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[quote=Anonymous]I'll be the contrarian here. You need an expert to develop a plan, and they also act as a third party to tell you and DH if you're on track or not, as apparently you two aren't able to communicate that well with each other.

Do you mow your own lawn? Fix your own car? Probably not -- you could buy books and/or equipment and learn how to do it.. just like financial planning... but you may not have the time or interest.

Find an _independent_ financial planner. One that does not work for Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. Some here will say find a fee-only planner, but at this stage you probably need an array of services (estate planning, tax work, investment advising) so I think full service is worth it (you get what you pay for), at least for the first few years as you have a lot of life changes on the horizon (kids going to school, retirement, etc). After some years, you can always move to another option, but the additional cost, which comes with a full team of services, is going to be worth it in your case. At most you'll pay 1% of invested assets, and usually it's more like 0.85%.

Let's say you have $1mln in investable assets. At 1% that's 10k/year. You'll probably end up using $5k worth of services (if you paid elsewhere) in the first year to get your situation on track, so the "cost" is $5k compared, which they can probably make up in tax-efficient strategies (tax loss harvesting, donation to charities of appreciated stock, etc) and I guarantee they'll make up the $5k compared to your current non-existent strategy.

Give it a go for 1-2 years and get your financial house in order. Then change if you like -- there is no obligation to stay with any advisor long-term.
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