When you’re young and struggling to make ends meet it may not make sense to hire a financial planner. After all, you don’t have much money to work with so it seems like a strange idea to spend some of your limited resources on hiring a professional for advice. But according to a new report by Business Week it may be a good move. “A planner can help by using their knowledge … to come up with a game plan. For all investors–certainly young ones–it’s a very good idea unless you feel that you can do it on your own,” Yuval Bar-Or, founder of The Light Bridgade, a financial literacy consulting company, told Business Week.
It’s important for young people to keep in mind what a financial planner and adviser actually does. Planners shouldn’t just look at your current financial situation. Instead they’ll take a look at the broader picture which includes your future earning potential and your financial goals.
Younger adults may want to consider hiring financial planners by the hour, an investment that could be a few hundred dollars, according to Business Week. The difficult part of this is that implementing that financial plan is up to the individual. “An hourly adviser is better for someone younger with less assets because it’s more cost-effective,” Don Humphreys, president of Harrington Park, N.J.-based Voyager Wealth Management, a fee-only independent registered investment advisory firm, told Business Week. “You can sit down and have a plan drawn up, be charged an hourly rate, pay a one-time fee, then go and execute your plan. [Using an adviser] usually ends up being more, but it’s more appropriate for people with more complex investment portfolios.”
Wondering what you should try to accomplish during that meeting? Here are some guidelines:
- Develop a budget
- Create a plan for boosting savings
- Discuss estate planning and wills
- Find out about saving for college for children
And if you’re wondering how to find a financial planner, Business Week suggests checking out The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standard’s website. It offers a searchable database for financial planners according to geographical location. That way you can get advice from a person in your area.
Tags: Financial advice, Financial planner, personal finance, Fee-Only financial advisor, Financial services
Related Articles
- Unemployed? Consider These Search Tips The national unemployment rate is sitting at 9.5%. That means it's taking people longer to find a job-- an average of 35 weeks. But making the competition for jobs even
- Young Americans And Debt Debt is a word that is not often associated with the young and carefree twenty year olds of current pop culture. However, more and more young people are incurring debt
- Young Adults Make Big Financial Goals For 2011 Among the goals of losing weight and reading more, plenty of young Americans are making resolutions to save, pay off debts and live within their means. According to a new
- Educating The Young On Personal Finance With the country in the midst of a deep recession, many Americans are turning their attention back to the matter of personal finance. With all of the factors that
- Communal Lifestyle Now A Necessity For Debt-Ridden Young People In the 1960s, living communally with other people was a lifestyle, an ethical choice made because it aligned with one's passions and values. Nowadays, studies show, it is simply a