Do you use a financial planner?

Almost exactly what atj said. My planner is part of Charles Schwab. My mom used the same guy. He's helped me to be able to retire several years ago at age 49. His fees are based upon the size of my portfolio. I meet with him face to face once a year, but as atj said, he and his office staff are available whenever I have a question (which is infrequent). I highly recommend using one.

We started working with one from Wells Fargo a year ago. Prior to that we had talked with someone through our work about deferred compensation. The financial planner took ALL the pieces of our life and gave us a review. He made some suggestions, which we followed through on.

He confirmed we were on the right track concerning retirement. This helped our peace of mind as the Internet and TV commercials can scare you.

We use a financial planner who works off a percentage of the investment. He's associated with DH's business tax accountants. They work together. We meet about 2-3 times a year and go over the latest snapshot. He's been really helpful in coordinating everything and keeping a balanced portfolio.

Yes we have a family friend who is our CPA and another family BFF is an investment broker/stock broker.

Our attorney gave us a name a few years ago. We use him. His is with Raymond James and is now one of their "big dogs"--helps with the company plans or ?? We pay a percentage of our investment as his fee.
He has steered us well during the times the market was dropping very fast...we did not loose as much as people we know.

Make sure you do NOT get with someone who is unethical and you lose your money.

We meet every 6 months. I can ask for a meeting any time I wish, but those two meetings happen each year.

we have one..paid by a fee off the investments. my dh met him in graduate school (MBA). we have a tax consultant..friend works at that accounting firm. and we have an attorney..who did our estate planning.

We use a friend who is Certified Financial Planner and a Raymond James broker.

We met him at church, got to know him and his family and decided to employ his expertise professionally. I don't ordinarily mix professional services with church relationships but this one exception has been very advantageous.

I do know that Dave Ramsey offers a referral service. If you trust his teachings/methods you could look into his ELP website for local services.

I work for an independent financial planner. He charges a flat fee to just develop a financial plan (the fee will vary according to the specific circumstances). if someone comes to us to transfer in assets for investments he does not charge for a plan. He sees almost all of our clients on a quarterly basis and is available at anytime to answer any questions that come up in between.

I have to say I like the way he handles things much better than the advisor who did our financial plan - and she was family! She looked at our assets, made some suggestions of how much to save for retirement and sold us an insurance policy. She never made any recommendations for investments at all. We provide recommendations along with the plan...sometimes it is a product we offer but sometimes it's also just adding to their current investments.

Best way to find someone is a personal referral from someone you know. Pretty much every client we have came to us that way.

My father is a financial planner so I grew up with it.

Budgets drilled into my head from a very young age

We have had two financial planners. One ignored us completely, we could never get a hold of him or meet. Another was arrested for fraud and tampering with customers files without their knowledge, like changing the percentage of his fee to suit him.
We found this out through friends just after we signed up. We cancelled all our pending transactions and stayed away from him. Another one we tried, finally met with us, but expected us to put all our money in his pet company. He said he put all his own money with this company. We went home and looked up the company, Allianz, they got terrible reviews, people were complaining that they couldn't get their money out when they needed it, just a real customer service nightmare. The guy refused to see us after we refused putting all our money with Allianz. Clearly, I know how to pick them *insert eyeroll*. I will check out some of the companies you all mentioned. Thanks

I self manage all of our finances because I don't trust other people to do the right thing with our money. I take care of all our taxes (we had a rental for the last two years). I manage our retirement accounts at Vanguard and through the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). I manage our kids 529 plans. We're set for early retirement in the next five years (at age 52, or sooner, if we can afford it). I may hire a professional at some point, but I've done a lot of research and am happy with the returns on our investments so far. It's not for everybody, but it works for us.