I recently found myself with an additional, small, monthly income that I do not need for my daily living. This led me down the rabbit hole of what to do with it. I am looking at probably putting this money into an account, investing in something that pays dividends, and then just letting it compound for the foreseeable future.
This also led me down the rabbit hole, of how shabby my current financial situation is and I started to wonder who I could get to help me fix it up.
I'm looking for someone that can meet with me maybe once per quarter for the first year, then maybe 1 or 2 times a year after that to help me figure out what I have, how I'm using it, and offer ways of managing my money to help maximize it's effect. Someone that will look my shit over, tell me I'm an idiot, then help me fix it. The type of person when I say drop an e-mail that says "hey I want to do X, can I afford it?" they have a good laugh at the joke, then when they realize I'm serious, tell me "that's for people in entirely different tax brackets", or "sure, but we'll need to move some stuff around to make that work".
Is that a CPA? Is this something my local Credit Union might offer? Should I look at hiring someone? How do I tell the difference between someone that I can trust vs someone that's trying to milk me for money?
To give an idea of my wealth level (or lack there of), we have a household gross income of about $200k USD, and live in rural Midwest. I want to get my ducks in a row so I can purchase a 10 or so acre property and get out of living in town.