How & What does your Fee-Only adviser charge?

[Bongleur]

Fee for a plan?
Hourly Fee?
Yearly fee w/ certain number of hours?
Qualifications?

I'm starting to look. First one is $200/hr. FINRA RIA; CFP; CPA on staff; Fidicuary relationship, "Masters in CFP" from the organization that does the CPA certs.

[Red Badger]

First, the fee only adviser will make some of your money his/her money. Second, the adviser may provide good financial advice. Or not. The credentials are worth what the individual behind them can provide.

RB
CSCM
CPIM
CPM

[braumeister]

If you go down the FA path, I would caution that "fee only" doesn't always mean the same thing to everyone.

One of the first places that came up when I did a search on the NAFPA site has this fascinating twist:

Quote:

(The office) offers ongoing ... services on a Fee-Only basis. This management fee is generally based upon your overall liquid net worth, not simply the assets that we are managing. This is done so that we can avoid the conflict of requiring all assets to reside with us in order to advise on them

After that they show a chart with your total liquid net worth and the associated fee. It ranges from just over 1% for $1MM down to 0.6% for $6MM, and "negotiable" above that.

So they avoid the "assets under management" issue by charging you whether they manage them or not.

Far better to find an hourly fee or a flat fee for specific services. But that's not always easy from looking at someone's website. A personal interview is usually the best idea, for a variety of reasons.