Retirement column makes (the wrong kind of) news

We rarely cover journalistic controversies here on the Money blog, but there’s a smallish one now in the news that caught our attention.

As reported in the newspaper industry journal Editor & Publisher and elsewhere, a retirement planning column, written by a trade association, recently ran in several papers across the U.S., bearing the bylines of different, local financial planners. The presumed ethical lapse here is that "by So-and-so" usually implies that "So-and-so" actually wrote the thing.

I’ve read the column behind the fuss. The advice it offers is sound if not exactly startling: keep funding your 401(k), avoid withdrawing or borrowing from it, etc. There seems to me to be no evidence that the planners involved were trying to be anything but helpful and, of course, possibly drum up a little business.

If you need a financial planner, however, there are better ways to pick one than consulting the bylines, real or otherwise, in your local paper. Here’s some basic advice on choosing a financial adviser. And bear in mind that just about anybody can call himself or herself a “financial planner.” Even fee-only planners, the kind we usually recommend, have been subject to some serious allegations lately.  --Greg Daugherty

Greg writes the “Retirement Guy” column each month in the Consumer Reports Money Adviser newsletter.