Services and fees

$10,000 a year. Published, not negotiated behind a closed door.

The single most important question you can ask an advisor

How, exactly, do you get paid? Not roughly. Exactly, and all of the ways.

Very few clients can answer that question about their own advisor. Too few advisors have a good answer.

Here is mine: from my flat advisory fee, and only from my flat advisory fee. I do not benefit by a penny from any investment, product or insurance policy I might recommend. No matter how much money you have, no matter where I suggest it goes, my fee is the same.

The fee

The number comes from arithmetic, not positioning. A typical client takes twenty to thirty hours of my time in a typical year. Multiply that by a rate I consider fair for the experience I bring, and you get $10,000.

I also checked it against the published fee schedules of my closest competitors. My fee sits below what most of them charge their smallest client.

Run the arithmetic yourself

A 1% assets-under-management fee on a $2 million portfolio is $20,000 a year. My fee is $10,000.

On $3 million it is $30,000. My fee is $10,000.

That gap is not an investment return and I am not projecting one. It is subtraction. What you do with the difference is a separate question, and a more interesting one.

The uncomfortable part for the industry is what happens to that gap over a decade of a working relationship. Fees compound in exactly the direction returns do, only against you.

What the fee covers

Every advisor offers a broadly similar menu: financial analysis, savings and spending strategy, portfolio risk, tax planning, estate coordination. That part is not where firms differ.

For your fee you get:

• Financial planning built around your actual situation, not a template
• Investment management I perform myself
• Tax planning, coordinated with your CPA
• Retirement income and withdrawal planning
• Social Security and Medicare decision support
• Insurance and risk review, with nothing to sell you
• Estate coordination with your attorney
• Divorce financial analysis where relevant (CDFA®)
• Unlimited access to me during the year

Where your money actually sits

Charles Schwab is the custodian for client accounts. You never send me money.

The only client money I can move to my own account is the advisory fee, and Schwab has to approve that request before it goes anywhere. It will not approve anything outside my standard flat fee. If you want, I will get Schwab on the phone with you and walk through their safeguards together.

What it costs to leave

Either of us can end the relationship at any time, for any reason.

I do not use investments or recommend insurance products that carry surrender charges or early-exit penalties. Fees are billed quarterly in advance, so if we part ways mid-quarter I owe you a refund for the unused portion.

Your risk in hiring me is close to nothing, which is how I think it should be.

A conflict I do have

Every advisor has conflicts. Anyone who says otherwise is not being straight with you.

Mine sits at the front of the relationship, not inside it. If you ask whether you should become my client, I obviously stand to gain from you saying yes. So I cannot answer that question without a conflict, and I will not pretend otherwise.

Once you are a client, my only remaining incentive is to do work good enough that you stay. That is the whole of it.