Do you have a financial advisor?

[myrdale]

Update: We met with an FA today so I went searching for this thread to see when I had posted this. My husband won and we’re going with an FA after all.

I still don’t love it but it really comes down to the fact that I can’t do ANYTHING without approval from my husband’s company due to compliance / regulations. (As in, they even have to “approve” the equity I receive as part of my annual compensation. ) And now I get to bug the FA instead of my husband.

I wouldn’t advise it for most people with financial literacy, but I’m starting to understand why all of his co-workers have FAs themselves despite working in finance. Saves marriages.

I guess I missed this thread when it was originally started.

It does sound like an odd situation that you've described. Is it a company your husband works for, or owns?

It is my opinion that for most people, a financial adviser is probably not worth it. What is more important is financial literacy. Even for the super wealthy, if you're paying someone to manage your accounts and you don't have a clue what they are doing, then you may find yourself pennyless.

Keep it simple, Roth 401(k) or Standard 401(k) if available, and Roth IRA. Pick good mutual funds for each. Put money in and keep putting money in.

Now if you're talking big money past that, I see how an accountant / tax expert is worth their cost.

[jenn_jenn]

I guess I missed this thread when it was originally started.

It does sound like an odd situation that you've described. Is it a company your husband works for, or owns?

It is my opinion that for most people, a financial adviser is probably not worth it. What is more important is financial literacy. Even for the super wealthy, if you're paying someone to manage your accounts and you don't have a clue what they are doing, then you may find yourself pennyless.

Keep it simple, Roth 401(k) or Standard 401(k) if available, and Roth IRA. Pick good mutual funds for each. Put money in and keep putting money in.

Now if you're talking big money past that, I see how an accountant / tax expert is worth their cost.

Agreed that for most people, it doesn’t make sense. We do have somewhat unique situation. My husband works for a large bank on Wall Street in S&T so he is heavily regulated (and same for me because we are married).

We do need to have more than Roth and Standard 401k because we easily max out. Even with a backdoor Roth, we need to have an investment strategy beyond this. We’re not wealthy but our HHI is about $600-$700k annually, and should hopefully only continue to increase.

I *could* do it but the layer of regulations makes it tricky. Because anything I do, my husband has to submit through his company for approval, and then I have to execute same business day. This can get quite tricky when we both have busy work days and if there are any questions or problems that adds to the issue…which there always seem to be.

For example, I once wanted to sell shares of my company stock and had it denied because I had “bought” (aka I had shares vest) within 30 days of when the request was placed. We have to hold equities for minimum of 30 days due to regulations. I actually wasn’t even selling the recently vested shares but it didn’t matter. I have shares vest every three months as part of my compensation so you can imagine how frequently this is a problem. There are exceptions that can be made but it requires several rounds of back and forth with compliance.

We were somewhat hesitant to get an FA because we don’t have a large portfolio so we weren’t sure anyone would even be willing to take us on. Our FA’s typical client has a $5-$10M portfolio. We are no where near there and have only been “high income” for a couple of years. However, my husband knew someone from his network that he trusted and he made an exception for us. We’re still relatively young (early 30’s) so we hopefully have many years of earning and investing ahead of us.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

So I'll play the advocate here and say after $5-10M a FA is worth paying for. The amount you pay is a rounding error when you can get into investments normal people can't. Like angel investing, hedge funds, etc. There are a lot of investments you can play with for people with a lot of money.

I've been looking into the whole life and I don't know what to do. It's so expensive and I have term. Term has more than served it's purpose for when we bought it. But whole life is looking potentially like a strategic move for preserving more money. I just am uncertain.