Not everyone in the household is satisfied with my internet smartypants and sloppy spreadsheets when it comes to savings and investment strategy. In the interest of domestic tranquility, I would like to pay someone for their professional opinion and advice about such matters. We have assets with any number of institutions who are happy to sell us more of their products. I prefer someone independent.
For those of you who have tread this path, how did you go about it? Anything you would have done differently? Any recommendations or advice?
My advice is to put most of your money in mutual funds, using reputable companies like Vanguard and Fidelity. And your best bet is in index funds, whose management expenses are lowest–generally below 0.1%. It has been proven time and again that actively managed funds (which cost the seller much more from an expense perspective) rarely outperform the index funds.
I’ve never hired someone but the usual advice is to hire a “fee-only” advisor, meaning someone whom you pay for their time and who does not get commissions based on your trading. Also, people who are “certified financial planners” are supposed to have a higher level of training than someone without that.
What do you mean by “one off”? Are you just looking for a one time consultation to validate (or not!) your strategy? If so, I would schedule an appointment with a Certified Financial Planner and let hem know that initially you just want them to review and comment on your strategy.
Here’s a Motley Foolarticle on finding a CFP, and one from the WSJ.
My credit union offers this type of service for free. My wife and I met with one of their advisers several years ago to go over our assets, debts, investments, and goals. He put together a nice binder for us showing investment options we might be missing, some outlook documents, and stuff like that. We were new homeowners at the time, just a few years into our careers and it really helped us get into a financially responsible mindset. It sounds like your needs are a bit different, but could still be met by someone like this in so far as consolidating everything into one place and showing how well you’re diversified and what sort of overall growth your investments have had. We’ve thought about going back to get our binder updated but it’s hard to find the time these days and we also have a good friend who is a financial adviser who looks over our portfolio.
There really wasn’t a big focus on the CU’s products/services. Obviously they offer this service in hopes that you eventually expand your business with them and we did open IRA accounts with them a few years later, but there definitely wasn’t a hard sell or anything like that at the time.
Gotcha, thanks. This is my experience thus far with my (big non-CU) bank and the holders of my various investment accounts – a knowledge and preference of their own organization. So I’d prefer to find someone independent without any or minimal chance of conflict of interest.
I looked into something similar about a year ago, but my assets are modest and I couldn’t find anyone who would talk to me unless I was willing/able to invest $500,000.
My credit union has financial advisors, but they work for the CU’s investment group and – like you – I don’t fully trust them. I dealt with one of them while settling my mom’s estate about 18 months ago, and felt like he *was *all about recommending their products. Luckily I’m the only member of my household (the dog would blow everything on Milk Bones), so I’m continuing to just do some research here and there and make the best decisions I can.
Sometimes asking questions requires a minimum level of knowledge
Which is why I was mostly asking for people’s experiences.
I’m assuming there is some sort of service where I can have a one-time review and discussion of goals, savings, current and future allocations without any ongoing management or relationship. But maybe there’s not. The CFP place around the corner charges retainer-based fees.
My firm does not. Typically I’ll have a goals and abilities meeting or two with prospective clients before we ever attempt to formalize the relationship. Remember, not only is the person evaluating me but I’m evaluating them as to whether I want them as a client.
There’s no charge for those meetings, of course. I know others who do charge for those meetings but it always seemed pointless to me.
Ok I was poking around the NAPFA site and found a nearby place that provides guidance for a more do-it-yourself approach. $200/hr, typically about 10 hours of work to put a plan together. I’m mostly looking either for confirmation we’re on track or (more likely) a single course correction.
I got financial advice from my bank.
It was free, but the adviser explained that if there were two equivalent products, he would recommend the one offered by my bank.
I retired at 55 (owning my house) so the advice was pretty good.
It might be worthwhile taking a look at the index card. It’s a pretty good encompassing of the total sum of financial advice the average person needs to know. If you really want to learn more, there’s an entire book that goes along with it that delves into the why behind the what and is a lot cheaper than any financial advisor.
There’s an entire industry dedicated to trying to make finance complicated but it’s all in the service of selling you more stuff, not optimizing your financial well being.
Oh for fuck’s sake I guess I’m just bad at writing OPs. Let’s try this again.
I am not asking for financial advice here. I am especially not asking for your financial advice. I am well versed in the baby’s-first-investing advice out there, having pored over it when I needed it 15 years ago. What I am asking for is advice in finding someone with some sort of reasonable credential who can look over what I’m doing and confirm that it is reasonable or make some suggestions so that my management of the household finances looks less like witchcraft to others.
And in doing so I’d like to avoid any advice colored by conflicts of interest. Just a simple, one-time fee for advice arrangement from someone whose job isn’t also to sell me anything else.
