Friday, October 22, 2010

Financial Planning

We make a pair, Michelle and I.

We had our financial planner come over today (Hi, Trent! Thanks for coming!). We've managed to squirrel away a bit more in savings that we wanted to be doing more with than collecting miniscule profits from credit union savings account interest.


Also Tired of Miniscule Profits

Trent always comes well prepared, ready to study our current portfolio and make recommendations for how to tweak it and then find ways for us to invest what little chicken scratch we've got.

And 90 percent of the time, the stuff he suggests just goes right over our heads.

See, we're not numbers people. Words, yes, you can depend on us to come up with them, and in mass quantities. But when it comes to words that are mixed up with numbers, we just sit there pleasantly nodding while our brains pull a Homer Simpson on us:


To give us a bit more credit than I'm giving us at the moment, we do try our darndest to understand. We do ask questions. I try to follow the financial news and try to think as an investor should think (buy low, sell high; isn't it about time that gold did a header, et cetera). And then we both kind of sit back and think, "Wow. Are we investing in gold?" (Yes we are. In China, too. We're getting out of both, based on Trent's advice, which, from what I've learned, I think is sound.)

We have an ace in the hole in that Trent also works for the same company that advises Michelle's Dad, who has done not so badly with his investments over the years. We always check in with him when we make these decisions - and he always gives us the same song and dance we get from Trent: No one can predict how these things will work out. But he said we made some good decisions, based on the trust we've got in Trent. That's good enough for me.

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