Q. I retired as CSRS in 2015 and have a TSP account. I’ve recently decided to hire a financial planner and he recommends to “link” my accounts (savings, IRA, TSP) to a financial management tool that consolidates & updates your investments in order to get a total view of your accounts in one location for analysis. This necessitates providing my user IDs and passwords via secure encryption. The tool does not “store” the user ID or passwords. These tools seem rather common in the financial planning profession. I still have hesitation in providing my info via a tool. Would you recommend using these tools to “link” your investments into one consolidated view for management?
A. I do not use this approach in my planning practice because of security concerns. I prefer to collect the data I need from my clients as needed. It’s not that I know something special about the risk involved. It’s just that I’m a “belt-and-suspenders” kind of guy.
That said, why would you hire a financial planner that you don’t trust?
