How do you find a Financial Planner?

[roddysmom]

Morning,

 

Do I just go to the Bank? Call up the bank? It's BofA and not all of the branches have FP's.

 

Do I just flip through the Yellow Pages?

 

Our Re-fi went through, have nice bank balance at least for today.. LOL .

 

I had originally posted here: http://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=194956 took some of the advice and so now that we have everything in order, things paid off, now I need to move on to the next step, and that is, I guess, finding a Financial Planner!

 

Here's what I've done from conversations on the above-mentioned thread:

 

 

1. DH's company finally started a 401. Joined/ *check*

2. Paid off bills, CC's, car, loans. / *check*

3. Set up savings account "emergency fund" = to DH's 3 months salary - doing this today / *check*

4. Set up our BofA Savings with $1500 for those "next day" emergencies such as car repairs, washer, frig, waterheater, vet bills, etc. / *check*

5. At least a portion of our Re-Fi is going to be invested in a second house when the foreclosure's begin with those high ARM's in several months. We are already scouring properties in Charleston, SC where we want to eventually end up in 5-7 years. / *check*

6. We are going to make our 40 acres of land work for us. Working with the broker who did our Re-Fi, in about 6 months, we will start using the land. I need to find out all kinds of zoning info, but have to dig up the paperwork on the land first. It's somewhere in a tub in our attic.

 

Now, we have $50K left here after the Refi.

 

After all of our expenses vs. income we are left with around $2k per month.

 

Okay.. so what's the plan? *clueless*

 

How do I find a financial planner? I have to tell ya, reading things about MutualFunds, CD's, IRA's, 401's - makes my head spin. I have no understanding of this stuff. Stocks, bonds, etc.. bore me to tears and the glazed look in my eyes becomes apparent. Believe me, I've tried reading it - but I get no where, none of this makes sense. I just know we have $$ and I need to put it somewhere to make me MORE $$!!

 

 

Thanks!

 

KH

Edited August 25, 2006 by roddysmom

[54regcab]

1) Max out Rotha IRA's for you and DW through a mutual fund company such as TRowe Price. Start with a simple S&P500 index fund or a target date retirement fund.

2) What rate did you get on the refi? It might make sense to use some of the $50K to pay down the debt you refi'ed to the house. Remember you didn't pay anything off by doing the refi, you simply moved the debt.

3) Don't invest in ANYTHING that you don't expect to return AT LEAST the interest rate on your mortgage. This probably means no bonds in 401K or IRA's.

Edited August 26, 2006 by 54regcab

[Athena53]

I'm going to make an unpopular suggestion here and recommend an Edward Jones office. The reason it will be unpopular is that EJ sells mutual funds with front-end loads. Basically it's a commission- if you invest less than $25,000 it's 5.75%. If you invest $40K in those funds it's 5% and if you invest $50K it's 4.5%. But, the annual expenses are low and they're good funds. To me, if you're planning to hold funds for 10-20 years, the up-front commission isn't a big deal. (Others will disagree with me.)

 

This is the only brokerage where I'd send someone who just doesn't understand investments and wants someone they can trust. They are painfully honest and they're on the conservative side. I've been investing for over 30 years and that's where 90% of my money is. (The rest is at Charles Schwab so I can access their research- I like to do my own assessment of my investments, too.) Your investments will drop when the markets drop but it won't be as bad and you won't get caught holding 100% of your $$$ in whatever the latest hot trend is and have it all crash at once (like the dot-coms).

 

You do need to educate yourself regardless. Go to the library and look at the books on investments. They're not all dull. (I saw one called "Girls just want to have funds!")

 

http://www.epinions.com (reviews of products/services by customers) has a section on financial planners- you can also do a search there.

Edited August 26, 2006 by Athena53