Most financial advisors are doing a great job for their clients. This site exists for the moments when you’re not sure yours is — or you want a way to be sure they are.
Find Out How Your Financial Advisor Really Stacks Up
Built by Konrad Pimiskern — 23 years as a retail financial advisor and 11 years in corporate finance now retired from advising and not affiliated with any advisor firm. The Financial Advisor Report Card is the framework I use when widows, friends, and former clients ask the question I’ve heard for over three decades: “Is my advisor doing a good job for me?”
Why This Site Exists
After 23 years as a licensed financial advisor working with retail clients through firms including Edward Jones and Raymond James, I retired my securities, insurance, and financial planning licenses in 2022.
I didn’t expect what happened next. Former clients and casual acquaintances who knew I’d been an advisor, started calling. Widows whose husbands had handled the money. Pre-retirees with growing portfolios and growing unease. They all asked some version of the same question:
“Can you take a look and tell me if my advisor is doing a good job for me?”
I started attending advisor meetings with several of these former clients — mostly widows — to observe, ask the right questions, and then debrief afterward in plain language. What we did was simple: I helped each person understand what they were actually being told and what they should be asking next.
The pattern that emerged was clear. Most advisors are doing a good job. But many are swamped — too many clients, too little time, and structural conflicts of interest most clients never see. Clients often can’t tell whether their advisor doesn’t know about them, or just doesn’t have the time to care.
This site is the framework I built to help people figure that out for themselves.
What You’ll Find Here
The site is organized around three things you might be trying to do.
1. Evaluate the advisor you already have
If you have an advisor and want to know whether the relationship is working, start here:
- What is a Fiduciary Financial Advisor? — The single most important question to ask any advisor.
- 7 Financial Advisor Red Flags — Warning signs most clients miss until they cost real money.
- Is My Financial Advisor Good? — 8 questions that diagnose whether your advisor is earning their fee.
- Should I Fire My Financial Advisor? — When to move on, and how to do it without surrender charges or tax mistakes.
- How to Read Your Investment Statement — The 30-minute review that surfaces what your advisor doesn’t volunteer.
2. Choose a new advisor
If you’re shopping for an advisor — or considering switching — these are the guides to start with:
- 12 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor Before Hiring — The full interview framework.
- Fee-Only vs Commission Financial Advisor — How they’re paid changes whose interests they actually serve.
- How to Find a Fee-Only Financial Advisor — The three vetted directories and the verification checks before you sign.
3. Optimize the cost and structure of your advice
If you want to know whether you’re paying the right amount, or whether a robo-advisor or hybrid model would serve you better:
- What Are Reasonable Financial Advisor Fees? — Canonical benchmarks for AUM, hourly, and flat fees.
- Robo-Advisor vs Financial Advisor — Which one is right for your situation, and the hybrid model that often beats both.
The Financial Advisor Report Card Quiz
The fastest way to find out where your advisor stands is the quiz. It takes about 3 minutes, asks 10 questions, and gives you a personalized grade — including which specific areas of the relationship are working and which need attention.
It’s free to start. There’s no email signup. The full report runs $19 if you want the deep version.
Who Is Konrad Pimiskern?
I grew up in this business. My mother was a financial advisor. I went to Washington State University on a football scholarship and graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance.
I started in corporate finance in 1993, became a licensed financial advisor in 1995, and spent the next 23 years working with retail clients across regional, national, and international firms including Edward Jones and Raymond James. Throughout that career I held securities, insurance, and financial planning licenses.
In 2022, I retired all of those licenses — deliberately. Eight years of corporate finance work before, plus 23 years of retail advising, plus another three years of consulting in finance, compliance, and operations adds up to 34 years inside this industry. After all of that, I wanted the freedom to talk about how it actually works without active licenses, client responsibilities, or potential conflicts of interest.
Why this matters for you: I’m no longer affiliated with any advisor firms. I don’t earn commissions or fees from any retail clients. I don’t have referral arrangements with any advisors. I have no incentive to recommend specific people or products. The neutrality is intentional. It lets me answer the questions former clients started bringing me after I retired — questions that, while I was still inside the industry and licensed, I had to handle within the boundaries of my role.
Who This Site Is For
The Financial Advisor Report Card is built primarily for pre-retirees and retirees — the audience that has the most at stake in their advisor relationship and the least time to recover from advice that didn’t serve them. If you’re 55+, have a portfolio that matters, and are wondering whether you’re actually getting what you pay for, this site was built with you specifically in mind.
That said, the framework applies at any age. Younger investors evaluating their first advisor will find the same questions, fee benchmarks, and red flag patterns useful — even if the dollar amounts are smaller.
What This Site Is Not
This site is not financial advice. I’m not licensed anymore, and I’m not your advisor. Everything here is informational and educational — frameworks, questions, benchmarks, and patterns drawn from 34 years inside the industry.
If you need licensed advice for your specific situation, find a fee-only fiduciary advisor through NAPFA, the Garrett Planning Network, or XY Planning Network.
What’s Coming Next
The blog is the foundation. Next up: a podcast and YouTube content at @FinancialAdvisorReportCard, expanding the same framework into video and audio.
The longer-term project is an advisory service — helping investors evaluate, hire, and work effectively with financial advisors. The site, the quiz, and the content are the beginning of that.
Start With the Quiz
If you only do one thing on this site, take the quiz. It surfaces the right questions in the right order and gives you a real assessment of where your relationship stands.
Take the free 3-minute Financial Advisor Report Card quiz →
It’s free. There’s no email signup to start. And it’ll tell you in plain language with a letter-grade score whether your current advisor is the one you should be working with — or whether it’s time for a hard look at the relationship.