There's a lot of out-of-touch, clueless, practically insulting financial "advice" out there. . .I think many/most financial "advisors" can only think in terms of helping the upper middle class or upper class and have no idea of the financial conditions of most Americans.

I remember, over a decade ago, when my bank announced they had free financial advisor services available from certified financial advisors, and you could sign up for free to get advice.  They were hyping up how he could help all their customers achieve their financial goals and that he could help everyone, so they wanted all their customers to schedule an appointment.

Well, working paycheck-to-paycheck at a shiatty hourly job in a call center, not able to afford a car, barely making ends meet, and swimming in student loan debt (and having to have my parents help me with that), I knew I needed some help.

I scheduled a call with their certified financial advisor.

His first bit of advice?  That I wasn't saving for retirement and needed to put at least 10% of my income in a 401(k), and preferably up to 20%. . .my response to that was that I'm literally living paycheck to paycheck, and depending on how big the utility bills are any one given month I may literally have to sell blood plasma to afford to eat food. . .so taking 10% of my paycheck and putting it aside for retirement isn't very realistic.

He pushed back, saying I needed to make sacrifices NOW to be able to afford to retire in 40 years, and that what I put into it was tax deductible so it benefits me to invest instead of spending it on "luxuries" (as he put it). . .I was thinking that I couldn't afford to live now, so retirement seemed a pipe dream at best.  He really did want to focus on retirement planning (and tax returns), and had trouble wrapping his mind around the idea that I made about $650 every two weeks, after taxes and that after rent and utilities and food, that I really didn't have a lot of money to put into the stock market. . .he tried to tell me how great a 401(k) is because the company will match funds put into it. . .but my employer had a low cap on how much they'd put into it for each employee. . .and even then they'd ONLY do it if you were buying stock in the company itself.

So once we moved on from him wanting to make sure I was putting lots of money aside for retirement in 40 years, he started griping at me for having my parents paying my student loans, saying that at 25 I was way too old to be taking money from "the Bank of Dad" as he called it and that I needed to be 100% self-sufficient, and that included paying all my student loans, and that I shouldn't be afraid to pay them myself since the interest on them is tax deductible.  This derailed him into a long-winded speech that sounded rehearsed on getting all the best tax deductions and how some of the best advice he could give is how to maximize tax deductions.

My parents pushed me to go to college since I was in Kindergarten, raised me to basically think I literally had no choice but to go to college. . .damn straight I'd make them pay for the Student Loans. . .especially since I'd found out my mother had actually forged my signature to the Student Loan paperwork. . .I didn't even KNOW I was on student loans for the first few years, my mother kept saying I had a "college fund" paying for everything.

. . .I had to remind him that I didn't even make remotely enough money to have enough money to bother itemizing my return, so deductability of anything was irrelevant.  He didn't really seem to know how to handle someone who would find it clearly better to take the standard deduction rather than itemize, because even with every little trick he could muster up, that wouldn't get close to the standard deduction for me.

. . .and I had to point out to him that without my parents helping to pay my student loans, I'd likely default on them and the problems that come from it. . .and he really didn't seem to be able to grasp the idea that I just plain didn't have enough money for all the various investing and tax tricks he knew.

. . .ultimately our conversation fell apart once I rattled off to him, in detail, how much money I made every two weeks from my $10.50/hour call center job, how much was left after taxes and the really, really shiatty (pre-ACA) healthcare plan I could get through them, how much my rent was, how much I paid in utilities, and how much I paid in food. . .and that I couldn't even afford a car (so his advice on ways to get deductible mileage were moot), and really didn't have money to buy new clothes or really much of anything. . .so I was really calling to see if there were some ways to reduce my bills or some financial wizardry I was unaware of to help me get ahead in the world. . .

. . .he was unable to help.  He seemed genuinely puzzled by me, I was genuinely frustrated with him.

I came to the conclusion that unless you're making around $100k a year or more, "financial advisors" are a waste of oxygen.