Are there guidelines for whom you should trust for financial advice (online, peer, experts, only myself, etc)
"You need to understand how various entities make their money. Once you know that, you can determine whether their interests are aligned with yours. For example, a full-service broker makes money when you buy and sell stocks. They therefore have in interest in you doing lots of buying, and selling, not in making you money. Or, no-fee financial advisors make their money through commissions on what they sell you, which means their interests are served by selling you those investments with high commissions, not the investments that would serve you best. Financial media makes their money through attracting viewers/readers and selling advertising. That is their business, and they are not in the business of giving good advice. There are lots of good investments - index funds are a great example - that don't get much attention because there isn't any money in them.  In fact, the majority of ""wall street"" is not aligned with your interests, so be skeptical of the financial industry in general.  There are ""for fee"" financial advisors who you pay directly; their interests are fairly well aligned with yours. There is a fair amount of good information at The Motley Fool" Nothing beats statistics like that found on Morning Star, Yahoo or Google Finance.  When you are starting out, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Pick a couple of mutual funds with good track records and start there.   Keep in mind the financial press, to some degree, has a vested interest in having their readership chase the next hot thing.  So while sites like Seeking Alpha, Kiplingers, or Money do provide some good advice, there is also an element that placates their advertisers.   The only peer-to-peer lending I would consider is Lending Club.  However, you are probably better off in the long run investing in mutual funds.  One way to get involved in individual stocks without getting burned is to participate in Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs).  Companies that have them tend to be very well established, and they are structured to discourage trading.  Buying is easy, dividend reinvestment is easy, dividend payouts are easy; but, starting and selling  is kind of a pain.  That is a good thing.
"I think it's great that you want to contribute. Course Instructor You may want to take a look at becoming an instructor for a course like Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. These are commonly offered through churches and other community venues for a fee. This may be a good fit if you want to focus on basic financial literacy, setting up and sticking to a budget, and getting their financial ""house"" in order. It may not be a good fit if you don't want to teach an existing curriculum, or if you find the tenets of the course too unpalatable. A significant number of the people in Dave's audience are close to or in the middle of a financial meltdown, and so his advice includes controversial ideas such as avoiding credit altogether, often because that's how they got into their current mess. Counselor If you want to run your own show, I know of several people who have built their own practice that is run along the lines of a counselor charging hourly rates, and they work with couples who are having money problems. Building a reputation and a network of referring counselors and professionals is key here, and definitely seems like it would require a full-time commitment. I would avoid ""credit counseling"" and the like. Most of these organizations are focused on restructuring credit card debt, not spending signficant time on behavioral change. You don't need a series 7, 63, 65 etc. or even a CFA. I've previously acquired a number of these and can confirm that they are investment credentials that are intended to help you get a job and/or get more business as a broker or conventional financial planner, i.e. salesperson of securities. The licensure process is necessary to protect consumers from advice that serves the investment sales force but is bad for the consumer, and because you must be licensed to provide investment advice. There is a class of fee-only financial planners, but they primarily deal with complex issues that allow them to make money, and often give away basic personal finance advice for free in the form of articles, podcasts, etc.  Charity For part-time or free work, in my area there are also several charity organizations that help people do their taxes and provide basic budgeting and personal finance instruction, but this is very localized and may vary quite a bit depending on where you live. However, if there are none near you, you can always start one! Journalism If you have an interest in writing, there are also people who work as journalists and write columns, books, or newsletters, and it is much easier now to publish and build a network online, either on your own, through a blog or contributing to a website. Speaker at Community events There are also many opportunities to speak to a specific community such as a church or social organization. For example, where I live there are local organizations for Spanish speaking, Polish speaking, elderly, young professional, young mother and retiree groups for example, all of who might be interested in your advice on issues that specifically address their needs. Good luck!" I think the OP is getting lost in designations.  Sounds to me that what he wants is a 'financial advisor' not an 'investment advisor'.  Does he even have investments?  Does he want to be told which securities to buy?   Or is he wanting advice on overall savings, insurance, tax-shelters, retirement planning, mortgages, etc.  Which is a different set of skills - the financial advisor skill set. Accountants don't have that skill set.  They know operating business reporting, taxes and generally how to keep it healthy and growing.  They can do personal tax returns (as a favour to only the owners of the business they keep track of usually). IMO they can deal with the reporting but not the planning or optimization. But IMO the OP should just read up and learn this stuff for himself.  Accreditation mean nothing.  Eg.  the major 'planner' brand teaches factually wrong stuff about RRSPs - which are the backbone of Canadian's finances. I don't know which online casino we are talking about, but I would venture to say that online casinos, in general, are probably not the most trustworthy of businesses.  Caution is certainly in order.  That having been said, this isn't an e-mail from a stranger that contacted you out of the blue; you obviously trust them enough to have deposited some money with them, and it seems that they now owe you money. Let's assume for the moment that they are legitimate, and that they sincerely want to pay out your winnings.  If they are to pay you via a wire transfer, they would need your account number and routing number.  (This information is on every check that you write.)  In addition, if this is an international transfer, they would also need your bank's SWIFT number, or possibly an IBAN code. It does seem odd that they would pay you a partial payment with a check, but the rest has to be done via a wire transfer.  You could request that they send the remainder as a check, but I would imagine that if they refuse to send you a check, there is nothing you can do about it. If you decide to go ahead with the wire transfer, you could open up a new savings account with your bank first.  Then you could provide the account number for this new account, and if they are intending to clean out your account, there will be nothing in it.  (For extra protection, when you set up the account, you could ask the bank if they can set up a savings account that will accept incoming wire deposits, but no outgoing electronic withdrawals.) Either way, when you deposit the check you have and you receive this wire transfer, don't spend this money for a while.  Just let it sit in your account (you could transfer it to your main account, if you like), and wait a few weeks.  That way, if there is a problem with these payments and your bank insists on the money back, you will not be in trouble.  If they send you more than they owe you and ask for some of it back, it will be a clear indication of a scam.  Don't send them any money back. After a few weeks, you should be in the clear.  Good luck. By the way, online gambling is a terrible idea.  The fact that you don't trust the casino to pay out should tell you a lot about this industry.  After you receive these winnings (or even if you don't), the best advice I can give you is to stop gambling. It's highly unlikely that you will be able to achieve 8% and would consider myself lucky to get 4% in the current interest rate environment.  You might want to read some reviews of peer-to-peer lending and even try it out some yourself.  Give yourself something like 2000 Euros/Dollars and a year.  If you truly need 8% to retire, then you are not ready to retire. Here in the US it increases the complexity of your tax forms.  I did an experiment with lending club.   Here is what I found: After 18 months of giving it a try, I decided to abandon this strategy.  My money will receive better and safer returns in a dividend focused mutual fund. However, I encourage you to give it a try yourself. In the case of an investment strategy, if you don't retain custodianship over your funds, or at least determine who is the custodian, then walk away.  You should be able to get accurate account statements from a trustworthy third party at all times. I thought the Finance Buff made a pretty solid argument for a financial advisor the other day: http://thefinancebuff.com/the-average-investor-should-use-an-investment-advisor-how-to-find-one.html But 1.5% is too expensive. The blog post at Finance Buff suggests several alternatives. He also has the great suggestion to use Vanguard's cheap financial planning service if you go with Vanguard. A lot of investing advice fails to consider the human factor. Sure it'd be great to rebalance exactly every 6 months and take precisely the amount of risk to theoretically maximize returns. But, yeah right. It's well-known that in the aggregate individual investors go to cash near market bottoms and then buy near market tops. It's not that they don't know the right thing to do necessarily, it's just that the emotional aspect is stronger than any of us expect. You shouldn't rely on sticking to your investments any more than you rely on sticking to your diet and exercise program ;-) the theoretically optimal solution is not the real-world-people-are-involved optimal solution. My own blog post on this suggests a balanced fund rather than a financial advisor, but I think the right financial advisor could well be a better approach: http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ Anyway, I think people are too quick to think of the main risk as volatility, and to think of investing as simple. Sure in theory it is simple. But the main risk is yourself. Fear at market bottoms, greed at market tops, laziness the rest of the time... so there's potential value in taking yourself out of the picture. The human part is the part that isn't simple. On whether to get a financial advisor in general (not just for investments), see also: What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? My former accountant, used to provide this service as part of him doing my taxes.  During the off season, he would provide a planning session and he would review strategies that I might look into.  Since he did not make any money off of providing investments, he was about as unbiased as one could be.  However, something like that might not be enough for you guys. You could go with someone online, Scottrade is going into the business of providing advice, as well as Charles Schwab or Fidelity, but you might need someone more personal. In that case, I would use my network.  Talk to people, ask who they use, like, and respect.  I would say it is very easy to find mediocre investment advisers, the good ones are hard. I would look for one that teaches.  It is very easy to tell someone what to do, much harder to teach them what is the right thing.   One thing that is easy about your situation:  Planning to buy a home.  Put money for a down payment in a high interest savings account.  What I mean by high interest, is they still pay almost nothing.  You can't really make a mistake.  If you find one with .5% instead of .85%, what is the real difference after 5 years?  About $180? I don't know, maybe saving for 30+ years you'd want to see how your investments are doing to plan for retirement? Or should I just use an interest calc on google and expect that average market return on my deposits will be there in 2045. Looking at the statements builds trust with the advisor. What makes them trusted?