How I would pick a financial advisor

You should be able to trust your financial advisor. 
For me, since I trust almost nobody, it is very difficult. 


I have one financial advisor which comes for free together with my employer related 401k. Do I trust him? No. 

He didn't offer his additional services outside 401k yet. But if/when he asks, I will have a serious talk with him. 

Just imagine you are thinking about consulting a dietitian. You would definitely have to see how he looks like. To see with your own eyes if he is successful himself in the assumed area of his expertise of weight loss and weight maintenance. 
If he looks slim, you would interview him to see if his experience is real and he is not just someone 20 years old fresh out of a dietitians school and had never had any weight problems himself. 
You would like to see the real results of the strategies he can offer. 

The same is with the financial advisor for me. 
His financial strategies and results will not be as obvious as the body of the dietitian. 
So I would have to ask him to provide his own results for me before I can trust him. Especially I would focus on how the accounts were handled just before and during the last recession. 
Anyone can talk. I would ask to see the results. 

But I don't think he will go for it and show me the results. He probably would say that this information is too personal or something like that. 
And I probably wouldn't insist if he is still against it after I explain the example with the dietitian to him. 


I know, some would bring the arguments against it, such as: a doctor who is healing a particular disease doesn't have be sick with it himself. He can still heal it going with the treatment guidelines. I agree with that. 

A financial advisor can give you general "treatment guidelines" for your finances. But those guidelines are not very difficult. You can gather that information yourself. 

I would compare a personalized financial advise to a opinion of a medical expert. Like one on some specific topic where the general information is not sufficient anymore. 
What you usually get from financial advisers is the general information. If your financial situation is very complicated, that can be compared to some complicated disease where you need an expert medical advise. 

For that reason I will probably stay without a financial advisor, at least for now. My situation is not complicated and I already have sufficient general financial knowledge. 
Maybe my expectations of a financial advisor are too high.