financial planning is crap. You go to a financial planner whose motives you question, you make a lot of assumptions about how much money you'll make, how long you'll live, how many kids you'll have, whether they'll go to college, etc. and the planner spits back a "plan" telling you how much you need to save, where you should invest, etc. Many times the financial planner tries to get you to invest in things that he/she gets a commission from that are not in your best interests.

You should go to a financial planner.

Wait, didn't I just say it was crap? Well, yes. But I recently learned a story that I find instructive, and I'll give you my butchered version of it here:

A little boy sees a big pile of manure and jumps on it, clawing away at the stinky mess. When his alarmed parents shout "Get off there! What are you doing?!" the boy says, "With all this crap, there's got to be a pony somewhere."

Financial planning is like that. A lot of it is bull--from the wild assumptions you make in coming up with numbers to the credibility of the advice a planner gives you. But there's a pony in there. Because when you take the time to ballpark some assumptions, to get something down in writing, you are more likely to do what that plan says. And even if your plan is wrong, chances are very good that following the plan will leave you in a better place than you would be if you had no plan at all, if you just wing it and hope for the best.

Example: We have 529 plans for my very small kids. These plans allow parents to sock away money that grows tax-free to be used for college expenses down the road. Every month when I pay the mortgage I also send in a set amount to the 529 for each child. When my wife and I saw a financial planner, we didn't even have the second kid yet, but we told him to assume we would have another. He looked at some numbers about projected college costs and came up with the dollars we should put in each month to meet the future need.

Are the projections guaranteed? No. Will it be enough to pay for their college costs? Who knows? Maybe it will be too much (although not likely). But chances are we would not be on a regular savings plan for college, not to mention a tax-free one, if we hadn't seen the financial planner. We might have created some sort of college account on our own that we contributed to occasionally when we had the money, but it's doubtful we would have been systematic about it.

Same thing with our investments. They're a little loosey-goosey in terms of the exact diversification goals, but at least we did some goal-setting and don't have everything in high-risk stocks or do-nothing bonds.

Those are the ponies that come out of the financial planning manure. They make the process worth it, even if you come out of it feeling a little dirty.