, and disciplinary history, with built-in conversation starters such as: “If I give you $1,000 to invest, how much will go to fees and costs, and how much will be invested for me?”

One wrinkle worth knowing: smaller advisory firms register with their state securities regulator instead of the SEC — Asset Lift is a Texas state-registered adviser, for example — and a state-registered firm may not have a Form CRS. Ask for its Form ADV Part 2 brochure instead; the brochure covers the same ground in more depth.

Then ask the person directly. CFP Board’s checklist puts the question bluntly: “Have you ever been publicly disciplined for any unlawful or unethical actions?” Ask it, then check the answer against the databases anyway. An honest professional expects you to.

How much of your practice is people already living on their savings?

Most of the financial industry is organized around helping you accumulate: save, invest, grow, repeat for thirty years. Living on your savings runs on different rules. Once withdrawals start, the order your returns arrive in matters as much as the returns themselves, and the job shifts from growing an account to delivering a monthly income that lasts as long as you do.

That shift is a specialty, and you test for a specialty the way you’d test any specialist — by asking about caseload. The SEC’s investor guidance suggests the wording: “What experience do you have, especially with people like me? What percentage of your time would you estimate that you spend on people with situations and goals that are similar to mine?”

One more dimension of fit: a retirement-phase plan often needs both bodies of knowledge — investment management on one side, insurance and contractual lifetime income on the other. Professionals are licensed for one, the other, or both. Two follow-ups sort that out fast: “What are you licensed to advise on?” and “When my plan calls for something outside your license, what happens?”

And weigh any blanket verdict — for or against an entire category of tools — against the license of the person delivering the verdict. That cuts both ways: an insurance-only agent’s enthusiasm for annuities and an investments-only adviser’s dismissal of them deserve the same discount, because neither professional is licensed or experienced on the side they’re pronouncing judgment about.

What separates a straight answer from a dodge?

You’ll recognize a dodge once you know the common ones:

• “You don’t pay me anything — the company pays me.” Someone funds that compensation, and the dollars trace back to your money. The honest version names the commission and where it comes from.
• “My fee is built in; you’ll never see a bill.” A cost you never see is still a cost. Ask for the number in writing.
• “We’re all fiduciaries here.” Maybe so — then putting it in writing should take thirty seconds.
• Any fee question answered with a performance story. “Don’t worry, I’ll make you far more than I cost” is not a fee disclosure; it’s a subject change.

A straight answer has three tells: a number, a document, and a tradeoff you didn’t have to extract.

One more move from the SEC’s guidance, and it costs you nothing: take notes in the meeting. Notes help if there’s ever a dispute about what was said — and they signal, from minute one, that you’re a serious buyer asking serious questions.

What should you do with these questions?

Bring them to every first meeting — including one with us. Nothing on the list is impolite. Every item comes from what securities regulators and the profession’s own standards bodies tell consumers to ask, and an adviser worth hiring has heard each one before and answers without flinching.

If you’d like to see our answers before you ever sit down, they’re laid out on How we work. And if you’d rather ask in person, a 30-minute discovery call exists for exactly these questions. Bring the list.