The short answer is “yes.” The medium answer is “maybe not.” The long answer is “yes.” 

You want someone in the practice of managing money managing your money. If that’s not you, hire someone excellent that makes you feel powerful and doesn’t talk to you like they went to Yale and you went to community college.

Until about two years ago, my short, medium, and long answers were “not in hell.” I’ve learned a lot about money in the last decade, so I felt very equipped to manage my own. And I follow many a pop-financial-expert who are doggedly against the idea of any finance bro managing anything for them. And this is of sound mind.

Do you know the story of Warren Buffett betting a million dollars that a simple, passively managed fund would outperform a managed hedge fund over 10 years? Did you know that he won that bet? The very simple moral of the story is: Warren Buffett saw the power of cheap index funds that track the market versus paying high fees for someone to “pick stocks” for your portfolio. Hiring a stock picker is essentially gambling, but fancier and accepted by your grandparents.

Here’s the difference: Hedge funds are incredibly expensive funds that are designed to “hedge” against downturns in the market. Humans, hedge fund managers, are guessing what stocks and funds to combine to give you this hedge. They charge high fees and take a portion of your profit. Passive funds, on the other hand, simply track an index, like the S&P 500 (an index of about 500 of the country’s leading companies) and do what it does with very little management. An index fund will NEVER outperform the market because it follows the market. A hedge fund CAN beat the market, but very rarely does.

So if you can just take your savings and invest it in a low-fee index fund and do better than most actively managed funds, why would you need a financial manager/advisor?

Well… if you don’t want tax-efficiency, don’t want to maximize your profits while minimizing your risk, don’t have kids or don’t care to fund anything for them, don’t have an inheritance, don’t want help with buying versus renting, loans, credit, healthcare, Social Security, long-term care, Medicare, interpreting your paycheck and benefits or managing the high level of risk associated with putting all your eggs in the basket of one U.S. index fund, then… you don’t! Opening an account at Vanguard, putting some money in it and buying an index fund is very simple. Otherwise, yes, you need a financial advisor or planner.

What is a financial manager? Someone who has your best financial interest in mind. We’re known as fiduciaries. We will tell you to do something in your best financial interest even if it loses us money. We look at the whole banana. Not just what stocks and bonds you’re invested in, but also what kind of health insurance you have, whether you want to retire in Dubai in 25 years, if you want to pay for college, what tax implications follow certain events, if you should have a trust for property, if you should invest in a little crypto, when you’ll likely be a millionaire/billionaire, how your savings rate will change if you’re expecting a large inheritance, why you would want to go with a Roth vs. a traditional IRA or vice versa. We also help you navigate life decisions, celebrate your victories and cry when your kids graduate. (Important note: if you have a financial advisor and they are not doing these things, it’s urgently time to break up.)

I continue to come back to this word:, practice. I don’t practice medicine, so I go to a doctor. I don’t practice piloting so I buy a ticket on a commercial flight. I don’t practice teaching sixth grade (woo-hoo!) so I leave it to the professionals. What do you practice and what do you want to practice? If you absolutely nerd out on all this stuff and LOVE learning about the new One, Big Beautiful Bill Act and how it will change your tax burden, go for it! Rock on! If not, find a pro. So many people turn into DIY-ers when it comes to money and taxes. And this is a waste of precious life units. Hire someone to save you money and go do the things you love to practice.

In a 2017 interview with CNBC, Buffett said: “You don’t need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you are not, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course that is both intelligent and disciplined. Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences.”

Megan Janssen is the founder of Money Juice (www.money-juice.com) and a financial advisor with Forum Financial Management, LP. The ideas and language written here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Forum. This column is never written by AI.