Your Finances: Finding an investment adviser

The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking its own sweet time coming up with a rule that would make all investment advisers put their clients' interest first.

It's been almost a year and a half since the agency said it would pursue this so-called fiduciary standard. It is trying to contort the standard in such a way that brokers who are paid commissions to sell products could fit under that definition.

If you're looking for an investment adviser, start with one who is a true fiduciary. Here's how to find an investment adviser now.

That's the mistake clients of Bernard Madoff (who was nominally a fiduciary) made. Make sure that your account is housed at a brand-name Securities Investor Protection Corp.-backed brokerage firm, like an Ameritrade or a Charles Schwab or the like.

If you have a $1-million portfolio and are paying an adviser 1 percent, that's $10,000 a year for investing advice. "What exactly are you getting for that?" asks Sheryl Garrett, a Shawnee Mission, Kan., adviser who only bills hourly or by the project. She says she typically gives a year's worth of investment planning for clients for roughly $2,000 or $3,000 a year.

If you are investing for retirement, find a proxy by which you can measure your adviser. Look at a low-cost target- date retirement fund for your age group, or use a website such as Yahoo Finance or Morningstar.com that allows you to monitor "play" portfolios to create a no-brainer portfolio of low-cost stock and bond funds.

For example, you could check your adviser's performance against that of the Vanguard Target Retirement Fund at personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/van guard/TargetRetirementList.

Over time, of course, your money manager should provide higher returns, net of fees, than the do-it-yourself approach.