The secret to wealth accumulation is earn more, spend less, save the rest.

Senior planning advice. Open an excel spreadsheet and fill in the blanks with cash in and cash out. Fill in enough monthly columns to get you to 90.

I am inundated by offers of financial advice. Usually, they offer a free lunch or dinner to listen to their pitch.

Typically, there are numerous offers to show me clever ways to pay off my mortgage fast. In the end, the advice is simply pay more and your mortgage will be paid off faster than if you paid less. And for this they wish to charge me.

I receive numerous offers on how to save for retirement. In the end, the advice is spend less than you earn and save the rest. And for this they wish to charge me. 

Of course, then there are the financial planners, with multiple letters after their name, who proclaim to have identified the holy grail in investing. They explain in excruciating detail that if you make 1% interest on your money, you will accumulate less than if you earn 5%. And for this they charge me. Of course I have respect for some financial planners, but an excel spreadsheet with a reasonable forecast of earning, saving and investing is effective. Every great financial plan begins with a forecast assumption of how long you expect to live, the one assumption that is indisputably unknown and makes the accuracy of precise arithmetic hopelessly speculative.

Then there is the absolute, indisputable, guarantee of wealth, if you will just follow the suggested plan, the world will be yours.

My advice is take the free dinner, walk out with a smile and file the advice, which often is a bit insulting to a person's intelligence. If you have been smart enough to accumulate a few million dollars for your final years, you do not need a financial planner, they need you to show them how you did it.