To find out what the average salary of a financial advisor is, you can visit a number of career and employment sites. However, finding a definitive answer isn’t easy.

As with other careers, the average salary of a financial advisor will vary according to a number of factors. In particular, educational background, experience, location and the health of the financial market. Information also varies depending on how recently salaries have been surveyed and in what manner.

To complicate matters, financial advisors commonly earn a salary plus bonuses and commissions. It is not always clear whether data is referring to salaries only or total earnings.

That said, it is possible to get an idea of the average salary of a financial advisor by looking at starting rates and achievable (i.e. fairly common) salaries at the higher end-of the pay scale using some of the more reliable information available.

Salary information from Money Magazine & Salary.com

According to a joint Money Magazine and Salary.com survey, most Financial Advisors earn between $32,700 and $144,200. The lower figure would be earned by a new recruit with a Batchelor’s Degree and 2 years’ finance-related experience, the higher by a highly-experienced and established Financial Advisor. The median salary of Financial Advisors in this survey is $66,800.

Average salary according to Payscale.com

PayScale.com, provider of real-time salary reports, takes a different and more detailed view. It looks at the average salary of Financial Advisors from a number of perspectives: by city, experience, company size and so on.

PayScale.com data for November 2007 indicates that the average salary of Financial Advisors is $39,951 for those with less than a year’s experience and $64,945 for those with 10-19 years’ experience. 10% of Financial Advisors earn more than $100,000. How much more is not specified.

Salaries also vary considerably from city to city. The median salary for a Financial Advisor in Dallas is $40,327 while salaries in New York are almost 60% higher, at $63,936.

PayScale.com estimates that highly-experienced, established Financial Advisors earn between $100,000 to $200,000 dollars a year.

In summary…

Though by no means identical, figures from both sources – Money Magazine/Salary.com and PayScale.com are in much the same ballpark. It’s clear that the more elements you have in place – education, experience, and the city and firm within which you work – the higher your salary as a Financial Advisor will be.

Certainly you can expect to start at around $32,000 and have a realistic chance of earning $150,000 if you are invest in your education and make wise decisions about where you work. Do well and you can expect healthy additional income in the form of bonuses.

In other words, it’s up to you whether you earn an average salary as a Financial Advisor or much more.

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