There often comes a point where managing your financial life starts to compete with the things you'd rather be doing. As wealth grows, so do the moving parts: investments, taxes, equity compensation, estate planning, charitable goals, and major financial decisions. What once felt manageable can begin to feel like a second job.
At this stage, hiring a fiduciary financial advisor to manage things and develop a more strategic plan is a natural next step. Whatever prompted the decision, there’s one question that often comes next:
What actually happens after I hire an advisor?
The short answer: It’s more than just handing over your investment accounts and hoping for the best. Good advisors take time to understand your financial life, develop a strategy around your goals, put that strategy into action, and continue adjusting it as your circumstances change.
Here’s what you can generally expect after deciding to work with a financial advisor.
1. Client Onboarding
The first step is getting your advisor up to speed on your financial life. This typically involves gathering information about your:
- Income and cash flow
- Investment and retirement accounts
- Stock options, RSUs, ESPPs or other equity compensation
- Tax situation
- Insurance coverage
- Estate plan
- Major financial goals
- Existing financial professionals, such as your CPA or estate attorney
It can feel like a lot of information, but that’s by design. Your advisor can’t make informed recommendations without understanding the full picture.
For someone with a relatively simple financial life, this process may be straightforward. For a high-net-worth household with multiple investment accounts, equity compensation, business interests, complex tax considerations, and an estate plan, it can take more time.
2. Goal-Setting Discussion
Your financial plan should begin with your goals in mind rather than with your portfolio.
Your advisor will work to understand what matters to you now and what you want your wealth to accomplish in the future. That might include questions like:
- When do you want to retire and what does your dream retirement look like?
- What are your anticipated expenses now and in retirement?
- Do you want to help your children financially?
- Are there major purchases or life changes ahead?
- How much risk are you comfortable taking?
- What keeps you up at night financially?
These conversations help your advisor distinguish between what’s financially possible and what’s financially right for you.
3. Current Financial Plan Analysis
Once your advisor has the necessary information, they’ll begin analyzing where you are today.
Your advisor may evaluate things like:
Investments: Are your investments appropriately diversified? Are you taking more risk than necessary? Are your accounts structured efficiently?
Taxes: Are there opportunities to reduce your tax burden or make your investment strategy more tax-efficient?
Cash flow: Are you saving and spending in a way that supports your short- and long-term goals?
Equity compensation: If you receive RSUs, stock options or ESPPs, how does that compensation affect your taxes, investment risk and overall financial plan?
Retirement: Are your savings and investment strategy on track to support the retirement you want?
Estate planning: Are your assets structured in a way that aligns with your wishes and your family’s needs?
The exact analysis will depend on your circumstances and the firm that you hire. Here at Plancorp, we use a tool called a Financial Independence Analysis that pressure-tests your plan across more than 1,000 different market outcomes to deliver a probability of success.
4. Financial Plan Recommendations
Once your advisor understands your situation, they’ll turn that analysis into recommendations.
Depending on your circumstances, those recommendations could address everything from your investment portfolio to your tax strategy to how you handle equity compensation. A comprehensive financial plan might answer questions such as:
- How much should you save and invest?
- How should your portfolio be allocated to support your risk tolerance and goals?
- How can you make your investment strategy more tax-efficient?
- Are you on track to retire when you want?
- What changes should you consider to your estate plan?
- How should you balance current spending with long-term wealth building?
- How should you handle a heavy single stock concentration, often tied to equity compensation?
The important thing is that these decisions shouldn’t exist in isolation.
For example, selling a concentrated stock position isn’t simply an investment decision. It could create a significant tax liability, change your portfolio’s risk profile, and affect your broader financial plan.
5. Plan Implementation
The value of a financial plan isn't the document itself. The value comes from putting the recommendations into action and ensuring the right decisions happen at the right time. That might mean:
- Reallocating your investment portfolio and consolidating accounts
- Adjusting retirement contributions
- Implementing a tax-loss harvesting strategy
- Creating a charitable giving strategy
- Updating beneficiaries
- Developing an equity compensation strategy
- Coordinating with your CPA or estate attorney
This is also where the advisor’s role can become especially valuable.
You don’t necessarily have to become an expert in every recommendation just because it appears in your financial plan. Depending on the advisor and the scope of your engagement, they may handle much of the implementation and coordinate with the other professionals involved in your financial life.
What Does Delegation Actually Look Like?
A wealth management relationship is designed to let you stay focused on the decisions that matter most while your advisory team helps handle the analysis, implementation, coordination, and ongoing monitoring behind the scenes.
6. Investment Portfolio Transition
If you’ve hired an advisor for investment management, this is the point where your portfolio may transition to their management.
A thoughtful advisor will first evaluate what you already have. Some investments may be appropriate to keep while your advisor may recommend selling, consolidating, or repositioning others. The transition should consider:
- Tax consequences like capital gains
- Concentrated positions
- Account types and asset allocation
- Liquidity needs and overall financial goals
For example, if you’ve accumulated significant shares of your employer’s stock through RSUs or stock options, simply selling everything immediately may not be the right answer.
Your advisor should consider the tax implications, your concentration risk, and your broader financial plan before recommending a course of action.
7. Ongoing Wealth Management
Hiring a financial advisor isn’t a one-and-done event where you receive a plan and never think about it again.
Your financial life will change. Your children will get older. You may change jobs, retire, sell a business, receive an inheritance, or decide you want to give more to charity.
Your financial strategy should change with you. That’s why ongoing wealth management typically involves regularly revisiting your plan and adjusting as needed.
The cadence of review meetings will vary depending on your advisor and your needs, but ongoing clients typically meet with their advisor periodically throughout the year.
In those meetings, you’ll likely check in on progress toward your goals, get a gut-check on investment performance, discuss tax planning opportunities, and work with your advisor on strategies to support upcoming financial decisions or life changes.
8. Proactive Monitoring
One of the biggest benefits of working with a wealth manager is knowing someone is watching the details even when you aren't.
Rather than trying to remember tax deadlines, monitor investment risk, evaluate equity compensation decisions, or coordinate multiple professionals on your own, you have a team proactively looking for opportunities and helping ensure important planning items don't fall through the cracks.
That might mean identifying an opportunity to harvest losses before year-end, recognizing that your portfolio has become too concentrated, helping you navigate a major equity compensation event, or flagging a planning issue that needs attention.
Working with a financial advisor means that between meetings, your team is hard working hard to achieve your financial goals.
9. A Team-Based Approach
For complex households, your financial advisor may not be the only professional involved in your financial life. You may already have a CPA, estate planning attorney, insurance professional or other specialists.
A wealth management relationship can help bring those pieces together.
For example, your financial advisor might work with your CPA to understand the tax implications of an investment decision or coordinate with your estate attorney when your financial circumstances change.
The goal is greater coordination, not necessarily replacing every professional you already work with.
Your First Year With a Financial Advisor
While every relationship is different, the process often looks something like this:
First 30–60 days:
Gather information, establish accounts, understand your goals, and analyze your financial situation.
Months 2–4:
Develop your financial plan, identify priorities, and make initial recommendations.
Months 3–6:
Implement agreed-upon changes, transition investments if applicable and begin addressing longer-term planning opportunities.
Months 6–12:
Monitor progress, revisit your plan, address new opportunities, and refine your strategy.
Ongoing:
Meet periodically, monitor your investments and financial plan, coordinate with other professionals, and adjust your strategy as your life changes.
The exact timeline will depend on the complexity of your finances and the scope of your relationship.
Final Thoughts
One of the biggest misconceptions about working with a financial advisor is that you’ll simply be adding another recurring task to your already-full calendar. In reality, part of the value should be taking things off your plate.
You should expect to participate in important decisions. Your advisor needs your input to understand your goals, values and preferences. But you shouldn’t have to continue project-managing your own financial life. A strong advisor relationship should leave you with:
- More clarity: You understand where you stand and what you’re working toward.
- More confidence: You have a strategy for making important financial decisions.
- Less work: Someone else is monitoring your financial plan and helping coordinate implementation.
- Better coordination: Your investments, taxes, estate plan, equity compensation and other financial decisions aren’t being handled in separate silos.
- A partner for major decisions: You have someone to turn to before making a financial decision with significant or long-term consequences.
So, what happens after you hire a financial advisor? Ideally, you gain more than investment management. You gain a coordinated strategy, a dedicated advocate, and a team focused on helping you make better financial decisions over time.
Take the Next Step
If you're wondering whether your current strategy is helping you make the most of your wealth, schedule a private strategy session with the Plancorp team. We'll discuss your goals, review key planning considerations, and help evaluate whether a comprehensive wealth management relationship may be appropriate for your situation.
