My regular columnist, Mom2KG, returns this month perplexed about her financial advisor. You have any advice? Please feel free to share. If you are new to this blog, please visit the Mom2KG section to catch up. Thanks.

It may not come as a surprise to anyone that the market meltdown has paralyzed us with fear. Mostly my husband, of course, who sees money draining away with every move I make. I even use too much toilet paper, apparently.

We’re doing a few things differently.

First, we increased the mortgage payments again. If we stick to our plan, we’ll have the whole damn thing paid off before the term is up, which means we won’t have to worry about the anticipated soaring interest rates. Second, I created automatic deposits into my RRSP account, but instead of spreading the deposit among different investments, I’m just putting it in cash for now.

Perhaps the best thing we’ve done is have me responsible for a large, fixed portion of the credit card bill every month. I have to admit this has made me pause once or twice before making a purchase. The account I pay out of is now a joint account, but until recently was only in my name. Even now I’m the only one using it, and I rather like seeing the cash balance.

Oh, I also finally got the President’s Choice Master Card, and we’re going to say bye-bye to the stupid Aerogold Visa. It costs $200 a year (for the primary cardholder plus a secondary card), and points do not seem to accumulate fast enough for us to be able to purchase flights. In addition, certain charges are not covered by the points, and so flights end up costing a few hundred dollars anyhow. Then we’re also stuck with Air Canada, which is not known for point flexibility. The program does offer merchandise as well, but we had really wanted the flights, and we don’t need more stuff. The PC card will allow us to set off the cost of groceries – always an issue with us.

One last thing – we are reviewing our choice of financial advisor. It’s a one-stop shop kind of place. I recently purchased term life insurance there. The original estimate turned out to be wrong, by close to 50%. It was a simple oversight – the broker had all the information but gave me the wrong info when we first spoke. I was pretty irritated, but signed the contract anyhow, because the final price was still acceptable, the contract is non-binding, and I’ve been trying to get this done for almost a year. But it’s just one more thing that’s rankling with us. We know everyone has lost money in the last several weeks, but were our portfolios properly diversified? Why had the advisor never mentioned REITs? Why did we have to push on getting an explanation about ETFs? Why is there so much redundancy in the portfolio? Why has no one talked to us about short, medium and long-term planning? We have very specific goals – isn’t that what we should be talking about?

What do you look for in an advisor? We need someone who will actively inform us of the greater implications of our investments, at least quarterly (right now we’re getting two calls a year, though we did get calls and e-mails around the time of the market frenzy). We want someone to educate us in the variety of investment possibilities, not just stupid mutual funds. We want someone to take an interest in our life and family goals and think about, and tell us, a strategy to get there.

As a post-script on yesterday’s post about Canadian banks and dividends, TD announced it is issuing $1.2 billion of common shares for the primary purpose of boosting its capital adequancy levels (this refers to the amount of money a bank must set aside). A good, bad or indifferent sign? Only time will tell…