Yesterday I got an email from a friend asking me what I thought about tankless water heaters. I think he must have been under the impression I might know something about them because of all the remodeling I've done in and around my house.

I replied that I had no experience with them; but that I'd think carefully about installing one. Naturally that set off quite an email conversation. Right away I picked up on something. My friend himself wasn't completely comfortable with the tankless water heater idea.

He'd read they were energy efficient, which is true. After all, you only pay to heat the water you actually use rather than heating an entire tank of water which may cool off and need to be reheated before you use it. Less water is wasted too because supply pipelines between heated water and the tap can be shorter. In case you're wondering, I agreed with him completely on all these points. I really believe they're a better technology for the home. Still, I told him I'd think carefully about installing one.

As you gain more success in your career and in life you'll accumulate plenty of

• scars from hard fought battles
• accolades for your great accomplishments
• friends with whom you've fought in the trenches
• a depth of experience which will make you a valuable commodity in your chosen field of expertise

If your career progresses anything like my own, you'll start asking yourself why you're time, your billable hours, shouldn't be your own to manage yourself. Why might you question it? Could it be it's that your customer rate increased by some large amount while your salary barely increased by the inflation rate? Could it be you're growing uncomfortable with the friction in the system - the time spent doing administrative tasks? Perhaps the concern grows out of an uneasiness that what you and your team are delivering, while valuable, could be both more on target and more effective for the same cost to the customer.

A good friend of mine called me yesterday and let me in on a bit of potentially good news. His company has offered him an early retirement package.

My first thought was that of how lucky he was to be offered a buyout. See, I happen to think that buyouts are a good thing at any age. He wasn't so sure.

He's been with his company for over 20 years. Except for a short stint at another company shortly after graduation, Bill hasn't worked for any other company. You might say Bill's grown roots. He's a bit, shall we say, terrified of change.

Even though I really wanted to sell him hard on why I thought it was a terrific idea to take the early retirement package, I listened to his rundown of the benefits offered in the package and decided to offer him a framework for making his decision.

I urged him to take full advantage of the services his company was offering. Employees eligible for the early retirement program were being offered both classroom and private sessions with financial planners and a career outplacement firm.

No doubt for me the most important thing I think about when evaluating professional services - whether it's home remodeling or dentistry or as in this case, financial planning - is the person's qualifications and experience.

When choosing a financial planner, I'd want to know the answers to a few important questions having to do with his/her qualifications and experience:

• How long has this person been doing financial planning work?
• What sort of financial planning does this person specialize in?
• What professional designations or certifications does this person hold?
• Is this financial planner's experience relevant to my situation?

Let's look at these one by one.

An old business acquaintance reached out to me the other day. He called me on the phone, out of the blue. I hadn't heard from him in years.

After a prolonged chit-chat period, the small talk that always precedes the real reason for calling, Bob, (not his real name) mentions that since we last spoke he's made a career change. He's now in a financial planner.

Bob went on to say that he'd always been fascinated by the workings of personal finance and financial planning. He'd always managed his own savings and finances through the years working for one large corporation or another. Over the years he'd grown tired of the corporate runaround. He wanted to do his own thing.

A corporate restructuring presented Bob the opportunity he'd been yearning for, to do financial planning for a living. He "took the package" and enlisted with a small firm which helped him through the process of becoming a financial planner. And now here he was ready to sit down with potential clients (maybe I'd like to be one of them?) and plan out their financial futures.