Let me share a personal admission: despite covering finance and business for 30 years, I’ve never had a financial adviser.

So, why is that? A negative encounter in my 30s left a sour taste. The adviser I briefly worked with would send poorly written emails, full of errors, and often told me she was too busy to assist until after the tax season.

My husband Michael and I led hectic lives, but we believed we had our finances fairly well managed. We had our bases covered with pension savings, ISAs, emergency funds, wills, and powers of attorney.

If that sounds a bit overconfident, the complexity of life and finances did increase as we aged.

Michael’s cancer diagnosis brought long-lasting challenges, and I found myself as the primary earner. Recently, I made a major career transition, leaving a secure job to launch my own business.

The financial planning I had been doing on my own wasn’t cutting it anymore. Feeling overwhelmed, I came to the realisation that I needed professional guidance.

And I’m not alone in this. Many people seek financial advice for the first time in their 50s or early 60s, when retirement no longer feels such a distant prospect.

But as I have discovered, finding the right adviser, and making the most of the relationship, is not as straightforward as it might seem. A good adviser will improve your finances and bring peace of mind. But given the fees involved, it is important they add real value.

A good adviser will improve your finances and bring peace of mind, writes Ruth Sunderland. But given the fees involved, it is important they add real value

It is possible to obtain free information from organisations such as the Government-backed Pension Wise, but not advice or recommendations. 

From later this year, regulators will allow a new form of ‘targeted support’ for people who can’t afford full-on advice. This is not tailored to individuals but to groups, such as people not saving enough for retirement.

For individual advice to fit your personal circumstances and needs, you need a qualified adviser regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. They fall into two categories: independent advisers, who can recommend products across the market, and restricted advisers, who can help only with certain types of products such as pensions, or the wares of specific providers.

Which you choose depends on your circumstances and how much money you have to invest.

According to the Schroders 2025 UK Financial Advisers Survey, only a quarter are prepared to work with clients who have less than £50,000 in investible assets, and a third of advisers won’t take you on with less than £200,000.

To find advisers, I drew on my professional network for recommendations, though I could easily have used websites such as unbiased.co.uk or vouchedfor.co.uk, which show details of advisers in your area or that suit your needs.

Though time-consuming, I believe it’s worth meeting two or three advisers before deciding. I chose to see them in person rather than online – ideally in their offices to get a sense of their firm’s culture.

I did some basic checks that firms and individuals are authorised on the FCA’s Financial Services Register and looked them up on Companies House.

Many people seek financial advice for the first time in their 50s or early 60s, when retirement no longer feels such a distant prospect

Initial meetings with a financial adviser, lasting an hour or so, are usually free. That is a very useful resource, but an hour isn’t long when discussing decisions that could shape the rest of your life. 

So I prepared carefully for the meetings, particularly since Michael was too unwell to attend and I was going on my own. I went through our assets and liabilities – property, pensions, investments, savings, mortgages and debts – and scoured bank statements to get a realistic sense of annual spending.

Armed with this groundwork, the adviser could understand where we are, where we want to be and identify any black holes in our planning.

For me, these first meetings are about establishing whether the adviser genuinely listened and understood our aims, and wasn’t trying to fit us into a template.

For instance, we don’t have children, so I would be raising an eyebrow if an adviser was overly focused on inheritance tax.

Mansplaining – and most advisers are men – would be an immediate deal-breaker, as would addressing only Michael if we had gone as a couple.

Advisers use software to model income and expenditure over time, factoring in inflation. Another useful exercise was categorising spending into essential, desirable and luxury. The good news on this was we are unlikely to run out of money even if we live long lives.

Research suggests that people who use financial advisers tend to achieve better outcomes than those who don’t

I found this exercise immediately useful in that it prompted me to examine spending, cancel unused subscriptions and rein in impulse purchases. It was also oddly therapeutic to feel more in control of the many financial unknowns we will face in the future.

One adviser looked at our ‘loss capacity’, or how much our investments could go down before our lifestyle suffered. We already held a decent cash buffer, meaning we wouldn’t need to sell investments at a loss unless we were faced with a downturn that lasted several years. We would, however, have to curb our optional spending.

Michael is drawing a final salary pension and I have a small one I can take in future, giving us a guaranteed chunk of income for life.

Along with our emergency cash, this gives us a cushion so we can take some calculated risk with my other pension pot and our Isas.

Following the initial meeting, clients can then expect to sign letters of authority allowing advisers to review pensions and investments in detail and come up with strategies and product recommendations.

I wanted to be clear about fees. Often these are an initial fee and an ongoing annual charge, both expressed as a percentage of assets and usually taken out of the investments. The percentage may look small, but the actual cash sums are likely to be sizeable.

For me, that didn’t automatically mean the advice was too expensive, but it sharpened my focus on value for money and being clear what services the adviser would provide.

One benefit, I hope, will be better investment performance and helping us avoid costly mistakes, including reacting emotionally rather than rationally to market falls.

Research suggests that people who use financial advisers tend to achieve better outcomes than those who don’t. 

Fund manager Vanguard estimates advice can add 3 per cent a year after fees, while the FCA has found that wealth can increase by up to 10 per cent in the years following advice, though that effect may fade over time.

There is no getting round the fact that paying for advice is a leap of faith at first, until the results start to emerge.

It isn’t only about investment performance – important though that is. A good adviser should lift some of the administrative burden, stop investments drifting through neglect, and give us the freedom to get on with living our life rather than worrying about money.

WHAT TO ASK A FINANCIAL ADVISER? 

• How often will we meet, and how accessible are you?

I would prefer six-monthly meetings and I’d like to know I’ll get a timely response if I call.

• Who will I be dealing with?

If I meet a senior adviser initially, will they stay involved or will I be passed to someone more junior?

• What is their succession plan?

If all the advisers are in their 50s or 60s, is there younger talent coming through?

• How many clients do they look after?

The more clients an adviser has, the less time they can give to each one. One adviser I spoke to suggested anything much over 100 clients was likely to be pushing it.

• Are clients tiered by wealth – and if so, where would I sit?

Do wealthier clients receive faster responses or more attention?

• How do they manage risk during market downturns?

What’s their approach to helping clients minimise losses and avoid knee-jerk decisions?

• What happens if I’m unhappy or want to change adviser?

How easy is it to move on, and what are the costs that might be involved in this?

The Mail has produced The Complete Guide To Wealth Management, written by Money Editor Rachel Rickard Straus.

To request your free copy, or for more information on how you can make smarter decisions about your wealth, retirement and legacy, call freephone 0808 258 0578 or visit mailfinance.co.uk/management