recommend financial planner? (Austin, Van, Point: how much, new home, wedding)

[hinke]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a financial planner?

I prefer someone who takes an hourly rate, vs. someone who will possibly gain from the specific investments we make. I'm a very skeptical person!

We don't have a lot of money but right now we are investing everything we can into our 401k so we can retire at 55 years old (20 years from now).

The problem I've been thinking about is that we can't touch this money until we are 59.5 years old....that means we have about 4 years we will have to have enough cash to live on before we can start taking from the 401k.

I don't know enough about financial planning to be able to determine how much we should save now for the "cash" we will need each month for those 4 years, vs. how much to put in the 401k.

Is this something we should be able to determine after 1 hour with a planner if we are organized with all of our finances, goals etc.? What is the going hourly rate for a financial planner?

Thanks in advance!

[austin-steve]

Sounds like you are looking for someone to help establish a road map from Point A to Point B that will deliver you to a specific financial destination. I can't recommend someone because I don't know anyone in that arena who doesn't also try to sell financial products and haven't used those services. But I do know that there are a lot of free financial planning calculators online that will point you in the right direction.

One of my favorite financial writers is Scott Burns at Asset Builder. He has a good website, blog and writes weekly newspaper column. If you read sites like his and absorb a lot of info, you'll start seeing some common principles and wealth-building rules of thumb that are really fairly simple.

In your case, I'd treat the planning as if you had two retirements. Your main, long-term retirement, and your short "gap retirement". That short one would have different considerations than the long term goal. You would treat it more like saving for a big vacation, wedding, or college for kids since it's essentially a one-time lump sum amount that you'll need to carry you over a fixed time/cost period.

Finally, beware of early retirement. Sounds good on paper but if you research it a bit, most people get bored real fast and don't know what to do with their time. So they end up working still, or taking part time jobs. That would factor into your financial planning as well, just working the additional 4 years.

Good luck,
Steve

[TexasHorseLady]

We've used John Henry McDonald and his team at Austin Asset Management for quite a while now. He's great about helping you figure out how much you have and how much you need and what you need to do to get from here to there and keeping you on track along the way.

[Austin City Living]

I recommend Skyline Capital Management in Austin at 877-460-1570. Our planner is Dr. Geoffrey VanderPal, a Certified Financial Planner. He is excellent and specializes in protecting clients principal. He saved us from the market crashes of 2000 and 2006.

[FalconheadWest]

Originally Posted by Austin City Living

I recommend Skyline Capital Management in Austin at 877-460-1570. Our planner is Dr. Geoffrey VanderPal, a Certified Financial Planner. He is excellent and specializes in protecting clients principal. He saved us from the market crashes of 2000 and 2006.

I second this. I helped Dr. VanderPal purchase a new home and he definitely has a head on his shoulders for all types of financial planning!