t's 2007 and you've decided that it's time to get some help from a financial planner. You log on to your computer, check the Internet Yellow Pages and find XYZ Planning Inc., the world's largest financial planning group with offices in more than 100 cities.

XYZ promises a fee-only planner that's just a few blocks from your house. You get there and the planner asks you to fill out a form answering questions about your goals, risk tolerance and time frame. Then you're offered a basic investment portfolio, with sound, conservative investments, based on your responses.

Is this a dream or a nightmare? Perhaps a little of both. It's a future pockmarked with both opportunities and problems for people trying to chart their financial futures.

On the bright side, our 21stcentury financial planner is an independent franchisee who offers you objective advice rather than pushing mutual funds and insurance policies. Unfortunately, though, he may offer little in the way of insights into the real financial problems you face. Rather than trying to grasp your ultimate goals - whether it's a new house, early retirement or maybe a more secure life provided by specific types of insurance - these planners may focus solely on your investment strategies.

That's certainly less than planners could and should be - and less than the best of them are today. Most planners come from a sales background. But today there is an elite core of financial planners who have gone far beyond sales and investments. They see themselves as lifetime financial guides who help clients implement their dreams.

"Wherever you are, you should aim for the sky," says Ross Levin, a financial planner in Minneapolis who is one of the new breed. "Our job is to help you get there."

There is only a handful of the new breed of planners. In the center is Robert N. Veres, a longtime journalist and observer of financial planners, who was once editor of Financial Planning magazine. Veres now publishes his own newsletter, Inside Information. This publication has something of a cult following among elite planners and others in the inner circle, such as Don Phillips, publisher of Morningstar Mutual Funds, from the Chicago-based mutual fund rating service.

Veres believes that this group of planners can help people answer the unanswerable question: What's it all about? "Most of us just don't get the programming we need in our younger years to be able to find the meaning in life," Veres says.

But Veres thinks financial planners can help. "They could be what helps people discover what it is they want and then helps them get it without taking advantage of them," he says.

A critical difference between planners who subscribe to Veres' outlook and others is that the former is independent. In other words, they aren't tied to a provider of financial services. An independent planner works for the client, analyzing needs and then picking and choosing the products to assist the client from a broad array of possibilities.

An independent planner is clearly good for consumers. It means that we can find a financial planner who is objective and who puts our needs first. Independence is a trend that's sweeping financial planning, stretching far beyond Veres and his group. "The power in this business is shifting from those who represent the seller of financial services to those who represent the buyer," says Morningstar's Phillips. "I don't think anyone can stem that important change."

But there are signs that consumers are not willing to pay for independence in their planners. Financial planning is hard work. The old-fashioned planner - the one who sold insurance and limited partnerships - was paid with sales commissions. That presented a conflict of interest. Would he sell the best product or the one with the highest commission? Would he replace one product with another to get a second commission?

Our new breed of planner resolved that problem by charging a flat fee to the client. It might be based on a percentage of investment assets or it might be set up as a retainer based on the complexity of the job. Some planners set a flat fee and offset it with commissions. Others refuse to sell any products that carry commissions.

Leading the anti-commission group is a small band of planners who organized as the National Association of Financial Advisors, or NAPFA. These 421 planners refuse to accept any commissions. They are strictly "fee only." The group enlisted the marketing savvy of Ron Roge, a planner from Long Island, N.Y. And because its members include a healthy dollop of the country's finest planners, NAPFA and "fee-only" became synonymous with integrity and quality among business reporters and consumers.

Because the press and the public have given fee-only planners such an enthusiastic vote of confidence, planners raced to adopt the fee-only label. But the controversy over this fee-only label and who can use it has had the unfortunate result of focusing consumer attention on whether a planner charges a fee rather than receiving a commission.

And, unfortunately, many planners are choosing to do less for the fees they charge and this is likely to continue. There is a strong trend among planners to specialize in investment management. In other words, clients pay a fee based on assets under management and the planner provides only investment management - usually by picking a handful of mutual funds - not insurance help, tax planning, estate planning or any of the other elements of financial planning.

Most observers, including Veres, are critical of this trend. "It's clearly a move in the wrong direction," Veres says. Ross Levin agrees, arguing that investing is neither the most difficult nor the most important part of financial planning.

"Investing is simple," says Jonathan Clements, personal finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal. "The investment side is clearly the easiest part of the puzzle and the part where a financial planner is the least likely to add value."

But investment management is the lucrative part of the business. Reinhardt Werba Bowen Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., firm that once did financial planning, has swept in $1.5 billion in client money in the past six years by helping planners convert their businesses to fee-only investment management services, with Reinhardt doing the asset allocation using low-cost index funds.

Reinhardt has replaced the brokerage firm as a gatherer of assets, the planner has lost his independence to choose from a broad range of investment products and the client has lost all financial planning services except investment management. Expect to see more of this model.

It would be easy to blame greedy financial planners for this trend. But customer greed comes into play, too. Planners charge for investment management because clients are willing to pay for investment management. Most of us still think there is some magic way to make a million bucks and we're willing to pay a manager in the hope that he will find it. As the Wall Street Journal's Clements points out, the real secret to wealth lies in saving more than we spend. But how many of us are willing to pay a planner to remind us to do that? "There's a disconnect between what people want to pay for and what they need," Phillips says.

It seems safe to predict that the trend to investment management will continue into the 21st century because that's where the money is. Some of the biggest and most prestigious financial institutions - like J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs - are courting independent planners, hoping they will distribute their products. "Wall Street is clearly gearing up to cater to financial planners," Clements says

Certainly, there will still be planners who will retain their independence. Hopefully, there will even be planners who continue to do the full range of financial planning services. But they will be bucking the trend.

There also will be more asset-allocation software available for do-it-yourselfers. And there will undoubtedly be some effort to franchise planning services. Although that sounds dreary, an independent franchisee might be better than working with a planner who represents a brokerage or insurance company. "There's room for something like the H&R Block of financial planning," Phillips says.

And as we get closer to the millennium, that trend will undoubtedly take root. The trend of providing a full-service financial plan is already well under way as more and more planners look for the most cost-effective, time efficient way of earning a living.

"The root of the problem is really this," says Robert Clark, editor of the Dow Jones Investment Advisor, a trade publication: "There is no way to get paid for the financial planning services." But it's still worth searching for. The closer you can come to finding a planner who offers independent, objective thinking about financial problems and who is willing to offer advice on the big picture, the better off you will be.

"When we do our job, we help clients to use their resources to create the life they want for themselves," says Levin, the Minneapolis planner. Now that's worth a fee!