Financial Planner (not advisor!) South of Boston?

December 30, 2007 7:58 AM

Searching for a financial planner south of Boston. Any suggestions?

I am looking for a financial planner (not a financial advisor) south of Boston near Weymouth, Hingham. I did a search on a few sites and a lot of them seem to want assets of $200K or more before they will even talk to you.

Most likely looking for a fee based advisor since I don't want them to be biased.

Primarily I need this person to help get my wife's and my finances in order as we prepare to move forward with a house and other activities. Find out what a professional thinks we should be doing rather than my assumptions based on a bunch of reading and occasional investing.

posted by UMDirector to Work & Money (2 answers total)

NAPFA stands for National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, but many (most?) experienced, good advisors also do comprehensive financial planning. . You need to register to do a search for NAPFA members near you, but I did, it's free, and I haven't gotten any spam. In the search results, there are summaries and links that you can use to see which do planning, and in some cases, what asset range they work with. We found our new advisor through them, in Newton, MA, and we've been happy with her so far.

NAPFA is a good organization, because all members must be fee-only, which is probably what you meant you wanted -- fee-based means that some part of their compensation comes from fees that you pay them directly, but they're still allowed to make money from what they sell you, too. Fee-only means they don't make any money from your investment activities aside from what you explicitly pay them, so their only interest is in providing a service to you
posted by daisyace at 8:49 AM on December 30, 2007

Seconding NAPFA, which is how I found my financial planner (who's in Watertown).
posted by cocoagirl at 11:18 AM on January 2, 2008