A good adviser starts with your goals, not with products. Retirement date, buying a home, funding education, protecting your family — the plan gets built around those, and the investments are chosen to serve the plan rather than the other way round. That means looking at the whole picture: tax efficiency, insurance gaps, pension consolidation, estate planning, and cash-flow needs, not just a portfolio sitting in isolation.

Just as importantly, a good adviser is a behavioural buffer. When markets fall and every instinct says sell, a good adviser is the calm, informed voice reminding you why the plan exists and what it was built to withstand. That conversation, repeated over years, is arguably worth more than any single fund choice — it's the difference between staying invested through a downturn and locking in a loss out of fear.

You can usually tell a good adviser by how they're paid and how willingly they explain it. Fee-only or clearly disclosed fee structures, a fiduciary duty to act in your interest rather than a suitability standard that only requires the advice to be "good enough," and credentials you can independently verify through the relevant regulator are all good signs. So is an adviser who explains their reasoning in plain language and doesn't mind being asked questions twice.

Bad advisers tend to give themselves away in a few consistent ways. Watch for pressure to decide quickly, discomfort when asked directly how they're compensated, and a habit of steering every conversation back to proprietary or high-commission products regardless of what you actually asked about. Promises of guaranteed returns are a hard stop — nobody can honestly make that promise, and anyone who does is telling you something important about how they operate.

Other red flags are quieter. An adviser who discourages a second opinion, who can't or won't point you to their regulatory record, or whose portfolio recommendations involve unusually frequent trading is worth a closer look — frequent trading in particular tends to generate fees and commissions for the adviser more reliably than it generates returns for you. So does a conversation that's constantly about chasing whatever has performed well recently, rather than staying anchored to your actual goals and timeline.

Before working with anyone, it's reasonable to ask directly: how are you compensated, and by whom? Are you acting as a fiduciary at all times, or only in some circumstances? Can I see your regulatory record? A good adviser will answer all three without hesitation, because the answers reflect well on them. A bad one will find a way to make the questions feel unnecessary — which is exactly when they're most necessary.

The right adviser doesn't just manage your money. They manage you, gently, at the exact moments you're most likely to manage yourself badly. That's worth paying for. Everything else is a good deal harder to justify.