Getting Some Professional Help

As we’re in full-on RRSP mode here in Canada (you can still make contributions to your RRSP now and have it apply to your 2009 tax year), we’re getting bombarded by ads for financial advisers and such. I usually ignore all of these, however this year I’ve been paying a little closer attention as I was thinking of meeting with a financial adviser to go over my situation and see if there was anything I could be doing better (aside from paying off my debt, natch). One of my colleagues had recommended her financial adviser, and I did send him an email last month asking for a meeting, but he never got back to me, so I figured he was too busy. His ears must have been burning this week though as he finally got back to me, and so we set up a meeting for next week to go over things.

I’m excited about meeting with him as I’ve a number of things I’d like to discuss:

• my current debtload
• my RRSP situation

This adviser works for my current employer (remember, I work for a bank), so I’m interested to see what type of things he can come up with. I was so excited and interested to hear what he had to say that I actually showed up to the appointment a week early! (I input the date incorrectly in my calendar, so I showed up this past Thursday when the appointment’s actually NEXT Thursday.) But he was quite gracious and we had a quick chat about things while I was there. I did offer to just come back on my actual appointment day, but he said it was actually good that I was there early as he’d be able to crunch through numbers and have some good suggestions for our appointment next week. (I had brought the latest copies of all my statements with me.)

The  major thing he pointed out quickly was that as my car lease is up next year and I want to keep the car, we’ll have to figure out what to do with the lease buy out amount. Count 1 point for him, as I’d not really been thinking about this. What I’d ask him to figure out was this: Determine the best course of action for me so that I could pay off my debt as quickly as possible without severely curtailing my life, and save me money by consolidating the debt to one payment with a lower interest rate.

So while I’m pretty good at figuring out my finances, sometimes you do need to ask for professional help. Right now I’m plain tired of dealing with this on my own, so let’s see what Mr. Adviser can do for me. Stay tuned!

Edit: Had to postpone the appointment till next week as I came down with a nasty cold this week and couldn’t make the appointment. But I’ll let you know what he has to say!