Tonight I went with my wife to a financial planner. She's been talking about getting advice on a retirement plan for herself, and who am I to stand in the way, right? I have a financial planner, though, and didn't want to go, but she kept telling me this guy was insisting that I show up for some reason I couldn't understand. She told him I had someone, but I guess he wouldn't see her without me there; I'm a good husband.

So I go, and it turns out that he's more than just a financial planner. In essence, he does business planning, retirement planning, etc. Turns out that when he does this type of thing, he doesn't just do it for one party, but for both parties. And, even if I decided I didn't want any part of it, if my wife said she did then he'd still need access to every single piece of financial information we had, otherwise he couldn't properly do his job.

Talk about an ambush! I don't think my wife set me up, but I felt ambushed nonetheless. I usually have one rule when it comes to certain things: if we have some sort of personal relationship, then I usually won't use you for things where I have to give up personal information. In this case I already knew the guy. We met years ago when we were both in the same organization, and I'd actually been to his house way back then also when he had made an offer to that organization to help anyone who completed a survey with ideas for their marketing, and I was the only person who did the survey. The guy lives near me, and I've seen him at the grocery store; that's usually just a bit too close for comfort from where I'm sitting.

So yes, I felt ambushed, and my first reaction was to kind of pull back and out. I went to sit on the couch, but I was still hearing everything that was going on. At some point, my mind realized that my wife was going to go through this thing anyway, and all my financial information was going to be his, and as much as I might not like it, maybe there was a way I could embrace it. So I asked him about it, and he said that whether I was a full participant in it or not, he was actually representing the family moreso than just my wife, whether he shared with just her or with both of us, depending on whether I came back with her or not. Heck!

So, I guess I'm going to be a client, and I'm not sure at this juncture how reluctant or willing I am. I still keep my true financial advisor, a guy who's made me almost 40% on my initial investment since I handed him a check just under 18 months ago, and I still keep my accountant. This guy supposedly enhances it all for us, especially if my wife decides to do more with her budding enterprise or other enterprises along the way. I'm not sure how open I am to sharing every dollar I spend with someone else, since I've always done my own budgeting, and actually do budgeting for others, but we'll see. I can end it at any time, no questions asked; check back in about six months when I'll have information one way or another to share.