A financial investment consultation can help you develop a plan for your future. If you want to get the most from the experience, you'll need to discuss some key issues. Mention these three topics during your visit to a financial investment practice.
Risk
Successful investing is about balancing risks against rewards. Higher risk tends to capture a bigger premium. People who bought shares of Amazon when it was just an online book store in the 1990s have collected bigger returns than folks who bought into dependable companies. That doesn't mean the investors who've collected dividends from stocks like IBM did badly. However, they missed out on the risk premium.
Conversely, lots of stocks from the 1990s tech boom went to zero. For every Amazon, there will be more than one Pets.com. When you speak with someone at a financial investment practice, you need to be aware of both sides of the risk equation.
Ultimately, you want to arrive at a level of risk that makes sense for your situation. Someone who already has a million dollars doesn't necessarily need to look for gigantic returns. The person who's dropping $1,000 each into 10 stocks for their entire portfolio, though, needs some risk.
Things Other Than Stocks
It is easy to think of investing as nothing but the stock market. Anyone who watches financial news would feel like the world is mostly stocks with a few commodities like oil and gold mixed in.
There are, however, numerous other investment vehicles. Each makes sense in a certain context. Mutual funds are often appealing to people who want steady returns without tracking the entire market. Bonds are also interesting for steadier investors. You should also think about real estate as an investment, even if the only property you own is your residence.
Different asset allocations make sense for different people. A person who's five years from retirement might want to be heavier into bonds. They want to lock in their existing gains and avoid the potentially brutal swings of the market. Someone fresh out of college, though, has more time for a higher-risk mixture.
Taxes and Fees
What you pay in taxes and fees can often determine your investing success more than the quality of your investments. If you're not maximizing tax-efficient vehicles like retirement accounts, you could be shaving several percentage points off your returns each year. Likewise, you don't want to pay tons in management fees for things like mutual funds and ETFs without evidence of proven returns.
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