Financial Advisor in DC

[Anonymous]

Neither my husband nor I have a good sense of investing or financial management and I'd love a recommendation of someone I can talk to in order to figure some of this out. We have about 100K in a savings account that is doing nothing for us and I'd like to figure out a way to invest it.

I've read some literature but I'm still pretty clueless (and scared). I'd love someone to give me the idiots version of financial planning.

[Anonymous]

Have you thought about investing in a basic 500 index fund. It makes it quite diverse.

[Anonymous]

The place you have it saved may have financial advisors who can provide basic services for free at that level. Call them and ask.

If not, here's my advice -- decide what you want to use the money for. Rainy day/emergency money, keep that part in cash (savings account) and shop on bankrate.com to find the best rates.

Then for the rest, do you want to use it for retirement or college? You can estimate the year you'll need it in that case. Then, go buy an ETF or mutual fund with that horizon. For example, go to ishares and look at the "Target Date" funds. Those are ETFs.

[Anonymous]

Never let anyone else manage your money! No one care about your money more than you. If you don't understand the stock market ... well now is the time to learn.

1. Open a brokerage account in your name and place your funds in that account. Make it an IRA or a Roth account if you can to defer or avoid taxes. But a simple brokerage account at ETrade, ameritrade, Schwab, scottrade, etc will do nicely.

2. Buy shares in roughly 30 dividend yielding companies from differing segments of the economy so you are not placing all of your eggs in one basket. Google "Dividend Champions" and "Dividend Achievers" for lists of companies of which you would like to be a partial owner. Not every investment will be successful and a couple will fail, but most will not and in seven years according to the "Rule of 72" you will double your investment and you'll be pleased you followed this simple advice.

3. Good luck ... you are now on your way to being an independently wealthy CAPITALIST!

[Anonymous]

PS - set your account so when your dividends arrive monthly or quarterly depending on the shares that you will automatically reinvest your dividends buying more shares of the same companies. This will be done free of charge BTW, brokerage fees are usually $7-10 per transaction; pretty cheap!