In this era of advertising overkill, it is easy to get confused when chosing a financial product. A classic example of this is ULIPs, which are being sold as investment -- not insurance -- products.

There are nattily dressed marketing professionals, called 'investment advisors', who come with reams of documents and power-point presentations to influence the decision-making process.

But you need not follow their advise blindly. Says Jayant Pai, a certified financial planner, "For starters, one needs to check whether the advisor has domain expertise or not." So, when the advisor is selling a product to you, there are some questions you should ask.

These include, what is this product? If it is an insurance policy, then why ULIP, and not a term plan? The latter is always cheaper but does not give you returns, while the former is very expensive and gives low returns.

Why this product? You must know whether the product matches your risk profile. And more important, why your advisor thinks it is suited to your needs. Also, remember, if the advisor is pushing one product then it is clear that he has a vested interest in it.

What is the historical performance? For instance, equity-based mutual funds have given returns of over 40 per cent in the last four years. But a lot of them performed badly when the markets crashed in the late nineties. Try and get an historical mean, rather than an average for the good times only.

What will the outflow be? You need to know the investment pattern in the fund. Is it a monthly, quarterly or yearly expense? Also, what happens if you cannot continue to invest any more? What are the extra costs?

Every investment product has an array of costs -- fees, commissions, asset management charges, and so on. These extras always impact your returns on investment.

As Kartik Jhaveri, director, Transscend India puts it, "It is important to know the strategy that the investment advisor is devising for you."

Also, you need to know the monitoring process to help update yourself on your investment decisions, when required. Most important is the need for a fall-back strategy, if the investment product does not work.

So, it is important to make the effort to educate yourself before making any investment.