Nine months ago I said good-by to "regular job" bit and started doing independent consulting.  I plan to do that for 3-5 years, slowly ramping down to fully retired.  I've read, researched, and analyzed our finances till my head hurts  Some things I am comfortable with, but I feel I do not have a good handle on other areas.  I'm 62 and my wife is 6 years younger than I am, so that adds a lot of complexity.  We are both covered by medical insurance from her work, but neither of us want her working until she is 65 and I'm 72...we want to enjoy while we are healthy.  There are so many variables around insurance, how/when to file for SS, and how taxes impact retirement income.  There are many subtleties that have have big impacts.

We have an investment guy in Baltimore that is managing about $1.5M in combined tax advantaged and regular investment accounts.   He is part of a boutique personal wealth management firm...we would be a zero short of being able to open an individual account with them, but my wife's family all use the guy, which kind of grandfathers us in.  He has been doing a lot better with our investments that I could have done (or want to worry about doing), but he is strictly about managing return and risk.  He does not provide any guidance on tax planning or retirement planning.  They have folks at the firm that can provide retirement planning advice,  but asset wise, we would be a very small client for their retirement/estate planners.  We are worried about living well, but not running out of money before we die.  Their typical client is likely focused on the legacy they leave after they are gone.  Two very different concerns.

I'm setting up a call with a local retirement planner for an initial interview about their company and a second opinion about where we are retirement wise...but I am not sure what I expect out of the meeting.

#1: When it comes to retirement planning and managing investments, are these always intertwined and handled by the same person/firm?  Anyone here have two separate people/firms? If so, how does that work?  

From websites and the Saturday morning infomercials about retirement, one is lead to believe you just hand the financial keys over to a retirement planner and they take care of you...but when I dig into the details, I find that these retirement planning firms seem to apply the same cookie-cutter approach to investments for all their clients.  They seem reactionary to market changes, as opposed to be proactive.   The Investment guy we currently use is very in tune to our specific risk tolerance and short/intermediate term cash needs (1 month to several years).  They do not just stick you in an "age appropriate" portfolio that gets rebalanced yearly.   They charge a fee, but they are also creating an investment mix of individual stock and bonds, as opposed to buying funds or indexes that have their own fees.

#2 Is there such a thing as independent retirement advice?   Where do you look for this?  I would not be opposed to paying a professional by the hour to review our finances and provide advice, if they were truly independent, and not making money bases up the sales of annuities or the like.

Thanks in advance.

Start listening to the Sunday morning radio talk shows, a few firms talk about retirement prep and post retirement.  Some will give a free/low cost consult.

I also would have them look over your investment broker/portfolio.  Look at the risk factors and if your in pre or post tax accounts.  $1.5mil in pretax means alot of work ahead.

Healthcare will be one of the biggest costs and hopefully you’ll be healthy, but two people I know of passed with heart attacks, no warning, in their early 60s.


ETA: get a number of opinions, both on their approach and if it fits your goals.

I have very skeptical view of those advertising on TV. Fisher Investments has been pimping their services very hard recently. Nearly all of them seem to get paid as a percentage of your assets under management, often 1%.

If you have $200K in assets, 1% is $2,000/year. Not a huge amount. If my assets eventually grow to $2M, I'm now paying $20K/year. How much more complex is my portfolio at $2M? For most people, not that different. Numbers are bigger but the recommendations are similar. Is the planner 10X the amount of work to justify this? That seems improbable.

Per OP, you also have to worry if the advisor is recommending funds that they are incentivized to offer. And yes, there are advisors out there who you pay an hourly or annual or one time fee to review all of your portfolio and offer recommendations to you. Ideally, they have no incentives whatsoever other than giving you the very best advice, probably with the hope that you'll come back to them for a review from time to time.

Ponder on this quote:

You can find a fee only fiduciary that specializes in investments and tax planning.  Many of those work on an annual basis, so you'd need to find someone willing to work with you on an hourly basis for the advice you need.

The biggest challenge with that, is you don't know how good/thorough/valuable/complete their advice is until you already paid for it.

There is a great group on Facebook named "Retirement Planning Education (formerly Taxes in Retirement)".  You can ask a billion questions there, even anonymously.  Lots of great conversations.

I'm a lot younger than you and just realized that you need a plan for retiring - taxes are likely the largest single consideration if you will have much more than SS income in retirement.

#1: No.  You want a "fiduciary" advisor (ie. one you pay directly for his time, therefore guaranteeing he has no conflict of interest).  He will often be able to manage money for you if you want, but it's not required(if it is required be cautious).  
The guy I use shares how he would invest your money so you can do the exact same investing that he would and avoid his 0.35% fee.  

#2: Yes, See #1.  The key is that you find someone you are writing a check to for advice - avoid anybody who sells you investments on commission or who requires he manage your money for you.  

The guy I found charges in the $2-5k/year range depending on how complex your finances are.  You meet a few times in the first month or two so he can collect all your info, put the numbers into whatever systems he uses, and come up with some plans based on your goals.  You and/or he implements the plan and you meet him briefly every month or three to continuously reevaluate progress to meeting your goals and make changes as needed.  

There are countless things I learned that I never really thought about that all add up to make a huge difference in your finances.  
In the grand scheme of life, it's well worth the money to try a guy out for a year and then decide if you want to keep paying him.  I'd recommend you ask around for referrals from people you trust before you blindly look up a name on the internet.

That’s a great author and great reference material.  You can learn a lot with this book.  

OP,

Recommend you join the following Forums and post your particulars.
https://www.bogleheads.org
https://www.early-retirement.org

We used Rick Ferri, a fee only fiduciary, a couple of times to review our plan when we were in the 3 to 5 year window prior to retirement.  We do recommend him.
https://rickferri.com

I would add this in addition to the great advice the falalark guy has given (all sound, by the way) is to know what you wanna do in retirement and your tolerance level for risk.    You need to know what you want in retirement and where you want to be.  Whoever you pick is going to ask a lot of questions about your goals, etc.  you need to think about that before you answer.  At least, I did.

I agree.  I am skeptic al of all the radio and TV hyped firms...

I had an initial meeting with Fidelity 2 - 3 years back.  It was not a good meeting and I actually walked out feeling my time had been waisted. We were talked down to, the only questions asked were "How old are you " and "How much will you be investing with us", and the rest of the hour was a canned speech that would have been better served as a YouTube view. They followed up by sending me some literature and it turned out to be practically word-for-word what the advisor has spouted in the meeting.  When I finally got information on their fee structure and total fees from all sources, it became a hard "NO".

Fidelity was going to charge a percentage of funds under management that, by itself, did not sound bad, but as you pointed out, they made commissions on on many transaction transactions, and they primarily put your money in "age appropriate" funds that contained their own fees.  That jacked actual fees on the average portfolio to an average of 2.5%.  It could be higher, depending on what funds the invested is.

I can buy "age apprprtrei funds" directly with $7 or less per trade all day long, and save the Fidelity commissions and their management fee.  

A very dirty secrete behind many  funds is that there maybe different CLASSES of shares.   Some classes are "Front Loaded" with fees, that you pay when you buy the fund.  Often called "Class A", to sound more desirable, that can be in excess of 5% with some funds.  If you hold them long enough, you probably come out on top, but many folks unknowling get burned when the investement manager sells these funds long before the front loading break-even fee has been justified.

I have been reading this.  It's pretty good, but nothing groundbreaking so far.

Thanks...this is the kind of stuff I am looking for.

A paid by the hour guy is what I am looking for, I just do not know how to find one

Ask the local estate planning people, including those at the firm you are dealing with. They will likely have go to people for referrals. Do not do what you mentioned about turning your money over to someone and letting them run your finances.

OP,,I fought a similar battle years ago.

Having SS begin at 62 will help you. Having no debt will help you. CONTINUING to live below your means post retirement will help you. Finding an "advisor" for your Medicare issue is paramount.

All that being said I'm worth more now that when we retired fifteen years ago and we get a "raise" every year in terms of absolute cash flow. I'm getting truly older now and the Wife is pushing for us to "cut loose" a bit with our expenditures. We are.

Every cell in my body wants to FILE NOW TO GET MY MONEY BACK FROM THE GOVERMENT, but claiming SS now does not seem right in my case... but it's part of what I need advise on.  

While my wife makes close to what I do now, but that is a recent thing.  That puts her expected SS benefit quite a bit below mine. She is also younger than I am.  
I have a small pension with no survivorship, so that income stream dies with me.  My thinking is that I should delay filing until 67 or even 70, to maximize what she will get after I am gone.

The guy I use recently started working through this company: https://forfiduciary.com/
They have independent fiduciaries all over the country, so if you get a different guy from them who knows what you'll get.  Many(all?) of their advisors are happy to do remote advising, so you don't have to be local to them.  The guy I use is the Huntsville, AL guy because I work in Huntsville and see him in-person.  I told him I'm in for a year and will see how it goes from there - so far it's been worth the cost to me.  

One thing I really like is he uses a website that shows you your financial life until you die.  You can evaluate any possible scenario you can imagine to see what turns out best for you.  It has your info(age and all your financial info) and will tell you things like when/how much of an IRA to convert to a roth ira, the timing and quantity of distributions to take from each source (tax free, tax deferred, or taxable) in order to best meet whatever goals you specify, and countless other things that I never would have thought of on my own (until it was too late).  The website is constantly kept up to date when tax laws, etc. change so you're always getting the most current information.  
If you want to figure out when is the best time to start SS you can simply evaluate that with a few mouse clicks.  Absent serious health concerns the answer is almost always to delay taking SS as long as possible.  

It is a case of garbage in=garbage out - the information is only as accurate as the information you put into it.  And uncle sam will change the laws over time, but there's no way to predict that.  
Eisenhower was right when he said plans are useless, but planning is indispensable!