Originally Posted by mispoken

I can't stress this enough...."Professional Financial Advice" is typically a licensed salesman. Now, I'm not saying APC should be your go-to resource. However, the financial services industry has created this facade that saving and investing for retirement is something we cannot handle as individuals. It's completely false, and if we spend time educating ourselves on this stuff we can make A LOT more money and save ourselves A LOT of BS advisory fees. Long-term buy and hold is really all we need to do. Invest systematically on a regular basis, sit on your hands and watch it grow. Hedge fund managers are highly paid salesmen and very few actually outperform a good benchmark. I'm guessing that sometime in the next decade hedge funds will cease to exist, they're simply too expensive for the performance they generate.

NOW, the actual complicated part of all of this is undoubtedly the tax side. A good fee-only tax advisor is absolutely necessary, in my opinion.

As far as picking investments and doing these financial "maneuvers" such as the backdoor Roth, it can be done on your own with a simple call to Fidelity, they won't lead you astray. Don't be afraid to keep them on the phone until you absolutely understand what is going on, I've spent many hours in the past on the phone with them. In fact, I've found many of the reps find this refreshing, seeing folks take control of their finances.

Just remember, most financial advisors do not have your best interest in mind. With that being said, they are out there, the good ones, it just takes a bit of legwork on your end. This place is a great start, but keep digging in and working towards financial literacy, I have no doubt it is going to pay off exponentially in the future.