Why Paying for Financial Advice Makes Sense |

If you are lucky to earn more money than you need each month, there was probably a time when you could have used some advice about how best to spend, save and protect it.

But if you looked around for a big national firm that swore to do the right thing, you would not have found it. Doing it right means putting your interests first, investing in index funds or similar investments, making money only through reasonable fees and not commissions earned from pushing complex life insurance policies, and talking to you in depth about your entire financial life and your goals and dreams.

So when LearnVest came on the scene in 2009, there was cause for some optimism. The company’s goal was to bring financial planning to the masses for what is now a $299 upfront fee plus a $19 monthly subscription. Yet even with nearly $75 million in venture capital money to play with, it doesn’t have 10,000 customers signed up for its standard plan.

We know this because LearnVest reported that modest client number in the announcement late last month that it was being acquired by Northwestern Mutual, a giant insurance company. Northwestern Mutual has an army of 16,000 or so a

via Why Paying for Financial Advice Makes Sense |.