I am a CFP and I am an advisor at an RIA firm. I will not and cannot speak for all who call themselves an advisor. My first and biggest piece of advice is to look for a fiduciary relationship if you decide you do want an advisor. Most of the bad experiences listed here and elsewhere can be avoided by taking this step. A fiduciary has the legal requirement to put the needs of their client above their own so you shouldn't have anybody selling high fee or commission products. And if they do, you have the power of the law to go after them. Stock brokers and insurance agents are NOT fiduciaries. In fact, Wall Street is fighting very hard right now in Congress against a proposal to force all financial advisors to adhere to the fiduciary standard. They sure as hell don't want to have to put their clients ahead of their commissions! CFPs are required by the board to adhere to the fiduciary standard. That is a private accrediting board enforcing that so there is a bit of caution in looking for only a CFP. RIAs (Registered Investment Advisors) are required by law to be a fiduciary so if you go to an RIA, you have a lot of legal protection from misdeeds. Most people don't know about these distinctions. And yes, I do think that my credentials and firm's business model is the best :-) But that is because they are.
I agree, not everybody needs an advisor. This is a website focused on early retirement by saving and investing. Most of the users here are do it yourselfers in financial matters and wouldn't go to an advisor. I will also say that for many on here, personal finance is a hobby that they enjoy spending time on and welcome looking into new topics related to the issue. So I will ignore the "some people need advisors" spiel and give some reasons why someone here may want to consider an advisor. Although, again, I will say that not all advisors do all these things so you do need to shop around for an advisor that can do what you need:
Taxes/Tax Loss Harvesting/Tax Planning-Betterment gets some good reviews on here about this. Advisors have been doing the same thing for a long time. Right now we're working our butts off tax planning as there are many funds that are kicking off large capital gain distributions this year (check your midcap, small cap and international funds). People tout 10%-12% annual investment returns. Proper tax planning can save you (some people say "make you") 20%-40%. I think the infatuation with Betterment is because of the lower price than most advisors. That's fine; they are robots and that's all they do so they should be cheaper.
Investment Expertise-I have to say, every time I see "100% VTSAX" posted on this site, I cringe. I like Vanguard and my firm uses some of their funds so it's not the fund choice, it's the asset allocation. Really? No international funds? No alternatives? Zero bonds? If you want to be that aggressive, why not overweight small or mid cap funds instead of having mainly large cap? Emerging Markets? Having a proper asset allocation, and rebalancing back to it, is very worthwhile. Easy doesn't seem like a good asset allocation to me.
Investment Options-We custody at Schwab and our master account is aggregated to meet minimum purchase requirements for lower cost institutional share classes. Some funds we use (we use some active funds) require a minimum of $5million or more. Because our master account has that, I can buy $1k of that lower cost institutional fund for a client. So even if you invested in the same funds we do, we do it in the institutional share class for less and thus offset some of our management fee from that. Also, because of our size, we have access to investments that aren't generally available, or available much cheaper through us, than the public at large.
Size benefits-Because of our size, we have preferential pricing at Schwab for trading fees and margin. We got some of our clients margin loans in the 2%s to purchase real estate. They currently aren't worried about ever paying that off. It's not your account that is negotiating with Schwab, it's our $350 million that is. It's also possible to get discounts with other professionals because of size and quantity of referrals. Some larger firms may even have in-house professionals.
Planning-True, most advisors won't know much about early retirement; we are rare birds here. But most advisors do many types of planning. Including retirement, college for grand/kids and Social Security benefits. Most of those that took advantage of the recently closed 'File and Suspend' Social Security benefit had advisors guiding them through it as most didn't know about it. Advisors can also weigh in on estate planning, insurance needs, business planning etc. Just make sure they are qualified to give advice or can find qualified people who can give that advice.
These are some reasons why someone on here may want to consult an advisor. Many on here won't or don't need to. Maybe a flat fee advisor for a certain topic is better than a management fee for you. It all depends on you, your needs and the value the advisor can add.
Definitely look for the fiduciary standard. That's way more important than goes to the same church/club/school/buddy knows....