Hmm I used this page: http://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx and went to the 10yr note and looked at its return. So to be clear, I'm talking about US Treasury Bills and not Canadian Treasury Bills. If you have a relationship with a financial institution you can buy them 'directly' (which is to say you own t-bills as opposed to buy into a fund which invests in t-bills) at $10,000 each. (insert caveat about 'Goldman Sachs' which handles sales of t-bills to individual investors and takes a cut, grrrr)

I don't have a magic bullet for finding a good financial advisor, mine cold called me in 1988 when I was at Sun and convinced me to by some California Municipal bonds. Now going on 23 years later I still consult her for financial advice. I think its more of a style thing in terms of being able to talk with someone about what makes sense and what doesn't with investing.

To give you an example, I was waaaaaaaaaaay over invested in tech in the 90's. My advisor told me I was, but didn't push me to do something different. 2000 may not have had a y2k bug disaster but it was financially painful for me.

Some folks might blame their advisor for not being forceful enough and getting me out of tech, but I don't roll that way. I heard what she had to say, we talked about the pros and cons, and I went with 'let it ride for one more roll' (a reference to the game of craps).

I was less forgiving of a recommendation for a fund manager who turned out to be a total turd. But I'm a big believer in Iacocca's comment that if more than half your decisions are good then you are ahead of the game. So advice for looking for an advisor:

1) Interview them, ask them the 'hard' questions, like "did you suggest to anyone to invest in Madoff's schemes?" (note either 'no' or 'yes' has good follow up questions, "No? It was such a great return why not?", "Yes? Even when the returns were out of line with other investments?")

2) Know that the wider the diversification the closer to the mean you will get. If the S&P 500 has a return of X% and someone tells you they can guarantee you > 1.5X% return, then you know they are not being truthful :-) Doing about 50% better than the S&P 500 occasionally has sort of emerged for me as a good razor for becoming suspicious. (note that 'banks' make there boatloads of cash on volume, not because they beat the S&P by 50% but because they beat it by a small amount but on a lot of other peoples money, and FedRsrv money but that is a whole different rant)

3) Check for compatibility. Everyone is different in how they interact with each other, and money, like sex, is one of those things that often has some really strong notions that were burned into ones brain at an impressionable age which color the way you look at everything. Risk averse? Risk seeking? Money as a tool? Money as a game score? Do they define themselves by how much money they manage? Do you? Its perhaps the hardest thing to get right.