I waited at home this morning for a chap to come and measure up some fence posts that have broken in my garden. As a result the fence panels are leaning over at a precarious angle!
He arrived promptly, measured everything up and told me what he thought the best replacements would look like (concrete case settings to stop the wood rotting too quickly in the future).
He left and promised me he would send a quotation.
I of course have a choice here. I can accept his quotation and in a couple of weeks time his firm will visit, fix the posts, re-affix the fence panels, tidy up and then send me his invoice.
Alternatively I could measure them up myself, drive to a local supplier, load up the car and then spend the best part of a day (or longer) doing it myself (in practice that probably means my wife doing it while I act as a labourer!)
Chances are though that whilst the DIY approach might be cheaper in the short term it may not look quite so good and possibly won’t last as long.
Financial planning and advice is a bit like this.
A survey by Ernst & Young found that 33% of people do not use an adviser.
They may of course not do any financial planning but a significant percentage of the public, some 59% according to the survey, use on-line research to compare financial products and then presumably either buy the plan themselves or go off to an intermediary to do that for them.
Worryingly of those who use an intermediary, 10% think they get those services for free and 21% don’t know how, if at all, they pay for those services.
At Informed Choice we charge for advice and we charge for implementation services, we also charge for the review services that we provide to our clients.
For us of course it is quite natural to expect our clients to pay for those services and culturally we are strong believers in the transparency of the charges we apply for our services.
So to use a simple analogy, financial planning is like a new fence; if you are inclined to do so, have the time available and the skills to do it there really is nothing to stop you doing it yourself.
On the other hand you could pay a professional to do the job – it really is about that choice.
Photo credit: Flickr/BevKnits
