The People Who Will Call You

Obituaries are public. So are property records. There are firms whose entire prospecting model is built on both.

Some of the people about to contact you are genuinely good at their jobs and worth knowing. Some are running a pipeline. In the first weeks, when you are exhausted and everything is a fog, those two look almost identical — and that is not an accident, it is the design.

So here is how to tell them apart, and what to say while you work it out.

The tells

Urgency that comes from them, not from you. Real deadlines are boring: a benefits election window, a claim form. Manufactured urgency sounds like before rates move, before the window closes, while this is still available. Nothing about your actual situation expires in the first month.

A product appears early. A first conversation that should be about what you have somehow arrives at a specific annuity, policy or fund. Note how many minutes that took.

The free lunch, the free dinner, the free seminar. These are marketing events. That is not a secret and not always sinister — but you are attending a sales presentation, not receiving an education, and the entire room has been selected the same way you were.

An appeal to him. He would have wanted you taken care of. He and I had a plan. Anyone reaching for your husband's authority to move you toward a decision is telling you something about themselves.

Discomfort when you say you want to wait. This is the cleanest test there is. A good professional will say of course and mean it. Watch what happens to the warmth in the room.

The two questions

If you remember nothing else:

"How are you paid?"

Ask it directly, expect a straight answer, and notice any discomfort. Fee-only, commission, a percentage of assets, a salary plus product incentives — none of these are automatically disqualifying, but the answer changes what their advice is shaped by. Vagueness is itself an answer.

"Are you a fiduciary, in writing, for everything you do with me?"

A fiduciary is required to act in your interest. Others are held to a lower standard, and some people operate in both modes depending on which product is in front of them — which is why in writing and for everything matter more than the word itself.

"No" is a complete sentence

You do not owe anyone an explanation, a meeting, or a second call. You are allowed to say:

Thank you. I am not making any financial decisions right now. If that changes I will call you.

Then stop talking. The silence after it is not yours to fill.

You can also simply not answer the phone. The genuinely useful people will leave a message and will still be there in four months.

When you actually do want help

There is a real moment for this, and it usually arrives after the fog lifts — often six months to a year out, when you know your income, your costs, and what you want the next decade to look like. Hiring someone then, from a position of knowing your own numbers, is an entirely different transaction than being sold to in week three.

When you get there: interview more than one. Ask both questions above. Ask what happens if you want to leave. Bring your own list of what you have rather than asking them to assemble it, because the person who builds your picture tends to shape it.

Including me

I should be straight about my own position, since this article sits on a site that sells things.

I am a certified financial educator and a consultant. I do not hold an investment licence, I do not sell insurance or investment products, and I do not manage anyone's money. I could not put you into an annuity if I wanted to.

What I sell is education — and the products here are deliberately the cheapest thing in the room, so that the decision is easy either way. If a page on this site ever makes you feel rushed, that is a defect, and I would rather you told me than bought anything.

The point of this article is not to send you to a different adviser. It is that the first few months are not the time to choose one, and that anyone insisting otherwise has just told you what they are.