Pros & Cons of Having a Financial Planner

Video Transcript

"I'm Roger Groh. We're here today to talk about the pros and cons of having a financial planner. What is a financial planner I'm asked a lot? Well there are all kinds of definitions but if I were looking for a financial planner what I would be looking for would be somebody that could really look at my situation explicitly today, look at what I have today, look at where I want to be in 30 years, 40 years, 50 years perhaps for retirement and then help me figure out what I have to do to get there how much money do I have to make, what sort of return on investment do I have to make on the cash that I have, on the investments that I have built, what are the best investments for me to make and what other considerations in my life might there be, income tax, life insurance, children, gifting, anyway financial planners fall under that broad category of they help you plan to get from where you are today to where you are trying to go up the road. Now be aware that in many cases financial planners have an agenda and their goal is not necessarily to represent your best interests but to learn enough about you in order to find a weakness to sell a product. Don't do that. Be sure you pick a fee only financial planner where you are paying them cash in order to help you get from where you are going today to where you are going in the future. Now having said that some of this you can do yourself. There are many websites that you can go to today where there are programs on there that will help you do some basic financial planning. Now it's very basic but it works. Remember, fee only, make sure that they represent you only and use them because it helps to have somebody to talk to to talk about goals, reasonable goals and what you have to do to get there. They can help you. I'm Roger Groh."