We're underway...

Finally, a response. It came over a week ago in the form of a phone call from the 'second guy' I tried to contact. We'll call him Mike. Almost immediately after Mike calls, the 'first guy' called to set up an appointment as well. Sorry dude, you had a couple of extra days head start and you still missed the boat...

My wife and I met Mike last week, and we did the basic get-to-know each other. He took some notes on what our goals are, and where we want to be in the next few years, stuff like that. Then he gave us some basic forms for tracking our spending and also for calculating our net worth. I've tried to find duplicates on the web, but so far I've come up empty handed. Visit any financial website and you'll find similar forms, just not the exact ones given to us (not that you'd fail if you didn't use the exact forms we got).

During our hopes and dreams conversation, I told Mike that my overall plan was to outgrow him. I think he took it well. I'll post my 'big goal' later, but-like I told Mike-he'll either have to quit his job to work for me full time, or he'll have our account taken from him because it's too large for him to handle!

During our conversation, my wife asked the perfect question. "Not to sound dumb, but what is it that you're going to do for us?" I thought it was the perfect (and absolutely not-dumb) question! He replied with a basic rundown of the products he sells (insurance and mutual funds) and how he helps people develop budgets. It was this question that got me thinking, "Why do we really need this guy?"

The answer I've come up with is 'accountability.' Originally, this blog was to serve as a mechanism of accountability for our spending habits. Unfortunately, the inconsistent and wacky posts of the past have left us with a big fat zero for this blog keeping us accountable. I also wanted someone to handle the finances for us. Not paying the bills, but putting our money in places that would get us some decent returns. After all, I bought Bank of America near it's 52 week high in 2007 (and carried it all the way to the bottom).

There's a lot of things floating around in this post. I'll expand on them later. But for now, we have a financial planner, and we're meeting him again on Thursday. More to follow...

If at first you don't succeed...

Try, try, again, right? The first time I tried to contact someone at Raymond James it was at one of their adviser's websites. So this time, I went straight to Raymond James homepage and found another one in my local area. Hopefully they'll contact me!

A quick tirade: Not returning calls is one of my major pet peeves. If you make me work for your business, you're out. I'm having the same problem with grad schools. I have a state university that's about 10 minutes from work, and 20 from home. No one there will call me back about their program, so instead, I'm going to wind up driving 6 hours every week to attend another school that's more expensive! I'd rather go there anyway, but that's not the point of this rant.

Now, I need to come clean on our finances soon. There's been quite a few changes.

P.S. Anybody that regularly reads this from the website, I apologize for all the ads. Especially the one between the post and the comments link. That's annoying. I'll get that fixed soon too!

No News...

I'm a little disappointed that no one from Raymond James has contacted me yet. It's been two days since I requested that someone contact me online. It's like my dad used to tell me: "If you want to make a million dollars in this world, all you have to do is call people back..."

I'll give it a few more days, then the strongly worded letters start coming out :)

Starting Over...

Given the fact that I haven't posted here in a couple of months, and that quite a few of the past posts were pretty lame and without merit, I've decided to start over. I'm contemplating deleting the past few posts, but I'll probably leave them there for awhile.

Now, getting on to the meat and potatoes of this post. I've decided it's time to seek some outside help. I have haven't been consistent enough in our finances to be able to achieve the goals I've wanted. With that, the quest for a financial planner began about two hours ago.

I had originally planned to go with Edward Jones. I have a couple of friends that use them and are satisfied, or at the very least, not disappointed. I, however, selected Raymond James. They have received numerous awards over the past few years, and last year (2008) they were selected as JD Power & Associates Full Service Investor Satisfaction survey winners (the only firm to receive perfect marks).

We'll see what happens after the first appointment. I suppose the greatest significance of this isn't that I've selected Raymond Jones, but that I've finally swallowed my pride and started searching for some outside expertise.