FJcruiser is spot on!
the best financial advice you can ever get is to have your own online brokerage account: it is not rocket science, very user friendly softwares, most majors nord american banks offer you that option.
what to put in your portfolio? keep it simple, check the major investment cpies online like fidelity, Franklin templeton, dynamic agf etc... look at the underlying stocks in their portfolio's (depending on your risk profile) and choose the same for your own portfolio.
lets assume you are using an advisor, his services are "free" (he gets paid from the investment cpy) but there will be a managment fee of roughly 3% on top of your gain (or losses...).
that 3% MER usually includes an "insurance" component that will garantee your capital invested.
lets look at some numbers:
you invest $100,000 over 20 years contributing $2000/mth:
-using an advisor/investment cpy at a 10% net return, you investment will growth to $2,251,545
(seems like a lot of cash but hardly enough to retire on if you consider inflation...)
-bypassing the middle men, doing your own portfolio with the same underlying stocks than the example above but NO MER fees, you investment will growth to $3,594,164
So, are you willing to pay an extra +million dollars for an adviser you will probably see once every 3 years ?(probably never since this industry has a 90% turn-over...)
I got approach by one of these advisor from deveere, very nice guy, trustworthy etc, I always ask the question " do you have your own online brokerage account online?" when they say "no" that means that they understand very little about finance...
These people are mostly sells person and there is nothing wrong with that, they are not the one actually investing your money, fund manager take care of that.
good luck/planning in your financial decisions.
PS: I used monthly compounding interest in my illustration.