Financial Planning: C or D

So having a baby and being 32 and all and having just kind of drifted along financially thus far in my life (not in debt but not much savings either), I figure it's time to take this shit a little more seriously.

1) Can anyone recommend good personal financial advice/planning books? I'd like something I can read together with H, and I would say that on the whole I am relatively financially literate and she is less so.

2) Has anyone ever actually gone to a financial planner? I feel like on one hand it's something that I should be able to do myself and I probably don't have enough money or complexity to justify it, but on the other hand I feel like maybe I need to have someone sit me down and say "You should be spending no more than this much on rent, and saving this much for retirement."

Well, never got a response, but we did wind up buying two books: The Ten Commandments of Money and Smart Couples Finish Rich.

The latter I'm sort of embarrassed to have even bought, and as its title and cover suggest, it's very seminar-y and annoying, and there's a lot of fluff about filling out charts of your values as a couple. There are maybe two chapters worth of actual useful financial tips, the best of which is that you'll save a lot of money if you take out a 15 year instead of a 30 year mortgage, and on average couples who do it retire like 8 years earlier. I sort of knew that but didn't realize how big a difference it made.

Ten Commandments of Money is much, much better.

I read The Four Pillars of Investing and I will summarize the four pillars for you
1. Get
2. An
3. Index
4. Fund

I used to read personal finance blogs all the time and they eventually coalesced into a blur of sameyness but I learned a lot from them. My favorite one was this:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/

He makes saving seem pretty easy and doable; esp bcz his personal story involved pulling himself out from being deeply ensconced in debt (from comic books, god bless him! <3). It ranges from entry level to intimidating (for me) parts of finance. A nice and helpful blog.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the philosophy behind index funds -- basically, you, ordinary person, are never going to beat wall street slicksters over the long term, so the best you can do is use the lowest cost means of investing in a broad swath of the market. Seems about right.

I think if I actually had any real money to invest I'd consider buying a rental property right now, like a studio or one br.