Did you know that there is a thing called Second

opinion on Finance?

The other day, I read how Automatic functionalities and the cultivating lifestyle changes are pretty evidently slithering into our daily lives. Okay okay! Let me clear that I am not against this changes, but most of the times it happens that these changes affect our health and we get to know that we are suffering from lifestyle diseases.  However, we are under the notion that these kind of problems is something we(as in “I”) cannot get and these doubts makes us go for a second opinion of expertised doctors.

Nothing changes when it comes to our finances too, we think that decisions made by us in the past or by someone’s recommendations are correct but back of the mind we have our doubts. When we can have second opinion from health experts why not from Finance experts, after all, Wealth without Peace is always dangerous.

Second Opinion as a financial service is not yet known to many people, however, there are many Certified Financial Planners offering this service. Let me tell you what should you look for when you decide to go for a second opinion on finance?

• Existing Investment: Nowadays most of them do fund allocation in diversified asset classes. When you go for second opinion you must make sure you get to know whether your choice of fund allocation was right, should you continue a particular set of asset class according to your risk tolerance or probably know whether investments in certain asset class is tax efficient. However, all these should be answered with proper reasons. The session needs to be educative, not informative. Information is available everywhere but many of them are not keen on clearing the myths by educating. There are invisibility cloak wearing facts that many advisors hide or simply present it in a confusing manner.
• Existing Insurance Policies: Clearing your doubts doesn’t guarantee zero risks but it improves the understanding of those risks. Many Insurance policies have been sold in the name of fixed maturity value and we conservative Indians are not that of a risk takers when it comes to finance. Whereas, there are also some impulsive buyers who keep buying policies in the name of Investments until they get confused either with the pile of papers or actually don’t know its worth. Second opinion can help them get clarity on this confusion regarding the policies taken. Like, if you happen to buy 3-4 policies and you get to know that there are 2 policies which can be surrendered as they were a bad choice, you save that amount of money and can actually go for a different investment option that is aligned to your needs. Expertised doctors cut the root of our problems so that it does not spread across the body similarly if you know some investments have gone wrong then you can stop it at once so that it saves your financial health.
• List of queries: We often have many queries regarding our existing or recommended investments. Clarity is needed sometimes on what happens to the tax benefit with particular asset class or how much corpus is needed to achieve our short term or long term goals. Second opinion in this case comes as a saviour but only if we actually come down for the session prepared. Always make a point to have your queries written or laid down somewhere so that at the end of the session you know whether you are satisfied with the opinion given by the Financial Planner or not. In India, a chemist can be considered as a pseudo-doc when we go and ask them for some medicines but a doctor can never recommend the right medication without knowing all of the symptoms.
• Know your target: To achieve any financial goals you always need to know where to start from but most importantly it’s essential to know how much time will it it take and whether you will achieve it or not(in figures). It’s always better to walk on a path which is bumpy but with goal visibility rather than walking blindfolded on a smooth road with no realization where your goal is.

Sometimes it is better to be in doubt than going wrong is what I can say when we talk about second opinion on finance from a certified financial planner.

For everything else, Money Anna is always there.