Money Crashers: 7 Types of Financial Professionals and When You Need to Hire Them

In the past, Brian and I have never relied that much on other people to handle our finances. We hired an accountant once to do our taxes, the year we were married, because our situation was particularly complicated that year, but when we got the $300 bill for her services, we decided I'd just handle that job myself from then on. And we hired a lawyer to help us buy our house, because you pretty much have to have one to scrutinize those complicated contracts, but that's the only time we've ever used one. I've handled most of our investments myself, setting up a plan that automatically pulled money out of our online savings account and putting it into a few different ETFs (as suggested by Andrew Tobias in The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need), so it required almost no work on my part. I did have an investment advisor handling my IRA at Morgan Stanley, but I had also opened a second IRA on Capital One Investing, since I found it much easier to be able to fund my account for the year with a few clicks of the mouse than have to call someone else to do it.

Recently, though, as we started drawing nearer to our goal of financial independence, I began wondering how I was going to go about switching over all our money from the investments we had now, which were set up for long-term growth, to new ones that would instead bring in a steady income that we could live on if we had to. Up until now, everything had been automatic, but this was going to take a lot more work, and I wasn't looking forward to it. And while I was thinking about that,

Capital One announced that it would be dumping its online investment platform and moving all our accounts over to E*TRADE—so I'd also need to learn a new system, and the automatic withdrawals I'd set up might not work so smoothly anymore.

And in the middle of all this, my finance guy from Morgan Stanley called me up and asked if I'd consider switching over my Capital One IRA to him—and maybe our joint investment account as well. He met with us and showed us some funds he'd picked out that looked like just what we needed—most of which I didn't have access to in my online account. Brian and I discussed it, and we decided that even paying 0.75% off the top to this guy, we could probably do better than we would with me trying to fumble my way through on my own—and it would be a lot less work for me. So now we have one financial professional we deal with regularly, and everything else I take care of myself.

All of which kind of illustrates the point of my latest Money Crashers article: some financial tasks make sense to do on your own, and for others, it's best to hire a pro. And which ones are which really depend on your personal situation. So, in the article, I offer a rundown of the different types of financial professionals, from accountant to "money coach," explaining what each one does and how to decide when it makes sense to hire one.

Check it out here: 7 Types of Financial Professionals and When You Need to Hire Them