EDITOR S NOTE: With their retirement savings crushed by the 2008 market crash, millions of older adults are turning to their children for help. SmartMoney Senior Editor Beverly Goodman is one of those children, and she recently embarked on this special report for SmartMoney.com and the February issue of SmartMoney magazine. Here s her story of providing financial advice to her mother a logistical and emotional minefield that s challenging even for a veteran financial journalist.

PREVIOUSLY: Goodman and her mother confronted the news.

See all of the stories from this series in Special Report: Parents in Crisis

My mother Vida and I are sitting in the office of her Ameriprise adviser, a space that looks a lot like a suburban doctor s office with its office-park location and nondescript, beige and gray decor. I ve convinced my editor that my mother s financial struggles emblematic of what so many Americans are facing were worth exploring. We ll visit three financial planners (all knew I worked as a financial journalist, though none was told I was reporting a story until after our visit) and see what sort of advice we get.

First up is her current adviser, Jeff, who s one of 10,000 advisers affiliated with Ameriprise Financial, a national chain of planners spun off from American Express in 2005. My mother dressed in pinstripe suit pants and a sweater set for the occasion this is important business, after all and chided me about my jeans. Her adviser, though, paid very little attention to me. In fact, he paid little attention to my mother. Despite eight years of working together, the two exchanged only the briefest of pleasantries, and within minutes he had spread out a stack of detailed Morningstar research reports on each of her funds. Mom was immediately overwhelmed, and Jeff didn t seem to notice that his circling of various numbers and pointing at colorful pie charts was distancing her, not engaging her.

To his credit, Jeff was trying to show my mother the overlap in holdings a few of her funds had. Not a bad point, but there are much larger issues at stake. Like why, for instance, someone my mother s age had 70 percent of her portfolio in stocks, instead of no more than 50 percent, which most advisers would prefer. Or why anyone in the 15 percent tax bracket would need the benefit of not one but two municipal bond funds. And why the heck hadn t he told her to sell the Ford preferred stock he d encouraged her to buy years ago? Jeff s answers, on the surface, weren t terrible. He acknowledged she had too much in stock; it was my mother who had prompted the move to munis by complaining of paying tax on funds that were losing money; and at this point she had lost so much in Ford, it might pay to see if it came back, though he was amenable to selling it.

Needing Advice, Not Just Options

All of this begs the question: What should investors expect from their advisers? My mother wanted actual advice (though in Jeff s defense, he says she didn t always act on his advice). She doesn t know how much she should have in stocks or which funds are the best; that s why she s paying for a planner. An adviser needs to understand the goals and fears of his clients and really hear what they re asking, says Carol Anderson, founder of the nonprofit organization Money Quotient, which trains financial planners.

But Jeff seemed loath to provide any real direction, preferring instead to have my mother decide between options he presented without making a concrete recommendation. (An Ameriprise spokesperson says its advisers are supposed to give clients options, but every situation is unique in terms of direction.) The only notion Jeff was firm about was sitting tight and doing nothing for two to three years. His rationale: Moving from stocks to bonds right now would mean selling a big piece of her portfolio at a loss and buying funds that wouldn t return as much, making it that much harder, if not impossible, for her to recoup her losses. What if the market doesn t recover in two to three years? my mother asked. I ll be a gym teacher, Jeff responded.

My mother was once a teacher and never dreamed she d find herself managing a portfolio, with her retirement dependent upon her own investing savvy instead of an assured pension. She taught kindergarten and first grade for seven years before having children of her own (I also have a younger sister). She left teaching to raise us, cashing out her $7,000 pension to put a down payment on a house. But when times were tough and she needed to go back to work, she couldn t find a teaching job. She tried for many years, working as a substitute teacher, applying to a variety of schools, to no avail. At $32,000, the salary the teacher s union mandated for someone with her experience and education (a master s degree), she was too pricey for many of the districts in our area.

Paying to Do Homework

So she took a computer class at a local nonprofit and changed gears now she works in the information technology department of a company that distributes industrial tools. And she loves it. What she doesn t love along with many doctors, filmmakers, realtors and countless other Americans is having to work a second job, essentially, as a money manager. Paying someone else to do the work is an option, but the standard 1 percent of assets per year can seem costly, particularly when you re losing money and not getting much advice beyond sit tight. Besides, as my mother often grouses, you still have all this homework to do.

That s a sign that you may need a different financial planner, according to money coach Mellan. Your relationship with your financial adviser is extremely important, she says. It s not unlike finding a therapist. You want an empathetic listener, someone who makes sure you understand everything without feeling stupid and who is willing to move at your pace. People s relationship to money can be fraught with emotion, Mellan says, and having an adviser tell you to buy this and sell that won t address a client s entire financial life.

NEXT: Is our financial planner, um, too young?

Our special report continues all this week as Goodman recounts the process of getting her mother back on track. Following that, she will chronicle her ongoing experiences in an online diary. ALSO READ: Parents in Crisis: Finding the Right Adviser.