More often than not, the perception is that financial advice is only concerned with investments. While investments are important, comprehensive financial planning covers anything money related in your life, now and in the future.

For better or worse, our finances impact our lives every day. A simple run to the grocery store, buying a birthday present, contemplating purchasing an automobile, replacing a broken water heater, planning for a vacation and the list goes on. It feels like every time we turn around, we have to make some kind of a decision that involves money.

Financial Planning, when done with a holistic view of all your financial matters will continuously focus on:

• Your day-to-day financial health, covering your cash flow and budgeting to ensure that every dollar you make has a purpose. A dollar without a job gets spent.

• Establishment of healthy money habits. Sound money behavior over a long period of time is extremely important.

• Risk factors, capturing areas for review that might prevent you from reaching your goals.

• Investments, which will be the engine that will help you meet your future goals.

• Retirement Income planning projections to ensure that you are taking care of your future self and family.

Financial planning needs to continuously focus on the present to ensure that potential risks are captured early on, in order to have a positive long-term impact on your future.

With our CFO model, we act like your personal Chief Financial Officer. We collaborate with you, we listen, we educate, we coach and we support.

As a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) firm, we are required to act as a Fiduciary.

The definition of a Fiduciary is: "of, relating to, or involving a confidence or trust". Or better said per Investopedia: "A fiduciary is a person or organization that acts on behalf of another person or persons, putting their clients’ interests ahead of their own, with a duty to preserve good faith and trust. Being a fiduciary thus requires being bound both legally and ethically to act in the other’s best interests."

As an RIA firm, we appreciate that we are bound legally to act in our clients' best interests. But we think it needs to be deeper than that. As a human, within your body and mind, you must want to do what is right for the client, not just because you are required to by law. Truly caring about the client needs to be embodied within someone's values, which then is reflected within the company's culture. That is our belief.

Yes, the firm is 100% independent. We are not tied to any one specific financial firm. No sales quota or a need to push any products.

To best serve our Continuous Financial Overview (CFO) offering, we apply a hybrid model, consisting of two compensation methods:

• Flat fee as a monthly subscription.

• Assets Under Management for investments we manage for you (if any).

See our Pricing page for details and below for a deeper dive.

The financial industry is a confusing place, especially when it comes to how people pay for financial services. There are three main methods of how consumers can pay for personal financial advice. Some advisors can choose to use only one method or a combination.

1. Assets Under Management (AUM): Under this method, the financial advisor charges a fee directly from the investments they manage for you. This is typically on average around 1% and the actual monetary amount will vary based on the fluctuations of your investments. For example, if using the typical 1% as the AUM fee, in year one, if your investments are worth $250K, the annual fee will be $2.5K. In year two, if your investments have grown to $270K, the fee will be $2.7K.

Usually, if this is the only method the financial advisor charges for their services, they might require a minimum amount for clients to invest with them, which can be a minimum of $250K or more.

While 1% might not sound like a lot, it can add up over time, especially once your assets under management start crossing the $500K mark.

2. Flat fee: Under this method, the financial advisor charges a set flat fee, regardless of the size of assets (for very large balances and added complexity, the flat fee might be increased). Typically, flat fees can range from $4K to $12K a year and are usually paid on a monthly or quarterly subscription basis. This can be beneficial if you have a higher amount of assets since the flat fee will be capped to a certain point, compared to your level of assets. However, this model could be expensive if somebody is in the beginning stages of their financial journey and might not be able to justify the cost.

Under this model, an "Advice Only" model can also apply. This is a newer way of providing financial advice. The advisor will work with you to review your current situation, and provide advice based on your goals. You will then implement any recommendations on your own. Usually, there isn't an ongoing relationship under this model. If additional advice is needed, a new fee will be paid and the advisor will perform another engagement with the new advice. Typically, this model is best for individuals who have experience in personal finance and investing, and are looking for a second opinion.

3. Commissions: Under this method, the financial advisor gets a commission directly from the financial company for any products sold. If the advisor only offers commission-based products and not comprehensive planning, it tends to lead to a transactional relationship. Due to the transactional nature of commissions, the financial product could be sold to the consumer without much (if any) thought of how it might integrate into the family's full financial picture. Frequently, there is very little education given to the client, which leads to the "product being sold, and not bought".

• The most common commission-based financial products are mutual funds, permanent life insurance and annuities.

• More often than not, it is not the product itself that is bad, but how it is sold and whether it makes sense as part of your unique financial plan. A financial product might be bad for one family but very good for another. That's why education is crucial as part of a comprehensive plan. While you don't need to be an expert, you still need to be provided with the education to understand how it works, what commission is paid and how it plays a role within your financial plan. This is why we only contemplate commission-based complex insurance products (permanent life insurance and annuities) to clients who are in our long-term CFO Comprehensive relationship. We need to know your full plan before we consider such financial tools.

None of the models are perfect, but each adds a unique value and allows us to serve the diverse demographic who have careers in the Retail industry.

We are integrating Flat Fee via a monthly subscription + AUM into a process to capture as many benefits of each as we can. Transparency in how you pay for your financial planning is key.

We don't sell any financial products, so we don't receive any commissions or kickbacks from products we might suggest as part of your financial plan.

As you read in the above section, there are multiple ways a financial advisor gets compensated.

The best method is with transparency. You, as the client, need to know what and why you are paying for the service you get. This is a top priority for me as the owner. I am after building relationships and that starts with trust and transparency.

Know this. There is no such thing as a free financial advisor or free financial products. There is always a cost to you, either directly or indirectly.

Educating yourself on the different fee models (above drop-down) is a great starting point.

What is a conflict of interest when working with a Financial Advisor? - it often comes down to how the advisor gets compensated and whether that could create a conflict of interest in recommending certain products to the client. Is the product/strategy in the best interest of the client, or did the form of compensation impact the advisor's proposal?

Here are some important conflicts of interest that you should be aware of:

Assets Under Management (AUM): The more assets the advisor manages, the higher the compensation for the advisor. That by itself is not bad, if the complexity and additional services might need to be provided if the investments have grown in value. However, what if the advisor doesn't recommend a certain strategy that requires moving money out of the investments he/she manages as that will lower the fees? That could create a conflict of interest.

To minimize conflicts of interest within the AUM model, we have implemented the following:

• A tiered AUM fee schedule. The higher the investments we manage for you, the lower the fees get for each threshold.

• We have put a cap on the total annual fees we can charge (Monthly Subscription + AUM) to be $10,000*. That means that once your assets reach a certain level (around $2.5M), your total fee will stop at $10,000. If your managed investments continue to grow, you will be capped at the $10,000.

Commissions: This model usually carries the highest form of conflict. The advisor gets a commission from the company offering the product. Very often, commission-based financial products are very transactional. There isn't much of a relationship once the product is sold. If that was the only form of compensation, the only incentive for that advisor to continue a relationship is to sell you additional products. You can see how this can become problematic. Did you buy a product that you truly need or were you sold a product that paid a commission to the salesperson?

To be clear, certain products that can be very valuable for your unique financial situation can only be purchased via a commission-based model. These are typically mutual funds and insurance-based products.

To minimize conflicts of interest within the commission-based model, we have decided to not sell any financial products or accept any payment for suggesting such products. Our job is to suggest products that are in your best interest and for that, we only accept payment directly from you. No incentives to offer specific products.

*We reserve the right to increase the cap amount periodically based on new complexity, inflation and other economic factors.

Continuous Financial Overview (CFO) - while this model is meant to be a long-term relationship with ongoing financial planning, there is no long-term commitment.

This is a relationship, and you should be getting long-term value from it. We don't see a point in locking you into a contract. If for any reason you are not happy with us, you won't be engaged in the relationship anyway, so being stuck in a contract will only benefit us and not you. We will work with you to find a different financial planner. Our main goal is to help you succeed on your financial journey.

Individual Retirement Accounts (Traditional and Roth IRAs) and brokerage accounts can be considered to receive investment management as part of the CFO Comprehensive model, following the AUM fee schedule as described in our Pricing page.

401k plans serviced by your employer will not be considered as part of the AUM fee schedule as they are administered by your employer's plan provider. However, advice and analysis on such accounts is included as part of the monthly financial planning subscription.

There is NO minimum requirement for Assets Under Management. A big reason why we use a hybrid compensation model. You shouldn't need to have a minimum amount of non-401k investments to be able to have access to quality financial advice. The point is to help you start or continue to build toward your financial goals.

We also don't make you move any investment until after Step 3 is completed in the Relationship Flow. We want to get to know you first, then plan and then start implementing.

We cap the max annual fee at $10,000* for the Subscription + AUM fee. This means that if you cross approximately $2.5 million in investable assets with us, you will not pay more than $10,000. This can be extremely beneficial compared to a 1% AUM fee, which would be $25,000 annually for that level of assets.

*We reserve the right to increase the cap amount periodically based on new complexity, inflation and other economic factors.

We are partnered with reputable custodians, Charles Schwab and Altruist. A custodian is a financial institution that holds your investment assets on your behalf for safekeeping. They are your assets under your ownership. Think of it as a regular bank. Your cash in the checking account is being held by the bank, but it is still your money.

As part of the custodian's services, they also serve as a broker when you want to buy and sell investments within your accounts. They also perform administrative tasks such as tracking your investment activity, receiving dividends, as well as providing important tax paperwork.

While we provide investment management as part of our service, we don't have physical possession of your assets. The custodian does and they are under your name and ownership. We are given permission by you to be able to manage the investments on your behalf based on your Investment Policy Statement (IPS) which we create and update periodically as your life changes. With your permission, we are able to make the necessary trades based on the IPS.

We are 100% independent. We don't have a parent company looking over our shoulders with pressure to meet some kind of a sales quota, push certain products or provide a cookie-cutter service.

Our mission is to do what is in your best interest, unique to your situation, and being 100% independent gives us the ability to do just that. To be YOUR partner, with your best interest in mind.

Good question and in full transparency, it is hard to explain if there is a difference. Just like in any industry, there are different titles for the same job. In Retail, for example, someone overseeing a whole district can be called a District Manager, a District Lead or a District Sales Manager. Is there a difference between the three? Hard to tell.

Financial Advisor seems to be the more popular term when I compare it to Financial Planner on Google Trends.

Here are some things to be mindful of, when looking for someone to help you with your finances:

• Truly think about what is important to you and if you want someone to help you with all things personal finance or just a few specific things.

• Some advisors will mostly focus on managing your investments and not spend much time diving deeper into anything else. As you can see from our CFO model, investments is only a piece of the pie. But if you want only investment management and nothing else, such an advisor might be the right fit for you.

• Other advisors will only offer certain products, such as insurance. While insurance is extremely important, some might use these products as a solution to everything. The quote "If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail" comes to mind. When working with an insurance representative/advisor, make sure they are providing you with detailed education since these products can be very complex. You should have a very clear idea of why such a product is being implemented and how it fits into your overall financial plan.

When meeting with financial advisors/planners, ask questions. Don't be shy. If there are questions that you still want to be answered and you couldn't find those answers on their website, make sure to ask during your meetings.

Do not feel bad when asking your questions. If you feel uncomfortable asking the advisor your questions, maybe their personality is not a good fit for you. You should continue your search.

Financial planning is crucial to your overall well-being and future. You need to feel that you have a trusted partner by your side. It is supposed to be a relationship after all!