Earlier this week we had our first conference call with our new financial planner.
He is actually Joe's parents financial planner and since Joe's parents are retiring early at the age of 60 we figured he must have helped them do something right.
WOW- can we say overwhelming.
My brain hurt when I got off the phone.
Maybe that is because we were on the phone for 1 1/2 hours or maybe because every 5 seconds he brought up our plan to have children..... seriously!!!!!
He went thru everything from our salaries, our insurance, what we are thinking about as far as life, what we are thinking about as far as retirement, etc.
So right before getting off the phone with him, he gave me a list of things to get him before he can put together a package full of IRA opportunities, investment options, and his recommendations, (Which I just finished and faxed to him Thursday), and a list of some quick recommendations for us to get started on the road to thinking about working towards retirement.
After, I got on the phone I sat at my desk for about 10 minutes having an out of body experience. It is hard to think that I am not even 30 yet and I am stressing out about this.
I am suppose to be a twentysomething this year!!!
I quickly reminded myself that we are doing whats right and getting our finances in order and set before we introduce any changes (if they happen) into the picture later in life.
So here are his current suggestions:
1) Turn back on paper statements.
He said this forces you to look thru everything with a fine tooth comb every month.
This is something I normally do- but Joe does not and I think he needs to.
So they are back on....
2) Sit down together each month and review our spending.
I do this and probably can tell you down to the penny what is in our account.
My husband is clueless- I pay the bills, balance our accounts, manage our monthly spending, etc.
He has no idea!!
So he does not get it when I get upset about some of his spending habits like $20 on a pair of goggles when he could have used his amazon gift card that has been sitting in his desk.... urrr... i digress.
Anyways, I think this will help us as a couple target more ways to cut back.
3) Increase our contributions to our 401K thru work.
Right now Joe and I are both contributing 15% of our income. We increased it to the maximum of 16500!!
4)Making Wills
Up to this point everyone I have talked to states we do not need a Will until we have children or start to have more assets (even some lawyers).
Our financial planner kind of agreed with this for us because our house is the only debt we have- cars are paid off, college is paid off, no credit debt. So this I will be holding off for the time being.
However, we do have advanced directives so he was happy to hear that.
5) Life Insurance
Fortunately, thru my work I have life insurance for twice my annual salary and Joe has it for one time his annual salary. He suggested taking out a term policy on Joe to increase his life insurance thru work. This is actually something we had talked about early this year when I was getting our finances in order to meet with the planner. However, we can not do this till open season which is not until November.
He also stated when we have children, "as soon as Laura is pregnant," to increase our policies...again with the whole baby thing!! =0) Can you tell I am anti-baby right now?
6) Forcing us to both sit down and look at our benefits.
I did this at great length earlier this year and I have a folder for Joe and I.
However, again my loving husband is clueless on this!
7) Changing our financial planning spreadsheet a little... Yes I am a spreadsheet person because it lets me keep track of my spending in one place and I can compare months.
All and all I think these changes will be good.
I will keep you updated on how they work out.
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