Why You May Need a Financial Advisor, Even if You're Not Rich
*By Lauren Babbage*
You don't need to be a millionaire to hire a financial planner. Even if you're in debt, an expert may be able to help you manage your money.
"There are more and more [financial planners] sprouting up wanting to help build wealth, rather than just manage wealth," said Shannon McLay, the founder and CEO of The Financial Gym, a planning firm.
McLay told Cheddar that a financial advisor can help in three essential areas:
1. **Goals.** Not boring, old-school goals like saving for a rainy day or a downpayment on a house. Maybe you want to freeze your eggs or buy a zoo. A planner can help establish short-term and long-term goals to help make your dream a reality.
2. **Accountability.** Do you spend too much ordering on Seamless? Are your impulse buys too frequent? A planner can review your budget and expenses, and help you curb unnecessary spending.
3. **Advice.** Your planner can be a sounding board when you need to make big financial decisions. Whether it's going back to school, buying a house, or taking a new job, an impartial expert can walk you through the financial pros and cons.
It's never too late or too early to engage a financial planner, McLay said.
"The biggest issue we see with clients is money behaviors, and bad money behaviors," she said Wednesday in an interview with Cheddar. "A financial planner will help you establish really good financial behaviors early on."
According to a 2017 study by the Center for Financial Services Innovation, 48 percent of Americans said they spend as much or more than they make, causing them a significant amount of stress. And McLay said that many women ー eight out of 10 ー lack confidence in their financial decisions.
Hiring a financial planner, she said, can ease the burden and allow you to spend more time living your life and less time worrying about how you'll pay for it.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/you-dont-have-to-be-rich-to-hire-a-financial-planner).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
