[rjm1cc]

Originally Posted by bonrich

We use a fee base financial planner for our investments. Have gone this route for years and have had success with it. This Planner looked at our 401's before we retired. Then, asks about goals, etc. Looks at our risk tolerance, plans at retirement, our complete financial status, and what we wanted to do during retirement and how much we would like or need to have per month. Then he gave us choices of what Companies to use, Vanguard, TIAA-CREF, as examples, and the different funds to help us to be able to realize our goals and to make sure we do not run out of money to accomplish them. He does not get any money from these funds so there is no incentive to the Planner to push you into a particular fund. His money comes from an hourly charge when we meet up with him, which we do once a year, about 1 hour or so to review and tune up our portfolio, if needed. Also to make sure we are in the percentile we are comfortable in, either 60% stock funds-40% safe funds, or 70-30 for the more conservative investor. Also, he determined the correct RMD needed to satisfy the IRS and made the calls to the Funds to set that up along with deductions for Federal or State taxes. Also makes changes to our withdrawal as our needs change.
Nice to know if needed for advice, he is just a phone call away, which happened when we bought our first home,(very quickly) in TV. We were fortunate to have found the right person for us.

Sounds like a good guy. What is his hourly fee. Seems like it would be tough to make a living but then it is the same way most professional get paid - hourly for services rendered.
Do you compare your results to bench markets to evaluate how well the investments go?