Anyone ever gone to see a financial advisor? My wife was thinking that we should start investing some of our money. I mean, I take a bunch of money out of my pay for my 401(k) and we have some CD’s and our savings account, but that is it. We save plenty of money, but with how low the stock market is right now, we were wondering if it would be worth it to start investing so that we can benefit when the economy eventually bounces back. Has anyone else gone to see a financial advisor or do you just invest on your own (like with online trading).
I would wait on cd rate they are low, also you can pull up comparables from online for the best rates. Normally you bank will match or give a .25 point to get your business.
Right now I would leave your 401k alone as the market will rebound, there are many factors involving its decline.
I advise my own finanacies and I can not really complain. I leave my 401k alone as i vest my 20%, and play the stock market, even in a decline there is still money to be made, and its well worth it. You just need to study companies and how they react.
Case and point… if you have 20k to play with… find a few stocks they show some “play” dips and climbs…
2.00(current stock price) / 20k(investing capital) = 10k shares… goes up .10 meaning the stock is now 2.10 (SELL) = 21k minus 20 for stock trading fees.
gives you 980.00 profit for roughly a days work. .10 gain is almost certain on stocks that you know will move.
vs a cd
20k *.0525 over a year which is about 86.00 for a 30/day month. = 1036.00<-- but this is a whole year…
one can make 10 good moves and be done for the year, but its a risk.
I’m an accountant so I understand all of that. I guess my main question is, how beneficial is it to go to a financial advisor? Do they cost much? I understand the markets on a limited basis, I deal with money all day, just not investments.
Unfortunately, you have to find a great FA who is also lucky. No matter how experienced he/she may or may not be, this market is way too crazy to really be investing in consistently. You can listen to Kramer (who is a bit eccentric) and sometimes wrong, but he is for the most part ethical and does not out right lie to you. The reason I say this is because I’ve dealt with a guy, and my experience was less than satisfactory. Most of them truly care about you investing because they make money on it, I’ve moved into personal online trading. Check out a few magazines (i.e. Forbes) that can help you with figuring out stocks, make sure you know something about that specific industry and read their public statements, they have to publish them because of the SEC and disclose financial statements which aren’t extremely hard (also not as long as they use to be and nothing like reading Mutual Fund Statements) to read especially if you have an accounting background like you do…
X2 Mine is friend from highschool. He actually works for morgan Stanley. I gave him my money nd told him to put it where he would put his own. It hs worked out very well so far. And I trust him. I have known him for 24 years