How would you go about selecting a Certified Financial Planner?
My wife and I are financially successful adults, but we need guidance with the next steps, including:
- Private equity co-investment
- College savings for children with special needs who may or may not attend university
- Retirement savings beyond the standard 401k and IRA options
- The tax ramifications of all of the above
My friends are generally not at this level of planning needs, so those who have worked with a CFP have had only much more basic questions. We have known plenty of financial advisers over the years who just give bad advice or canned advice. I expect our needs will become more complex over the next decade.
How do we find a quality CFP who can help with the above? What is a reasonable price to pay for this help?
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!
Separate from my initial generic response:
I believe the typical advice is to max out your HSA contributions and save your health care receipts but don’t reimburse yourself yet because there is no deadline for reimbursements. Instead, just treat your HSA like a double tax advantaged retirement investment account.
Beyond that, you’re looking at a regular taxable brokerage account. Look into which asset types are most tax efficient—those are the ones you’ll wanna allocate in your regular taxable brokerage account. Careful, it’s a rabbit hole and you will hit against the law of diminishing marginal returns, but it might be worth it to broad strokes put international funds in your taxable brokerage while your bonds are live in your tax advantaged accounts. There’s more info on this if you search the boglehead wiki.
Our health plan does not give us access to an HSA, so that is off the table for the foreseeable future. I will check out the wiki, so thank you for that!