Financial planners

[spike13]

My FI and I were discussing how to organize our finances. I''ve always wanted to go to a financial planner, but am lost at how to find a good one. Most folks I know don''t use one and I haven''t found a good review resource online.

Any recommendations for someone in the SF bay area? Any good advise on how to approach this?

I also want to set up all the things like a will and trust. My FI owns his own business and I want to make sure we''ve got things taken care of in the event of something bad happening.

 

[violet02]

I found this one on Yelp.com
http://www.yelp.com/biz/waddell-and-reed-shawn-okumura-campbell#hrid:qw9enmuShs_YTisgBVCmZg/query:shawn%20okumura

He's been great so far. We hired him to be our financial planner a couple of months ago. We're trying to get our finances in order to purchase a house.

I'm not sure about the wills and trust thing in re: to financial planners. My best friend is a lawyer that specializes in setting up wills and trusts so that may be the way you want to go with that (lawyver vs financial planner i mean).

 

[Regular Guy]

Two suggestions:

1) Through my work, and it''s provision of free services, like for finding advice for child care providers, and counselors, etc...it also offers counseling help for budgeting. But...they also picked it up a notch...essentially offering advice for financial planning...and before deciding to buy our current house (also somewhat against the planner''s advise !) we went this route.

2) This was after not deciding to go with a person we''d pay. We did shop this down through two venues. We sought to triangulate between the people listed with the no fee association for planners, and (since we''re in DC) the Washingtonian''s guide to good financial planners. We narrowed this down to five guys, and almost did this, but ended up going route #1.

Many employers do offer route 1. (I''m forgetting the name for this generic service...maybe someone can help me). It''s a telephone call...and may not be nearly as good as what #2 can get you...but you can''t beat the price.

 

[bebe]

We have used the same one for 11 years and the guy is a part of our lives, so to speak!

He has been with us through many changes in our lives. We are grateful we found him, there are
so many "planners" out there. You are wise to do your homework. One of the issues you might
want to investigate is how they are paid. There are different ways, some might be better for your
situation than others. And ask what all the fees are. When we sold our business and the money
was invested, our fees were shocking, but still after much research, we discovered very much
in line with industry standards. We also set up wills, trusts and the such through our planner.
We have never bought insurance from him, he doesn''t sell it. But I see that frequently in ads
from other firms. Something about that bothers me! He has offered advice in those areas, but never
tried to sway us one way or the other.

For some basic information you might want to check out www.assetbuilder.com
Scott Burns who writes a weekly column for our local newspaper, started this site.
I have found a lot of IMHO, good, straight forward advice there. Best of luck.