the Price of Retirement Planning Services

We were able to meet with a financial advisor for two hours with another appointment for two hours set up for a month later. This second appointment was the perfect opportunity for us to have tiime to go home to look up more detailed information so that he could "fine tune" his advice specifically for us and our circumstances.

My husband and I both had 401k accounts, but were ready to take the next step in planning for retirement. Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds all seemed so exciting but very scary. We had no clue how to do anything, but knew that many of our friends had them and weren't concerned about retirement like we were.

The advisor was great. He didn't mind that we were not the type of people he will ever make a small fortune off of. He truly seemed to enjoy his job teaching us about different investments that were suited to us.

Ask everyone you know, especially those that seem to have no care in the world about their future retirement, if they use an advisor, and who they use. Research different thoughts and ideas you have so you can ask some intelligent questions. In our case, we read up on stocks, bonds and mutual funds, and although we still didn't understand them, we knew this was something we needed to discuss with our new advisor. This is not an area to be too frugal with. This is your future and you should use the best possible company or person that you can afford.