Should I pay for an advice session with a financial advisor??

[Coffeetree]

Would it make a big difference? I haven't got any savings to play around with as I put everything into my flat. I'm maxing out my pension contributions at work. No debt except mortgage (until I'm 70).

Is an IFA just for people with big sums to manage or will one maybe help me figure out some clever tricks?

I should say, I had a session with an advisor about 20 years ago and he helped me set up a private pension. Also told me about ISAs, which I already knew. Seemed like not a whole lot of help. But I'm in a very different situation now.

Work out how your pension is invested and whether you have any influence around that. Work out whether you'd have any discretion to start creating a pool of savings.

If you have no influence around pension and no ability to create savings, then I am not sure how an IFA could help.

If on the other hand you do have influence around pension and and a decent pension pot, or if you have the ability to start saving and investing some monthly amount, then an IFA might be able to help a little with asset allocation, or a lot if you have many investment options including the choice to change platforms.

Before deciding, it would be worth investing some time to educate yourself. By reading online you can probably learn enough about a few key topics that can make a big difference such as
-fees
-asset classes (stocks/shares, bonds/fixed income, other)
-the small number of key decisions to make within each asset class. ---For stocks/shares, I'd think about passive vs. active, and then which benchmark index is most suitable for you. A lot of people in UK use the FTSE100 but I find that has an industry skew towards fossil fuels and banks that I don't like, so I prefer a global index.
--For bonds/fixed income, I'd want to know about interest rate risk and credit risk.

I hope this helps a little bit.

Thanks YankeeDad! I haven't got any discretion around my pension funds. I literally have £1500 in a Stocks and Shares ISA. Before draining that for my flat I educated myself a fair amount about funds so it was doing okay. You've kind of confirmed what I was suspecting.

Have to say I don't use an IFA. I have the benefit of being an accountant with an investment banking background, but I found it relatively straightforward to research and work out what to do. We have an interest only mortgage backed by ISAs, plus. SIPPS so it's been worth taking the time.

My advice would be to consider the fees. Personally I'd rather pay for upfront advice than the commission type arrangement where your advisor receives a percentage of your investments every year. These can really add up. Ditto for the platform you use, look at their fees (so Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell etc).

Finally, equity markets are difficult at the moment, and down 10% or so since November. Could be a buying opportunity if you're investing over 5-10 years but, if not, I'd be careful as the bull run may come to an end this year with high inflation.