Sandra Loosemore <sandra[at]frogsonice.com> wrote in message news:<m3bribfzne.fsf[at]dartfrog.localdomain> ...
- quote -

I'll add that even if you do get a financial planner, you don't
necessarily have to follow the planner's advice. It's just another way
to get some advice and guidance.

BTW, in the book "The Millionaire Next Door," which contains some
interesting and surprising info, the authors found that although many
millionaires lead modest and thrifty lives, one thing they had no
qualms about was paying for financial advice. It can definitely be
worthwhile to have someone helping to guide you and who is aware of
your needs and goals. Whether you follow your planner's advice or not
is up to you.

The main reason that I work with a financial planner is because I think it's
difficult to consider all of the factors involved in financial decisions,
specifically, how things will be handled when my wife and I die. I don't
want poor planning today to impact the value of my estate that will be
passed on to my children and my grandchildren.


"Relaxification" <relaxification[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:dae65ca5.0407191021.21d7a621[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

me <ha[at]look.nospam> wrote in message news:<jn72g0hlm294dhva2tfdv37fqd3ksit8rc[at]4ax.com> ...
- quote -

I only keep about 5k in a regular bank account. Right now everything
else is in INGDirect, although I'm going to shift some into a decent
portfolio. I want 50K easily accessible, though. The rest can just
sit there and grow (if possible.)

On 19 Jul 2004 19:20:16 GMT, relaxification[at]hotmail.com
(Relaxification) wrote:

Get the money out of the bank account. Inflation is eroding the value
of your money as it rots in the bank. Leave some for an "emergency
fund" that can be used with no tax issues and get the rest working for
you at 8% or more return a year.

Good thing not having CC debt. Keep it that way.

"JSR" <basil[at]nycap.rr.com> wrote in message news:<_3jLc.76459$bp1.33927[at]twister.nyroc.rr.com> ...
- quote -

I appreciate all of your advice. No, we don't have kids. Yes, we
plan on them. No, my wife won't take much time off work.

My income is probably going to double or triple over the next 3 years
or so, so I imagine our income by, say, 2007, should be in the region
of 300-400K per year. At that point I can't see not using a financial
planner - the incentive is there for him/her to perform well.

I also can't see ever needing more than this kind of income. Even now
our needs are more than met - any extra income will seem like icing on
the cake.

But I do see people all the time who earn many millions of dollars a
year. Their lives are markedly different than mine. And when I ask
them what it feels like not to think about costs they all say the same
thing - their lifestyle just expanded to fit their income and it
doesn't feel any different than when they made 50K a year.

Sandra Loosemore <sandra[at]frogsonice.com> wrote in message news:<m33c3mfhwq.fsf[at]dartfrog.localdomain> ...
- quote -

That's a good point, although given the real estate market here
(Venice, California), it sure is tempting to own more property.

I agree completely, I neglected to mention that the brief list of beginning
steps was not in any particular order. Some of the items I mentioned take
priority over others, especially your retirement and current financial
stability.

-JSR

- quote -

relaxification[at]hotmail.com (Relaxification) writes:

- quote -

Hmmmm. It seems to me that if you don't have the time or interest to
manage your own finances, getting into the landlord business is absolutely
the wrong thing to do. Owning and managing rental property is a risky,
time-intensive form of investment, compared to (say) picking out a few
good mutual funds and just parking your money there.

-Sandra

Relaxification-

Believe it or not you're actually ahead of the game by merely beginning to
research what you and your wife should do with your personal finances.
Unfortunately, its a confusing and contradictory world out there and you're
bound to discover a wide array of professional opinions. Do some reading,
talk to a variety of planners and get second opinions before you make your
initial moves. As the process moves forward try hard not to be paralyzed by
indecision for making no decision is a decision in itself.

I was struck by a few things that were absent from your initial message,
maybe this would be a good place to start. the following isn't inclusive but
it will hopefully cover some preliminary basics.

1. Kids? If you have some are you saving for their education yet? If you
aren't you may have a tax deduction on your state return coming your way. If
you don't have any yet but plan to have some you will want to think about a
couple of things. Will you wife continue to work? If she takes "time off"
will that be for a few months, half a year or continue at half time? How
much will child care cost in your area? Find out who offers child care in
your area and find out what their waiting period is. Do they take infants?

2. Life insurance? If you have some will it cover your needs in the event of
either your death and or your wife's death? Have you done a financial needs
assessment on that life insurance to see if the death benefits will cover
your expenses going forward? You'll get a variety of different opinions as
to the type of life insurance is best in your situation. I'm fond of the
"buy term, invest the rest" philosophy for general life insurance
situations.

3. Disability insurance? Believe it or not, you're chances of being disabled
for more than six months are greater than your chances of premature death at
your age. Its important stuff because you want to make sure your finances
will remain sound should you or your wife become unable to earn your current
income.

4. Umbrella coverage? If you don't have this yet I would call your auto /
home carrier and request it. Its not impervious but its cheap and you can
easily afford 1 - 2 million in excess liability coverage.

5. Home insurance? Does your current home policy cover the value to rebuild
your home in the event of a catastrophic loss. Talk to your agent and
compare your coverage to the cost of rebuilding your home.

6. Are you maxing out your contributions to your 401(k)? If not, do it.

7. Are you maxing out your contributions to your traditional IRAs? If not,
do it.

8. Wills?

9. Even though you have a solid income you may find that there are some
areas for trimming fat from your budgets. In many of the cases I've seen
similar to yours there is a fairly substantial after-tax cash sum that can
be generated each month by trimming down on unnecessary expenses. You may
notice no difference in the quality of life you current experience. And in
doing so the time value of that money, if invested, could result in a
substantial sum

I need to run now. I hope that's a helpful start. There is a lot more to do
and a lot more to consider. Feel free to e-mail me if I can expand on
anything.

-JSR

"JSR" <basil[at]nycap.rr.com> writes:

- quote -

And one minor note on this - these things (and, actually,
a few others) all come _before_ worrying about saving for
your kids colleges. Ultimately, if it comes down to it,
you (or they) can borrow money for school - you can't
borrow money for retirement. It may appear "selfish",
but in these matters, you and your retirement need to
come first - even though actual retirement itself will
likely take place after they finish school.


--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

Thanks. And sorry for the typo in the subject line.

I guess it does just boil down to the question of how much time I want
to devote to this. My thought is that I'll probably take a portion of
our disposable income and throw it at a financial planner with the
thought that I won't touch it for many years. And the rest I'll keep
with ING and maybe use as a down payment on a second house (we could
rent our first one out and maintain the mortgage quite easily.)

Naturally, it's cheaper to do the financial planning on your own. It's
just a matter if you want to spend the time and effort in research to
setup your own portfolio. If you don't want to spend the time, then I
suggest you interview 3-4 financial advisors before you make a
decision. Remember, there's advisors and financial advisor companies
out there that won't look out for your best interest. I found out the
hard and expensive way with American Express Financial Advisors ( see
http://www.amexsux.com ).

Good luck.

Pete


relaxification[at]hotmail.com (Relaxification) wrote in message news:<dae65ca5.0407191021.21d7a621[at]posting.google.com> ...
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Sandra Loosemore <sandra[at]frogsonice.com> wrote in message news:<m3bribfzne.fsf[at]dartfrog.localdomain> ...
- quote -

Thanks. Believe me, I'm not going to jump into anything without
getting many second opinions. But I thought this might be a place to
start.

Relaxification wrote:

- quote -

What you should do depends on your preferences. The one thing a
*good* financial planner can do for you is to help you focus on that
matter, assuming you really want a true financial plan. A good
planner is not going to make overreaching promises about "beating
the market" or making a killing for you--rather, he/she will help
you take a balanced approach and determine based on your situation
and tolerances what types of options make the most sense for you.

Do it yourself might make sense *IF* that's truly the best use of
your time. Time is something we all have a limited supply of, and
to do the job *right* is likely going to consume significant time
getting up to speed on the issues involved. There are some very
good resources out there, but there's also junk (of course, that's
true of planners as well <grin> ). But even with the good resources,
you'll need to devote time.

Now if what you want is someone who can "pick winners" then it's
likely both strategies (do it yourself or hire a planner) will fail.
And that's the risk in both the do it yourself and selecting a
planner issue--being seduced by promises of "quick riches" to select
either the resources you use for doing it yourself *OR* the planner
you decide to work with.

--
Ed Zollars, CPA
Phoenix, Arizona

In article <dae65ca5.0407191021.21d7a621[at]posting.google.com> ,
Relaxification <relaxification[at]hotmail.com> wrote:

- quote -

To quote Bob Newhard, what do you think you should do? There are
pleanty of do-it-yourself books out there. You will not come out
all that badly by investing in no-load index funds or ETF's over
time. Then again, you have enough money where you can get the
attention of the mid to upper levels of the financial planners.
They may have options and strategies that you don't get from the
dummies books. Keep in mind that you will pay for this service.
Then again, you will not have to spend your time doing the reading
and work. It all boils down to how you want to spend your time.

-john-

--
================================================== ==================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 john[at]johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
================================================== ==================

relaxification[at]hotmail.com (Relaxification) writes:

- quote -

You don't have to be a genius to manage your own investments, but it
does take some reading and some careful thought about your risk
tolerance, goals, and the extent of personal involvement you want,
before you take the plunge. I suggest you get a couple books out of
the library or bookstore and/or visit some of the financial planning
sites on the web instead of relying on advice from random people on
the net, though. Take your time and don't commit all your money at
once.

-Sandra

Hello all.

Here's our basic financial status:

My wife and I own a home which cost us 540K 18 months ago. It's now
worth about 700K (we refinanced the mortgage and had an appraisal, and
it seems congruent with other recent house sales in our neighborhood.)
We put about 55K down on the house and the monthly is about 2600.00.

I own my car. My wife has a couple of years left on hers at 450 a
month.

We have no credit card or student debt. We have about 80K in savings,
sitting at INGDirect.

I'm 37. She's 34.

Our combined income is about 200K. We both contribute to 401Ks and
save about 2K per month after everything is paid out.

What do we do with our money? We have a fair amount of disposable
income - should we just get a financial planner? Or is it just
simpler/cheaper to do it ourselves?