Financial Planning: C or D

So having a baby and being 32 and all and having just kind of drifted along financially thus far in my life (not in debt but not much savings either), I figure it's time to take this shit a little more seriously.

1) Can anyone recommend good personal financial advice/planning books? I'd like something I can read together with H, and I would say that on the whole I am relatively financially literate and she is less so.

2) Has anyone ever actually gone to a financial planner? I feel like on one hand it's something that I should be able to do myself and I probably don't have enough money or complexity to justify it, but on the other hand I feel like maybe I need to have someone sit me down and say "You should be spending no more than this much on rent, and saving this much for retirement."

Well, never got a response, but we did wind up buying two books: The Ten Commandments of Money and Smart Couples Finish Rich.

The latter I'm sort of embarrassed to have even bought, and as its title and cover suggest, it's very seminar-y and annoying, and there's a lot of fluff about filling out charts of your values as a couple. There are maybe two chapters worth of actual useful financial tips, the best of which is that you'll save a lot of money if you take out a 15 year instead of a 30 year mortgage, and on average couples who do it retire like 8 years earlier. I sort of knew that but didn't realize how big a difference it made.

Ten Commandments of Money is much, much better.

I read The Four Pillars of Investing and I will summarize the four pillars for you
1. Get
2. An
3. Index
4. Fund

I used to read personal finance blogs all the time and they eventually coalesced into a blur of sameyness but I learned a lot from them. My favorite one was this:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/

He makes saving seem pretty easy and doable; esp bcz his personal story involved pulling himself out from being deeply ensconced in debt (from comic books, god bless him! <3). It ranges from entry level to intimidating (for me) parts of finance. A nice and helpful blog.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the philosophy behind index funds -- basically, you, ordinary person, are never going to beat wall street slicksters over the long term, so the best you can do is use the lowest cost means of investing in a broad swath of the market. Seems about right.

I think if I actually had any real money to invest I'd consider buying a rental property right now, like a studio or one br.

When my mother died in 2020, my inheritance consisted mainly of two life insurance payouts, which we've just been sitting on for the past four years while we figure out retirement. We met with a financial planner last week who suggested putting them into a fund that pays out an amount about 1/3 of our current monthly expenses for the rest of my wife's life (she's 69), then the rest of my life (I'm 61), and if I die within 10 years of my wife, it keeps paying out to our daughter until 10 years after my wife's death has passed. And then using a part of that monthly pension/annuity income to pay for life insurance that will pay out to our daughter on our deaths. This seems like a reasonable plan, except for taking a large chunk of our liquid assets out of our hands; but we don't really know what to do with those assets, and they're not working for us at the moment. Opinions? We would still have a decent chunk of liquid savings; it wouldn't be us putting all our eggs in this annuity basket. Oh, and our house is paid off.

There's an old saying that comes to mind: there are no guarantees, only guarantors. That applies both to the insurance company and the planner selling it to you. "Financial planner" is a very loosely regulated profession, sometimes totally unregulated. The chances are good that your planner will get a commission by selling you that product. Ask if that's true. If so, I'd be very leery of taking their opinion on it.

Since your finances probably aren't all that complex, I'd find a planner who meets the standard of a fiduciary, which has stricter legal requirements to safeguard you from their having ulterior self-interests in the advice they give.

how does the annuity compare to putting that money into a regular high yield interest savings account?

what are the conditions on pulling the money out?