Where can I get financial advice?

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ok, I know "financial advisor" is the obvious answer , but if anyone can let me know what to look out for so I can spot a good, independent one, that would be great.

Dh is self-employed and will be getting an accountant soon, because his tax stuff is looking a bit too complicated nowadays - do accountants tend to do financial advice or is it very seperate?

What we want advice for includes working out a budget (harder than it sounds as dh's work brings in odd lumps and bits, and I have been off on mat leave and plan (hope) to be having a baby again asap, and we want to move house... blah blah. We also need investment advice for the times that dh gets paid in a lump and we have (for a few months, until we start to use it up) a bit of spare money in the bank.

Get the accountant to recommend somebody.

It's generally considered better to get a fee-based IFA, ie. you pay them an upfront fee for each meeting. This means they don't get commission from the financial service providers, so have no conflict of interests.

www.unbiased.co.uk is a website where you can find IFAs in your area. Fee based is generally considered 'better', but if you haven't got large sums of money, you may find a commission based adviser (I think you can select which one you want on the website) more suitable. It's best to pick a couple and phone them up if you can't get a recommendation - you'll soon get a sense of whether they'll be the one for you.

If you go fee based, then the advisor will charge you for every phone call, letter, etc - a bit like a solicitor. Usual chargeable hourly rates are £150+ + VAT, so can work out expensive if you require lots of contact/help from IFA.
Commission based means that this type of servicing is free.

IMO, fee based is better if you have a large lump sum to invest and are pretty self sufficient.

Commission charges on Stakeholder pensions etc are so low at 1%, that commission is often preferable in this case, imvho