Poll: Pay for financial planning?

[LD92599]

I've been wanting to meet w/ our tax accountant who does fee-for financial planning. My thinking is an un-biased opinion or look over our investments, insurance, etc. We also use Edward Jones which is commission based.

Which, in your opinion, do you prefer? And why?

Thanks!

Laura

[wellyes]

Oh nevermind! Misunderstood the question!

[BabyMine]

I hope I understood the question but when we did ours it was a fee and also comission. The initial fee was very low.

[niccig]

We had fee based, and he wanted to push certain investments or insurance. We only agreed with one. We're now seeing our accountant - DH and I disagree on what to do with out money, and the accountant is a 3rd party that has known DH for 20 yrs. Sometimes it's easier to hear things from a 3rd party.

[Radosti]

We tried a fee based one last year with Ameritrade. It was a $600 fee and the guy reshuffled our 401K (can't say it's any better, may be worse) and had us switch to his life insurance. Then, he went MIA half way through the year. I finally applied for a refund with Ameritrade and got my $600 back.

[KBecks]

If you're going commission based, you're still paying, it's just a different compensation structure than a fee-only financial planner.

We are managing our own investments through no-load funds and self-managed trades. I have been thinking of hiring a financial planner because we are not keeping up with it as we should, but I have huge trust issues handing it over to someone else. I'd almost rather screw it up myself than have someone else screw it up for me (and paying them for the service).

I don't know..... I think that looking for referrals is good, but I also think it's generally hard for people to evaluate their performance unemotionally, and so I don't know if I can trust referrals either.

[jk3]

A family member is our investment advisor. We pay a 1% commission on a quarterly basis. Our accountant is fee based.

[hillview]

We are sitting on the wall on this one. We've interviewed 4 people who were all commission based then our life insurance guy offered to run scenarios for us for free (with the idea to sell us more investments). So far we are sitting on our cash (which we are NOW happy about).
/hillary

[gobadgers]

We're facing the big dilemma with this. So far, we have been managing everything ourselves. But my husband's family and my family have wildly different view of money management and we're trying to hash out our style. My mom and dad have always managed their own money and have done very well with it. But it seems like it took a LOT of research and time (and confidence!). My husband's family has 'a guy'. He was a family friend from way back, so trust was never a problem for them. We could use their financial planner. This sounds bad, but he's older than my parents and he won't be around to continue to help us by our retirement!

I guess if we had that person that we trusted without question, I'd like to have someone a little more knowledgable and 'in the loop' than myself manage my money. Since we don't, managing it ourselves seems like the next best option. There are a lot of resources out there, sometimes I just have a hard time getting up the motivation to stay on top of it (especially these days, I hate to even look!).