My husband and I are both freelancers, and our finances are as quirky and unpredictable as, well, the economy in general. We met with these folks to try and force ourselves into some kind of planned saving and investing. They were stellar. From the moment we walked into their offices we got a good vibe. The people working there seem happy and comfortable. There's no hard selling going on -- in fact, you don't write any checks to them. Everything is written directly to whatever you're investing in (an IRA fund or whatever).
My dad started investing with Bill Blyth many years ago, so I've always known that they were honest and dedicated. But they treated us and our wee small savings just as well as they would if we were bringing in a huge chunk of change. Bill Blyth and Carla Nitz sat down with us for a couple hours of discussion about where we're at in life and where we want to be in the future. They take a holistic approach to financial planning, so they wanted to know about our whole lives, not just how much we want to have by such and such a time. We also walked out with some good book recommendations (Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit, is one). And we left feeling like we'd done what we wanted to do -- start an investment plan, not commit to more than we're comfortable given our freelancey lifestyle, and understand how our choices now can affect our reality later.
They even gave us a lovely orchid to take home. I suspect it's meant as some kind of metaphor for how you're supposed to tend your financial whatever, but I'm not holding that against them. It's way prettier than a Suze Ormond book. read more