Advice for choosing a financial planner?

[Luvtoride]

My first adivce for a specific planner is to ask friends/relatives.

Also know there are financial planner and investment advirsors. Financial planners could be someone that you pay that has no stake in your investment accounts. Investment advisors will haeve their hands in your investments.

I like you am "maybe" some time until retirement, but I realized this year that my investments today are where they need to be to retire (thanks to the market the last couple of years). So, just this week I moved a bulk of investments and 401K into low risk options to presure this gain. Could be right, could be wrong. But, my piece of mind is knowing already that retirement (could be early retirement) is a bit more secure.

This is the best response I’ve read here. Most here have described ”Investment Advisors”. I don’t think I’ve noticed any mention of a “Financial Plan”.
Our Fiduciary Finanical Advisor(s), they work as a team and we have 2 “Steves”( as my wife refers to them) have put together an entire Financial Plan for us including :
- retirement income needs and sources by year
- pension draw strategies I.e. joint vs single life
- social security optimization ages (not at 70 to maximize rate)
- annuity products to help achieve our goals above (yes we do have certain Annuities)
- life insurance strategies using cash value policies with our kids for both our retirement needs and legacy and gifting strategies for our kids and grandkids
- tax considerations for RMD drawdowns when we get to that point
- Asset Allocation and “bucket” strategies for both tax-advantaged and taxable accounts
- and Specific Portfolio construction using investment advisors with different strategies and disciplines

Yes we pay advisory fees for some of the Assets Under Management but I consider them quite reasonable for the overall planning and advice we get. Some may be happy doing all this themselves and minimizing fees but I don’t have the time or confidence/expertise to research and implement these financial plans.

As others stated, ask family and friends for recommendations for Advisors.


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[DrQ]

We have money in Edward Jones and Fidelity. My view on advisors is that sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.

I originally thought CFP was the way to go, so we interviewed several CFP's at Fidelity and Jones. We settled on a CFP affiliated with Jones and we gave him my DW's IRA (small) and a $25K portion of my IRA. I was not impressed, he put me into TEVA @ ~$60/share and never had a real plan. My impression was that he was just picking off the Jones buy list to fill the investment percentages to match the risk profiles. IE - just phoning it in. There was no real research or a PLAN.

I stopped communicating with him for over a year. Then a new guy started working out of his office. This guy was persistent and I finally took his call. When we met with him, he presented his investment philosophy and 6 step plan. Being an engineer, I'm big on process.

We were convinced to have him clean up our investments. He did as promised. Turns out, he used to work as a trader for large investments and had his own business at one time. It seems he LOVES researching equities and funds. Not every pick is a winner, but he evaluates performance and gets rid of the underperformers. In the past two years we have received double digit returns on the portfolios which he manages and have been working on a retirement income/distribution plan.

We hold managed accounts and unmanaged accounts. The accounts holding annuities are not managed and we do not pay a monthly fee as we do not do any trading in those accounts.

 

[Sugarcubesea]

We need to hire a financial planner.

Looking to move some old 401(k)s that are sitting with previous employers and start actually planning across all of our accounts. Expecting about 10-12 years until retirement.

Any recommendations on how to start and what to look for are appreciated!

I highly recommend using a fee based financial planner

 

[artringwald]

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