Having a lot of fancy acronyms after their name doesn’t mean they’re experienced or honest. Do your own research before you choose an adviser.

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Question: I expect to retire in about three years at age 66 and need advice on what I should do with my 401(k) and a lump sum from my pension plan after I leave my job. I met with a “retirement planning specialist” whose card also said he had a “Wharton certificate in retirement planning.” I have no idea what any of this means. Can you shed some light on these credentials? –H.G.

Answer: When it comes to advisers touting their retirement-planning expertise, there’s no shortage of credentials. You’ve got your CSAs (Certified Senior Advisors), CRFAs (Certified Retirement Financial Advisers), CSCs (Certified Senior Consultants), CRCs (Certified Retirement Counselors)…and lord knows how many more designations that have popped up in the time it took you to read this sentence.

But as I’ve noted before, the difficulty isn’t finding people who claim to have designations that suggest special expertise. It’s determining whether a credential requires rigorous training that can truly improve an adviser’s effectiveness or whether it is really a convenient way for advisers to impress potential clients.

In the case of the adviser you mention, I can tell you that the certificate in retirement planning issued by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is part of a special executive education program created by Wharton and AXA, the big insurance and financial services company.

The program, which is open only to AXA advisers, is essentially a five-day affair. The certificate that attendees receive attests to the fact that they attended and completed the course. There’s no exam. I don’t want to suggest the course is fluff. The advisers study a variety of retirement issues with such well-known Wharton professors as Olivia Mitchell and they do a case study, which is critiqued. But it’s not as if they’re getting a Wharton MBA in retirement planning.

As for that term “retirement planning specialist,” it’s a purely internal title that AXA allows advisers who attended the program to use.

Why, you may ask, are we seeing this proliferation of men and women of letters? Well, one reason is that with the baby boomers marching into retirement, there’s clearly a growing need for more proficiency handling such issues as saving and investing for retirement and turning 401(k)s and other accounts into lifetime income. No doubt many advisers want to learn as much as they can to help clients navigate such matters.

Then there’s a less charitable explanation, which is that initials and designations can create an aura of credibility, warranted or not, and make it easier to sell products that generate fees.

And make no mistake, the use of some credentials by some advisers has been a problem. In testimony last year before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin claimed that the Certified Senior Advisor designation has been used by annuity salesmen as a deceptive marketing tool.

In the wake of such allegations, the Society of CSAs has begun requiring that advisers who use the designation provide a disclosure statement to clients that, among other things, says that “the CSA designation alone does not imply expertise in financial, health or social matters.” Well, thanks for clearing that up.

So how can you increase your chances of ending up with an honest and competent adviser who can really help you address retirement-planning issues as opposed to just salesperson with a string of letters after his or her name?

Well, the first thing you must realize is that no designation - even the mighty CFP (Certified Financial Planner), which is generally considered the creme de la creme for advisers dealing with individuals’ personal finances - guarantees competence or, more importantly, integrity. You’ve still got to assess whether this person has sufficient expertise and is willing to put your interests ahead of his or her own.

Ultimately that’s a judgment call - and a tough one - but you’ll increase your chances of making a good decision by checking with state, federal and other regulators to see whether the adviser has a history of complaints from clients.

It’s also a good idea to get referrals from well-regarded industry groups like the Financial Planning Association or the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, as well as recommendations from friends or relatives who have had success with an adviser.

On the other hand, I’d be wary of any advisers who contact me unsolicited, and doubly wary of ones who run free retirement-planning lunches or seminars. Many times such sessions are just a come-on to sell high-priced investments.

Above all, though, you’ve got to maintain a healthy sense of skepticism and trust your instincts. I think you can tell when someone is trying to sell you something as opposed to listening to you talk about your needs, concerns and goals then trying to create a solution that addresses them.

If an annuity or some other product the adviser sells always seems to be the top solution or if the adviser is reluctant to outline fees in writing, then perhaps the letters that should be on that person’s card are GSA (glorified sales associate) - and maybe you should just walk away.

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Using variable and equity-indexed universal life insurance policies as retirement vehicles is expensive and complicated, and probably not worth the trouble.

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Question: What do you think about VULs and EIULs as retirement plans? --Liz G., Downey, California

Answer: My short answer: not much.

That’s not to say that I couldn’t imagine some circumstance in which you might consider them. But they would be way, way, way down on my list of retirement-planning options, something I wouldn’t even contemplate until I’d thrown every possible cent into tax-advantaged plans like 401(k)s, IRAs and the like, and until I’d also funded options like low-cost index funds or tax-managed funds in taxable retirement accounts.

And even then I’d be extremely hesitant to get involved with these plans.

Before I tell you why I’m so wary of them, however, let me first explain to readers who are unfamiliar with VULs and EIULs just what they are.

Although they’re often referred to as retirement plans, in fact these are nothing more than insurance policies, specifically variable universal life (VUL) and equity indexed universal life (EIUL). Both are designed so that a portion of the premium you pay buys insurance coverage, while the rest goes into investments that build the “cash value” portion of the policy.

With a VUL, you invest in portfolios known as “subacccounts,” which are essentially the equivalent of mutual funds. Most VUL policies offer a dozen or more such subacccounts, everything from domestic and international stock funds to all sorts of bond funds.

An EIUL, on the other hand, allows you to invest a portion of your premium in an investment whose return is pegged to a benchmark such as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. The idea is that you get the upside of stocks’ returns, but also downside protection in the form of a small guaranteed return.

So how do these policies amount to retirement plans? Well, the pitch in both cases is that you invest in the policy, your cash value builds without the drag of taxes over time and in retirement you begin withdrawing money as you need it for living expenses.

And there’s one more big lure: instead of just pulling the money from the policy, you borrow against your cash value at attractive rates. Since policy loan proceeds aren’t taxable, you have the prospect of tax-free retirement income.

All this sounds delightful, of course, but there are some major downsides to consider. First, a portion of your retirement savings is going to life insurance, and the cost of that coverage is often higher than what you would pay for a regular old term insurance policy.

Then there are a variety of marketing fees and sales commissions that cut into your return. In the case of VUL, there are the annual operating costs for the subaccounts as well as an annual fee known as the “M&E” or mortality and expense charge, all of which lower returns even more.

The investment fees are less explicit in EIUL policies, but they’re there nonetheless, built into the formulas that are used to calculate returns.

Speaking of those formulas, they’re typically so complicated and convoluted, it’s difficult for any average person to follow them, let alone understand whether or not you’re getting a good deal. (Equity-indexed annuities are similar to equity indexed universal life policies from an investment point of view.)

And both types of policies come with a big potential tax trap - namely, if you’ve borrowed from the policy and then let it lapse, the investment earnings you’ve withdrawn that were touted as tax-free become taxable. So if you’ve been using the policy for income in retirement, you could end up facing a substantial tax bill late in life when the last thing you need is to be shelling out beaucoup bucks to the IRS.

I think these policies are too expensive, too complicated and too much trouble to be worthwhile.

In my opinion, you’re better off maxing out your 401(k), investing in an IRA if you can, funding any other tax-advantaged accounts you may have access to (such as a SEP or solo 401(k) if you’ve got business, freelance or self-employment income), and then moving on to tax-efficient investments in taxable accounts, including low-cost index funds, ETFs and tax-managed funds.

If you’ve done all this and still have money to invest for retirement and are considering a VUL or EIUL, I recommend you first read “Variable Universal Life: Worth Buying Now?,” which was written by James Hunt, a former Vermont insurance commissioner now with the Consumer Federation of America.

If you’re still hot on getting one, I suggest you take the policy, the cash-value projections and all the information you can get about fees and costs and go to a financial planner who doesn’t depend on the sale of such policies for his or her livelihood for a second-opinion about using the policy for retirement income.

If after doing this, you’re confident that you understand the costs and the risks and you still want to buy such a policy, fine. But if your decision comes back to haunt you later on, don’t say you weren’t warned.

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