How to hire professional help with your money, from a financial planner to an attorney

• Depending on your financial situation, you might need professional help from financial planners, attorneys, brokers, or insurance agents.
• If you plan to keep working with them over time, you'll want to make sure they understand your financial goals, and that they can work together as a team to help you achieve them,
• You might want to consider starting to build your team before you urgently need one - if they're in place when you have a change in financial situation, they'll already know how best to work together.
• Start getting your team in place with SmartAsset's free tool, which can help find the right financial planner to meet your goals »

When you hire financial experts, you're building a team.

Depending on your situation, your team members might include experts like a financial planner, an accountant, a loan officer, an attorney, a real estate agent, and an insurance agent. All these finance professionals are working together on the same project: moving you toward your financial goals.

Amber Hutton, a loan originator with Axia Home Loans and founder of The Piggy Bank, says when you're hiring finance experts, it's important to keep this "team" perspective in mind. Ensuring everyone is on the same page - with each other, but more importantly, with your financial goals - is one way to ensure you make wise choices with your money.

"When we all know where we are going, we can game plan together and figure out how to get there together," Hutton says. "There are so many moving parts, and the more complex your finances become the more having an expert you trust involved matters."

You want people who understand your goals and perspectives

Practically, this could look like hiring finance experts who share a similar philosophy on risk. But more importantly, it should mean choosing team members who are united in supporting your unique goals.

When you are confident in your team members because have the same approach with your finances, you can relax and focus on what matters to you: using your money in a way that meets your goals. Having confidence in your team's perspective and their dedication to your goals means you don't have to micro-manage them or do extra research to determine if their way is the best way.

"As you achieve success, the last thing you should be spending your time on is figuring out if you are confident in the people who are managing your money," says Hutton.

Choose someone to take the lead

Building a financial team that's all on the same page can also be a major time-saver.

"Knowing that the professionals in your corner are working toward the same goal with the same philosophy around how you want your money to be handled will simply lead to a more efficient process," Hutton says. "This process of efficiency will lead to fewer unknowns, balls dropped, and communication gaps."

Jake Northrup, a CFP and founder of Experience Your Wealth, says designating one leader to facilitate conversation among the team can streamline communication and save everyone time. Usually, the financial planner, who fully understands your big-picture financial goals, can take the reins and facilitate conversation among everyone.

"You shouldn't have individual conversations with all of your experts about values and goals," he says. "That doesn't mean you should avoid communicating with all of your financial experts, but rather trust that one expert is responsible for keeping the others informed about what's going on in your life."

Ask a few smart questions to find people who are the right fit

The financial services industries are becoming more specialized, and you are no longer limited to working with professionals that live near you - you can work with professionals all across the US.

You can get an idea of how the professionals you're considering work, and how they might work together, by asking a few smart questions:

1. What type of clients do you love to work with?

Because you have a choice, Northrup says you should choose financial experts who specialize their services to best serve people like you. "For example, if you are a dual-income household with young kids, it likely means that time is incredibly thin and you should work with experts that understand and tailor their services to accommodate that," he says.

2. How have you worked with other professionals in the past?

To make sure everyone on your financial team shares a perspective on what it means for you to be financially "well," Northrup recommends asking each individual to share success stories. "Ideally, they have worked with people like you in the past and can share examples of how they successfully worked as a team," he says.

Consider getting your team in place before you really need it

Often, Hutton says, financial decisions need to be communicated on and decided in a short amount of time. For example, maybe you're trying to purchase an investment property that already has multiple offers. If you already have a trusted financial adviser, mortgage officer, broker, and attorney - and you're confident they share your best interest - you'll feel more confident in your ability to move on a financial decision quickly.

"Having to rush to gather the proper guidance, professionals, and information during these decisions is not setting yourself or the professionals up for success," Hutton says. "Having these relationships established before the decision is essential to allow the professionals to service you with excellence and efficiency."

SmartAsset's free tool can find the right financial planner to help you meet your goals »

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