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Financial/Retirement Planning is a step-by-step process. 
Receive a FREE Comprehensive 40-page Financial/Retirement Plan from WHI Financial Services
(follow the below link to WHI’s profile):
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WHI Financial Services helps hundreds of families each year to reach their goals! 
See if you are on-track to retire when you expect.  

WHI Financial Services provides their Free Financial/Retirement Plan which includes:

*Age @ Retirement Analysis - see if you can afford to Retire at your desired retirement age
*Annual Contribution Analysis – see if you are investing enough for retirement
*Annual Investment Returns Analysis – pre & post retirement returns needed to meet your retirement goals

*Asset Allocation Graphs - for your investments based on your retirement goals

*Estate Planning – Current & Alternative Analysis and Tax Estimate
*Survivor Needs Analysis

*Insurance Summary
*Long-Term Care Needs

*Net Worth Statement
*Retirement Capital Analysis

To receive WHI’s FREE Retirement Plan: email your request to info@AllFinancialAdvisors.com

We hope this helps.   
The AllFinancialAdvisors Team

 
There is an ongoing debate in the securities industry about the extent to which insurance agents are qualified (and should be sought out) to provide investment advice.

Because of products like annuities – which are financial products that accept investors’ money in exchange for securing a steady future (or immediate) cash flow, and are often used for retirement saving – fast-talking insurance agents have been known to blur the lines between financial advisory and insurance.

While annuities can be an excellent addition to any investor’s retirement plan, let’s face it – insurance is a business driven by sales commissions.  Insurance agents are definitely NOT financial advisors. 

Insurance agents will often tout and/or promote the insurance products that charge the highest fees and generate the greatest sales commissions – NOT products that an independent advisor would likely recommended, especially if those financial advisors are bound by a fiduciary duty and are seeking the best interest of their clients.

So when making your retirement decisions, or if you’re considering purchasing an annuity product, we recommend you work with independent financial advisors whose primary goal is to protect and grow your wealth.

While insurance or annuities may be a part of your financial plan or investment portfolio, your finances and retirement planning should not be left to an insurance salesman.

In addition to investment expertise, and ideally objective advice, financial advisors will be able to advise you on the most appropriate insurance or annuity products, and can often provide insight regarding those products that are safest and have the lowest fees.

We also recommend choosing 2-3 financial advisors to interview before selecting one to work with.  This will allow you to see the various expertise each advisor has and give you choices to base this very important decision on.  A decision that will most likely be one of the major ‘partnering’ decisions in your retirement years… 

We hope this helps!  Thanks.  The AllFinancialAdvisors.com team.

Getting Started and Taking a Step Back: Financial Planning

In our world of ubiquitous financial information, it is easy to get caught up in short-term trends when thinking about our money:
* What are the hottest stocks?
* Which mutual fund managers have the best performance this year?
* What is Jim Cramer telling me to sell today?
* What is Suze Orman telling me to do this week?

However, turning your hard-earned cash into more cash is only the tip of the iceberg. 

Knowing how to manage and budget your spending, income and saving is crucial, and in the long run trumps returns of any size.  This is where financial planning comes in. 

Think of stars like M.C. Hammer, Michael Jackson, and Mike Tyson.  Each of these individuals made tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars, and had access to high-end investment solutions – yet managed to wind up broke and bankrupt before the middle age of 40.  Why? Because of a lack of financial planning!

Contrary to popular belief, the easiest way to become rich is not to start a company or win the lottery, but instead to start saving from an early age and create a financial plan that maximizes tax efficiency and suits your lifestyle needs.

If you begin saving for retirement at 25, putting away $2,500 per year, you will have an astonishing $700,000 by age 65 (assuming annual growth of 8%).  By contrast, if you put away $2,500 per year, but wait until age 35 to start, you will have only $306,000 by age 65 (assuming the same growth rate). That is the magic of compounding and saving – or as Warren Buffet likes to call it, the “snowball” effect.

So… instead of chasing the latest financial trend, start by choosing a financial planner or a financial advisor who provides this service.

Financial advisors or a financial planner will examine your situation individually, create a customized financial plan, and help you achieve the future you desire.  Financial planners typically charge an hourly or fixed fee for their services; some financial advisors offer financial planning solutions in-house as well. 

Don’t expect this kind of personalized help and service from a mutual fund!

NOTE: Experts recommend contacting 2-3 financial advisors or financial planning firms, in order for an individual to contrast and compare each financial advisor or firm; thus making the best-qualified choice for their unique situation.

AllFinancialAdvisors.com is an online resource of financial advisors, financial planners and wealth managers.  It is a independent 3rd party directory of Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) managed by FINRA and the SEC (United States Securities and Exchange Commission).

Excerpts written by Ara Oghoorian, CFA: ACap Asset Management
(Beverly Hills, CA).

If you’re like most Americans, ringing in the New Year also means resolving to change old habits, or start new ones. Year after year, getting one’s personal finances in order consistently ranks as one of the top 5 New Years resolutions.  As with any resolution, the hard part is not making the promise, but actually putting it into action – consistently.   

Monitor Your Credit Rating / Credit Scores
A good credit score is the single most important factor in getting a bank loan to buy a home or a car, among many other things. Therefore, it is crucial to check your credit report; one overlooked mistake can cause havoc when you least expect it. Under current laws, you are entitled to a free copy of your credit report each year. Put a reminder on your calendar to check your credit every January.

Put Your 401K and Other Savings on Auto-pilot
If your employer has a 401k (403b, 457, etc.) plan, contribute the maximum amount while still maintaining a manageable lifestyle.  If you have maxed out your 401k and can still save some more, open either a Roth IRA (if you qualify) or a non-deductible IRA and contribute any additional savings. While your current income is finite, your future needs are infinite. If you would like to save for your child’s college education, only do so after you have saved for your own retirement. As I tell my clients, you can always borrow for college, but you can never borrow for retirement.

Pay Off Credit Cards
If you carry a balance on one or more credit cards, select the one with the highest interest rate and begin aggressively paying down the balance. If you can only make the minimum payments on your credit cards, begin cutting non-essential monthly expenses to devote more funds to paying off the debt.

Meet with a Fee-Only Financial Advisor
You don’t need to be a millionaire to benefit from working with a competent financial advisor.  A Fee-Only financial advisor can help you: identify or sharpen your financial goals; develop a detailed written plan to help keep you on track; identify an appropriate asset allocation that is commensurate with your circumstances; minimize your taxes; and most importantly, put your plan into action and provide you with detailed updates.  A Fee-Only financial advisor is like a doctor for your finances.

SUMMARY: Executing on all four (4) of these steps and you are certain to see tangible improvements in your financial health.  May your 2011 be a prosperous and healthy year for you and your family.
***

AllFinancialAdvisors.com: Many of our advisors are members of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA: the nation’s leading organization promoting Fee-Only comprehensive financial planning) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA).  Using the services of a qualified financial advisor and/or Wealth Manager (to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your financial picture) will ensure you can retire comfortably!  NOTE: Experts recommend contacting 2-3 financial advisory firms, so that one may compare/contrast each firm, thus making the best-qualified choice.

If you’re retired with little or no savings, mounting debts, and no financial advisor, you’re not alone.

According to the CESI Debt Solutions survey of over 200 retirees, the results of which were released yesterday, almost 40% of retired Americans have added to their credit-card debt since retiring. What’s more, they aren’t worried about paying it back before they die.

But even more sobering is the survey’s finding that over 50% of respondents have saved less than $50,000 (with many reporting that they have nothing in savings). Remember, these are retired folks!

CESI Executive Vice President Neil Ellington stated to CNBC that retirees who are accumulating debt likely feel like it’s too late to do anything about it, so they decide not to even try to get their credit cards paid off. He also observed that many retirees feel like they’ve earned some of the finer things in life, even if they have to put those things (travel, for instance) on credit cards. And finally, he explained that retirees who are in debt don’t know what to do about it, and they’re ashamed to ask for help.

All Financial Advisors thinks there’s a simple solution for those who are retired and in debt: Talk to a financial advisor. Comprehensive financial advisors are trained to help people reduce debt and build savings. And judging by the results of the CESI survey, that’s exactly what retirees need to do.

If you’re in this boat — retired, in debt, nothing saved and no financial advisor — there’s no need to be ashamed. Fee-only financial advisors know it’s not easy to bare your financial soul, but that’s what they’re there for. Only when your financial advisor knows everything about your financial life, including your debt, savings, insurance, estate plan, assets and more, can he or she come up with a plan you can use to actually pay off your debt, build your savings, and live out your golden years free of financial worry.

Has growing debt and dwindling savings made your retirement difficult? You can take the first steps toward changing your situation right now. Search for trustworthy financial advisors in your area. Interview two or three (if you’re not sure what questions to ask, check out our FAQs). See if one of the financial advisors you interview feels right to you, and hire that one. You can live out the rest of your life without the burden of financial stress. Let the financial advisors here at All Financial Advisors help.

Fiduciary: A Fancy Word For Trustworthy

Webster’s defines fiduciary as “of, relating to, or involving a confidence or trust: as held or founded in trust or confidence; holding in trust.” The word trust appears three times in that twenty-word definition, telling us it all boils down to . . . well, trust.

Fiduciary is a crucial word to remember when you’re evaluating financial advisors.  A fiduciary is bound by law to act in your best interests at all times, even when your best interests are in conflict with the fiduciary’s financial interests.

So what does that have to do with financial advisors?  Plenty.  Never assume a financial advisor is a fiduciary.  In fact, unless your financial advisor is an attorney, a certified public accountant (CPA) or a registered investment advisor (RIA), chances are, he or she is not a fiduciary.  Only lawyers, CPAs and RIAs are automatically fiduciaries.

And why is that important? Imagine a financial advisor who gets a commission for convincing you to invest in certain funds, insurance policies or other financial products. Do you think that advisor will recommend what’s best for you 100% of the time, or will you sometimes be steered in the direction of those financial products that result in a tidy fee for the advisor?

A fiduciary, on the other hand, must disclose in writing any actual and potential conflicts of interest. Fiduciaries cannot receive any compensation from any third party that is contingent upon your purchase of any financial product. They are prohibited from being compensated for referring you to any other professional. They must thoroughly disclose exactly how they are compensated. And they must adhere to a professional Code of Ethics.

You can certainly choose to work with a financial advisor who has not taken the fiduciary oath. But if you want to be sure you can trust the person giving you financial advice, choose a fiduciary. 

Rebalancing Your Retirement Investments:

No one has been sheltered by the latest economic downturn, including your retirement portfolio.  This may be the opportunity of a lifetime to rebalance your investments to take advantage of the future upswing of a recover.

Rebalancing your portfolio should be done with a money manager, financial advisor and/or a financial planning professional, as it is truly a difficult task to accomplish on your own.

You can do most of the leg work first, however, by evaluating your existing investments and assets, then present them to your existing or your newly found financial advisor and discuss what you want to change, alter, or liquidate.

First, why do you need to rebalance?

Typically you need to rebalance your portfolio because of your age, your risk tolerance has changed for any number of reasons (see latest economic crisis), or the relative values in your portfolio have changed and no longer meet your desired asset and risk allocation.

Age
In your late 20’s, you were probably inclined to invest in high risk, high yield, but once you are closer to retirement age, converting most of your assets into more liquid forms will probably be your primary goal.  Deciding and weighing the risks and benefits of these type changes are best suited for a financial advisor who has a diverse client base and a varied background of experiences to draw from.

Risk Tolerance
Again, when you were younger and still had a long-term time frame to invest for retirement, you were willing to tolerate higher risk. On the other hand, an investor in their 50’s who is counting on using their retirement fund as a reliable source of income might not be comfortable with a large decline in their portfolio’s value, even for a short period of time. It’s time to lower the perceived risk.

Asset Allocation
There are really only two choices to rebalance your portfolio’s asset allocation: either make direct adjustments by reallocating funds from one asset class to another (as you grow closer to retirement age you may divert some of your stocks and properties into something more liquid), or add new stable investments (such as bonds or cash) to the portfolio.

Any number of high-quality money management advisors within our independent directory ( All Financial Advisors ) can help.  Maybe selecting 2-3 to talk with before you make your decision; will help you get a feel for each financial advisor’s experiences, background, credentials, client to advisor ratios, etc. 

We hope this helps!

Our Top Ten List:
10 Signs You Need a Financial Advisor

# 10. You’re planning to start a college fund for your kids . . . and they’re already in high school.

# 9. You’ve been talking about taking that big vacation for five years, but you still haven’t saved any money for it.

8. You can only seem to budget an average of about $91.50 in savings every month.

7.  Your cousin Jim-Bob has a hot lead on an investment that’s (almost pretty much for sure) going to double your money overnight—and you’re seriously considering it.

6. You’ve been pushing out your projected retirement date for so long, that you’re now planning to be able to retire when you’re 85.

5. You were going to refinance your mortgage to get a better rate, but then you found out you could pull out some equity, so you did . . . and now the cash is gone, your house won’t be paid off for another 30 more years, and the payment is the same as it was when the interest was higher.

4. You hadn’t really thought about saving to replace your car (until it broke down yesterday).

3. You haven’t had a good night’s sleep in four years, because financial worries are keeping you awake at night.

2. You don’t know what a diversified portfolio is… and you figure it’s your diverse set of toys in the garage… skis, bikes, other diversified ‘stuff’ you own. Huh?

(drum roll in the distant background, please…)

and the #1 Reason is… The only financial goal you’ve ever set is to make it all the way to your next paycheck without having to take out a ‘pay-day’ loan…

ALL RIGHT, we admit these are ”tongue-in-cheek” reasons, BUT if any of them hit a little too close to home…, it’s probably time to start looking for 1 or 2 financial advisors to choose from (or a financial planner) – to help get you moving in the right direction. 

Some financial advisors and financial planners will work out special arrangements for your first consultation or provide advise and planning services via an hourly fee.

The best time to ACT is NOW!  Get started by putting your Zip Code in the search box above to begin reviewing the high-quality financial advisors near you.  It’s Easy & FAST to search within the AllFinancialAdvisors.com database. 

Our FREE and SECURE service will match you with several Fee-only or fee-based financial advisors who are right for you!  Thanks for visiting, have a good weekend & we look forward to your comments.

Are You One of The Millions of Americans Making These Top 10 Financial Blunders Every Day?

There’s plenty of advice out there about what you should be doing financially. But what about the things you shouldn’t be doing, the financial blunders to avoid? Let’s look at our top 10:

1. Living beyond your means. If you’re using credit cards and equity loans to afford your lifestyle, or if you have several panicky days at the end of each month when the money runs out before the next paycheck, you’re headed for disaster. Living above your means will prevent you from saving for emergencies like a job loss, and what about retirement? You can’t solely depend on your pension or 401(k) to see you through the decades between retiring and dying. Stop spending now and talk to a financial advisor about what you need to do next.

2. Neglecting to save. This one is tied to living beyond your means for some; for others, saving is simply a vague plan that never quite materializes. Build saving into your budget, and to make saving easier, set up an automatic deposit each month into a separate savings account.

3. Living without a budget.  If you don’t have a plan for where all your money will go each month, you’ll almost certainly spend it all–and not necessarily on the things you should be spending it on. Not living by a budget and hoping you’ll meet your financial goals is like drifting at sea and hoping you come across a luxuriously appointed island.

4. Carrying credit card balances. This is an exercise in futility, particularly if you only make minimum payments. If you can’t afford to pay off your credit card in full each month, then you can’t afford to be using it. Carrying a balance just racks up interest payments that could have been used to earn money for you elsewhere.

5. Making impulse purchases. This is closely tied to living without a budget (and, often, living beyond your means). By definition, an impulse purchase is something you can live without–and although you can certainly budget for wants in addition to needs, random spending on non-necessities just makes you work longer and harder for the things you do need–like retirement or a college education for your kids.

6. Not communicating with your spouse about purchases. If the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, both hands are going to be wondering where their money went. Discuss purchases over and above the amount of any “mad money” you and your spouse get each month, and you’ll save yourself money and countless headaches.

7. Failing to keep track of your money. This is another one closely tied to budgeting. Do you rely on your online account summaries to tell you where your money is going every month? If you aren’t balancing your checking account to the penny yourself, how will you know if errors are made in your account? (It happens.) Or, for perhaps a more hard-hitting example, how will you know if you’ve accidentally spent your budgeted coffee money on new shoes?

8. Making late payments. If you must use credit cards or loans, never, never, never make a late payment! They will always result in additional fees and, often, in jacked-up interest rates–both of which are money down the drain. Because they’ll be reported to the credit bureaus, late payments will also adversely affect your future purchasing power for big-ticket items like real estate.

9. Neglecting to make goals and plans to achieve them. We talk a lot about financial goals and planning here at AllFinancialAdvisors.com, and there’s a reason: They’re the foundation of any solid financial plan. If you haven’t defined your goals, you’re not likely to reach them. If you’re having difficulty figuring out your goals, get yourself a financial advisor who can walk you through the process and develop a plan to help you meet them.

10. Not participating in company retirement plans (especially if your employer matches contributions).  If your employer matches any portion of your contribution to your employee retirement plan, that’s as good as free money and you should be taking advantage of it. Even if your employer doesn’t match, you should still be contributing to your corporate retirement plan to get the tax benefits.

Are there other financial mistakes you notice people making (or that you’ve learned the hard way to avoid)? Leave a comment and share them with our readers!

NOTE: Experts recommend contacting 2-3 financial advisory firms, so that one may compare/contrast each firm, thus making the best-qualified choice.

Financial Reform and You:
Credit Card Changes

The new financial reform bill signed into law on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 cracks down on predatory lending practices and includes consumer protections when it comes to credit cards. If you use credit cards, these changes may save you money—and one of the new provisions might encourage you to stop using credit cards altogether.

Specifically, that’s the new rule prohibiting credit card companies for charging businesses extra “swipe fees” over and above the cost of processing credit and debit card transactions. Because businesses will have some cost savings as a result of that change, they’ll be allowed to offer discounts for cash transactions. It would create more work for businesses to charge different prices for different kinds of transactions, but some might just do it.
 
If you are not currently utilizing a financial advisor, we encourage you to search our comprehensive database of top financial advisors and financial planning professionals within All Financial Advisors.  They can help you to effectively invest for the future and decide how to best handle any outstanding debt on your credit cards that you might currently have.

The new law also allows privately owned stores to require a minimum sale of $10 for credit card transactions. So if you are used to paying for your $3 coffee with a credit card, you might want to consider paying with cash instead (or drinking a lot more coffee in one sitting).

Do you typically carry a balance on your credit card?  The new law will prohibit credit card companies from raising the rate on that balance. It will also require lenders to simplify contracts—meaning no more hidden fees and penalties.

It’s an unfortunate reality that there are plenty of folks who have been easy marks for predatory lenders.  The new financial reform law creates the Office of Financial Literacy, intended to educate Americans on saving and on the ins and outs of credit, loans, and other financial basics.  Within All Financial Advisors we will also provide on-going education and relevant articles pertaining to financial planning and how financial advisors work with consumer households.

Finally, the law allows state law to pre-empt Federal financial laws.  That’s good news if you live in a state whose consumer protection laws are tougher than Federal laws.

This post wraps up our series on how the new financial reform and consumer protection law will affect you.  Next week, we’ll hear from the other side and get reaction to the law from inside the banking industry.