The Work-Performed Standard

A flat fee is a price. This is the method behind it.

The sentence the whole practice rests on

My fee is tied to the work performed.

That sounds unremarkable until you hold it next to how the rest of this industry charges. Under the assets-under-management model, the fee is tied to the size of your account, which is a different thing entirely, and the gap between those two ideas is where a great deal of money quietly goes.

I ran an AUM practice for fourteen years with 225 clients, so this is not an outsider’s complaint. It is what I concluded from the inside, after it cost me a client I had worked with for twelve years.

Why the fee does not follow your balance

A typical client takes twenty to thirty hours of my time in a typical year. Some years less. Some years, when a business sells or a marriage ends or a parent dies, considerably more.

I priced that time at what I believe it is worth and arrived at one number that applies to everyone. It moves once a year with the Consumer Price Index, and that is the only thing that moves it.

Which means: inherit money, sell a company, roll over a 401(k), decide to invest an extra half million. The fee does not change. You never have to wonder whether the advice you are getting has a commission attached to it, because there is nothing for me to attach one to.

Two people can pay a very different amount for the same twenty-five hours of work. That is what a percentage-of-assets fee produces, and it is the part of this industry I could not defend once I looked at it squarely.

Why I still manage the money myself

A great deal of this industry has quietly outsourced portfolio management to model providers and turned advisors into relationship managers who deliver someone else’s decisions.

I do the work. I stay hands-on and I adjust when a client’s situation calls for it, which is a different thing from trading on forecasts. I do not make market predictions, because I have watched enough cycles to know that the confident people are usually the ones to worry about.

Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal, and no approach removes that. What an approach can do is make sure the person making the decisions knows you.

Why the answers are already published

Most of what a prospect needs to evaluate an advisor is information the advisor controls and rarely volunteers.

So I put it in writing first. How I get paid, every way. What my conflicts are, including the one I have before you hire me. Where your money sits and why I cannot take it. What happens to your accounts if I die. What it costs you to walk away.

None of that is on the site because a marketing plan called for transparency. It is there because those are the questions I would ask, and because an advisor who needs a meeting before he will answer them has told you something already.

What you get in a year

• An initial planning stretch where we talk often, and at length
• At least five contacts a year after that: your birthday, and after each quarter closes
• My preference for two deep-dive reviews annually, six months apart
• Coordination across income, tax, insurance, and estate decisions rather than the investment piece alone
• A phone number that reaches me

One thing I tell every client: do not sit on an unanswered question. Call me. You are paying me to advise you, so let me advise you.

What happens next

Step 1 — A virtual conversation. 30 minutes. No charge, no pitch.

Step 2 — Your plan and your fee, in writing. Including what I would not do.

Step 3 — The work.