You have one free hour with a financial planner...
As part of my husband's retirement plan we have a free one hour call with a financial planner. I'd like to say up front, I am in no way going to be swayed by this person to sign on for more time with them :) But... if you had one hour with a financial planner, I'm curious, what would you ask them? We are about 2 years from Coast FI, if all goes as planned.
Join the conversation
Sign up to reply, follow discussions, and connect with the ChooseFI community.
Comments
I would look/ask for tax optimizing strategies.
I'm the type of person who plans to manage my investments until it becomes clear that the value of seeking advice is greater than the fee-for-service price.
There's a conflict between what you want and what the free financial advisor wants out of the meeting. I suspect the financial advisor gets this all the time and has strategies to pivot you towards the sale.
I'd go through the work of preparing everything for the meeting, packing up my laptop, and going on a luxurious date with my partner and our laptops. I'd cancel the meeting with the financial advisor and use the same hour to explore the next best thing we need to learn to help us make the decisions on our own, or decide that it's time to pay someone because the value is greater than the cost.
This is something that's provided completely free of cost. As I stated, my husband and I have no intention of paying for this service, and the company knows that they are providing this to all the enrollees free of cost so no one is going in under any other pretenses. We are simply asking whatever questions we have, can choose to use or not use the advice, and go on our way. The most we might be out is an hour of our lives. To us we don't stand to lose much. Since we manage all of our own money I have all of the info pretty readily available already.
The services described a CFP so that is good. Do you have all the things on that list? Are there areas you know about that you have questions about? Or are you thinking they might have something you haven’t thought about?
This meeting really is to get you as a client, so they may steer you around what you are really after till you pay. know life insurance is one of the things wealthier people tend to shy away from but I can list 20 examples why it should be in your plan …
We do have life insurance. We aren't over insured but we have enough that if one of us were to pass away it would pay off the small amount we have left on our house and then put the other over FI. We always said we didn't want to get rich off the other dying. That was how we looked at it.
I love that. There are also other insurance products that are for when you are still alive. critical, chronic, long term care… all things that will put a huge hole in a FI plan.
I would ask what is the off the beaten path financial info that most people miss when dealing with a retirement sooner than the standard age, and I would also ask what advice they would give to a family member if they were not going to be able to talk to them again. What percentage of success do you feel comfortable with? Can they tailor their recommendations based on that?
“What are the biggest risks you see in our plan that we might be underestimating?”
I love this question. Thank you!
CFP are a bit different than a Financial Advisor so make sure which one you are seeing. FA is going to advise you on your stock portfolio. CFP should look at much more, and offer places you might not have thought about and may have some gaps, and more fully understand the retirement/spend stage. Be sure to let them know in as little time as possible that you are a saver with possibly a higher risk profile than many and put on the table immediately everything you have in place already and where you see yourself. That way they can avoid wasting time trying to fish it all out and figure out your path for you. If you can do that in less then 15 minutes it gives you a ton more time to ask, what else should we be doing to prepare for Coasting?
Those are very good points! I plan to have all of our info available so I can have it ready for them to review and not have to scramble and waste time. From a their site, this is what they offer - While our plans can be tailored to fit any situation, our financial planning process offers current financial position analysis, charitable gifting strategies, legacy planning, tax strategy, asset location, cash flow analysis, and retirement planning. We’ll coordinate with your other professional advisors to ensure you have the best possible underlying strategy at work now and in the future.
I'd love to hear if they have any additional insight as we get closer to stepping back in our current jobs into something that is less demanding.