Touch all of the bases when calculating cost basis...

For those of you thinking about moving your finances to a financial planner be prepared to provide him or her with the cost basis for any stocks that you have. The cost basis of your stock is its purchase price adjusted for stock splits, dividends and return of capital distributions. This value is used to determine the capital gain, which is equal to the difference between your stocks cost basis and the current market value. Also known as "tax basis". Now one would think that even a haphazard record keeper would be able to come up with something as simple as the purchase price, but let me through you a curve. I have some stock that I have owned for over 15 years. I know what I paid for the original stock, but what threw a wrench into my calculations is the 15 years of reinvesting the dividends every quarter. That combined with the fact that the brokerage that held the stock for me changed hands 3 times, really muddied the water. If figured that finding the cost basis would be as simple as going to the old broker, pulling up my account and finding a button that I could click that says "cost basis". Nope! Not my friends at E-trade. I had to look through 15 years of archived statements to figure out what was what. I dug through their stuff and also through every box, file, nook, and crannie that I had at home stashed away in my attic. Talk about bats in the belfry! Mind you, I have moved 6 times since I bought the stock, so that in itself was quite painful. After several hours of hard work, I was able to get pretty close. I believe I have covered all of my bases. Don't let yourself get into the same predicament that I did.