By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder
It has been a long time since I have written much about financial advisors, a frequent subject on this blog in the early days. I have a serious conflict of interest there, given that I have a large number of advertisers that are financial advisors, even if they account for a relatively small percentage of the revenue of The White Coat Investor, LLC. Choosing who can go on my financial advisor recommendation page has given me more heartburn over the years than any other aspect of this business. I have left a lot of money on the table there and maybe I should have left even more. Part of the issue is that there are no perfect financial advisors.
Today, however, we're going to talk once more about how to find a good financial advisor at a fair price. I am often accused of being anti-advisor, but that really isn't true. I'm anti-bad advice and I'm anti-overpriced advice, but I have no problem with good advice at a fair price. There are four main methods of paying for financial advice, and some advisors use two, three, or even all four methods. They are:
- Commissions
- Asset Under Management (AUM) Fees
- Annual Retainer Fees
- Hourly Fees
Financial Advisor Commissions
The problem with number one is that the conflicts of interest are so large that even good people cannot withstand them for an entire career. The worst investment (and insurance) products carry the highest commissions. They have to in order to be sold. So your advisor is constantly faced with the dilemma of sending your kids to college or sending his kids to college. That's too much to ask from your advisor. Paying for advice in this manner is not only likely to cause you to end up in high cost, poorly performing investments, but you are also likely to switch between them way too often, generating additional costs and lowering returns.
AUM Fees
The problem with number two is not necessarily that the advice is bad. There are some conflicts of interest involved in this model including:
- Incentivized against recommending you pay down your student loans instead of investing
- Incentivized against recommending you pay off your mortgage instead of investing
- Incentivized to recommend too high of a savings rate
- Incentivized to recommend too low of a retirement withdrawal rate
- Incentivized to recommend ill-advised IRA rollovers if they are paid on IRA balances but not 401(k) balances
These are relatively minor conflicts of interest compared to those introduced by paying commissions in my opinion. Plus, these fee-only advisors generally have a fiduciary duty to you and frankly, know a lot more about investing than the salesmen. So I have always been okay with you using an advisor who charges AUM fees.
The problem, however, is these advisors often charge too much for that good advice. How much is too much? Well, if you can get the same quality advice for much less elsewhere, you are paying too much. Since you can find good advice for a four-figure amount per year, I see little reason to pay a five figure amount. That's why AUM fees have always been my second least favorite way to pay for advice.
I have sold ads to advisors who charge AUM fees for years and continue to do so. About half of those on my recommended advisor page charge AUM fees. They may also offer some or all services for flat or hourly fees, of course. At the beginning of this site, I simply could not find enough advisors that charged flat fees or hourly fees anywhere, much less the local advisor that readers often asked for. They simply weren't out there and I had to recommend someone.
The other dilemma is that financial advisory firms charging flat fees tend to not be as profitable as the ones charging AUM fees. The entrepreneur in me has great respect for an advisor who can manage to convince clients she is providing a great value at $50K a year while other advisors are charging $5K for similar advice. Those sorts of fees also provide a lot of money to buy ads, like those I sell here at The White Coat Investor. The investor advocate in me, of course, feels an intense set of guilt at the idea of sending a reader to an advisor who potentially could be charging them $50K a year at some point.
Doing the Math on AUM Fees
So I have always recommended that my readers actually do the math each year if their advisor is charging AUM fees and ensure that they are getting more value out of the relationship than the cost. I didn't think that was really all that hard, but maybe I was asking too much. Today let's actually do some math using the fee schedules of a couple of real but unnamed advisory firms as examples. Here's one:
AUM Fee Schedule
- <$250K 1.75% AUM
- $250-500K 1.5% AUM
- $500K-$1M 1.25% AUM
- $1-2M 1% AUM
- $2-3M 0.9% AUM
- $3-4M 0.8% AUM
- $4-5M 0.7% AUM
The nice thing about this firm is that they will take you with zero assets and give you advice. If you have zero assets, and you are paying an AUM fee, that's a very nice price, at least for that year. But let's do the math on how much that advice will cost you each year as your assets under management grow. Remember that most advisory firm fee schedules like this one “fill the buckets,” so even if you have $3 Million, you are still paying 1.75% on your first $250K. This is what the fee schedule above really looks like.
As you can see, you don't have to get very far down that list before you are paying a five-figure amount in advisory fees each year. I never recommended the asset management services of this particular firm because I thought those fees were too high. Let's take a look at another firm whose asset management services I actually have recommended.
AUM Schedule
- <$250K 0.78%
- $250K-$2M 0.72%
- $2-4M 0.58%
- $4-5M 0.48%
- $5-10M 0.43%
- >$10M 0.33%
This is obviously much lower than average and dramatically lower than the firm above. They will also take you with zero assets, which is really important for doctors since the time they need the advice the most is in the beginning when they don't have much. An advisor with a $500K or $1M minimum isn't very useful to most docs in those early years. So what do these fees actually add up to?
As you can see, those fees are dramatically less than those of the first firm. How much lower? The math is elementary.
It is pretty easy to see why I chose to recommend the second advisor but not the first, no? Especially if you compound the difference in those fees over decades. That said, I think a halfway decent physician saver probably ought to fire both advisors by mid-career. In the first case, the fees hit a five-figure amount at an asset level of around $700,000. In the second case, the fees hit a five-figure amount at a little under $1.5 Million. For a physician saving $50,000 a year and earning 8% a year on it, those figures should be hit approximately 10 years and 16 years out of residency respectively. Another alternative to firing the advisor, of course, is to negotiate a cap on fees. At that point the advisor is faced with a tough decision–either do the same work they did last year for the same fee or lose $10K in revenue. I suspect many will choose to cut you at least a partial reduction in fees. But I have zero problem with you using that advisor while you learn to manage your own assets or even until the fees add up to an onerous amount and am perfectly happy to recommend them and take their advertising dollars.
Flat and Hourly Fee Advisors
However, my preferred methods of paying for financial advice are flat annual fees (typically for investment management) and hourly fees (typically for financial planning.) Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and many other kinds of professionals are paid this way, why not financial advisors? Can you imagine charging your patients an AUM fee? Insane, right? But does it really take a lot more time to manage a $1M portfolio than a $100K portfolio? Not really. Perhaps there is more risk there if the advisor screws up and gets sued. Perhaps there are a few more accounts to manage. Perhaps a slightly higher fee can be justified. But a 10X fee? No way. In addition, an AUM arrangement really isn't fair to the advisor when you have a small portfolio. 1% of $10K is only $100. How much time do you really expect from a professional for a mere $100?
To be fair, at a low level of assets, it can be cheaper to use an advisor charging AUM fees than one who charges a flat annual retainer. Nearly all of the flat fees charged below are four-figure amounts, but there is still a lot of variation there. For ease of reference, consider one who charges a fee of $7,500 per year. It is the same fee when you have $50K as $5 Million. Let's compare that to what you are paying the two AUM advisors above.
As you can see, up until an asset level of nearly $500,000 with the expensive AUM advisor and a little over a million with the cheaper AUM advisor versus the flat fee advisor, you're actually paying less by using an AUM advisor. How long will it take to get there? Well, it depends mostly on how much you save and a little on how much you earn. But saving $50,000 a year and earning 8% per year, we're talking about 8 years and 13 years respectively. That could take even longer if the advisor is only charging AUM fees on your taxable and Roth IRA accounts and not your 401(k). You just have to do the math each year to know.
Best Flat Fee or Hourly Rate Advisors
It is okay (and perhaps even better early on) to use an advisor charging an AUM fee, but you must do the math each year to make sure you are still paying a fair price. At a certain level of assets, you can get at least as good of advice at a lower price by using an advisor charging flat annual or hourly fees.
We have built a list of great fee-only, fiduciary firms that will manage your money without charging you AUM fees. If you want to learn more about these firms, visit the Recommended Financial Advisors page and actually read the application they had to submit to me in order to advertise here.
What do you think? Do you agree it is okay to use an advisor charging AUM fees? Why or why not? Who are your favorite fee-only firms that don't charge AUM fees? Comment below!
Dr. Dahle, thank you for curating this list of financial advisors. I know it’s more headache than it’s worth, but it’s an incredible resource for your readers who struggle to find someone they trust to help them with their finances. For the most part, people find advisors by “asking around” and often end up with a friend, a friend-of-a-friend, or a family member. Our experience is that many of these advisors, while good people, give bad advice.
The AUM advisors singing their own praises on this page, and probably rightly so, should not fee threatened by your preference for flat-fee arrangements. My guess is that they’re smart, experienced advisors who act solely in their clients’ best interests and are worth their fees. The problem is that the widely-accepted practice of charging a percent of assets enables lousy advisors to make a boatload of money, especially from their older, higher net worth clients. A lot of the time [maybe most of the time], their clients don’t know how much they’re paying the advisor or how crummy the advice has been. Once they connect the dots, though, it’s liking taking the red pill in the Matrix and seeing reality for the first time.
My primary point is that you can’t blindly trust your advisor. You have to self-educate and fully understand the strategies and decisions your advisor is making. Whether you use an AUM advisor, a flat-fee advisor, or an advice-only planner, you cannot just hand over your money and assume that person will make competent, prudent decisions in your best interest.
Not everyone is going to want to fully DIY their finances, but I really think you need to self-educate to the point that you feel like you could. You need to have the confidence to ask smart questions and look after your own best interests. The stakes are too high.
Just to be clear, in case you might be alluding to my comments, I am singing nobody’s praises (our firms charge flat fees for both financial planning and CPA services). And I believe Steven Podnos is merely sticking up for the value that he provides as an experienced MD-CFP. It would be foolish to overlook the time it has taken him to build his business and all that he has learned along the way.
I believe one reason AUM continues to be used by so many advisors is that it is so much easier to calculate. The downside is that, as others have pointed out, the fee increases as assets do. I believe some, like Steven, have attempted to mitigate that with a downward sliding scale. The change from AUM to flat fee requires a restructuring of the business – it is not an easy thing to do. As long as Steven is running a successful business using AUM and his clients are happy with him, I’m not sure why he would want to change a model that works.
Another fee model you might be interested in that has not yet been mentioned and that is also being used by younger advisors is a combination of % of income + % of net worth. The profession is slowing listening and change is coming about – but it won’t be overnight. I suspect that, in a generation when our group of boomers has moved aside, billing by AUM will be significantly on the decline. Obviously, the younger investors of today are very different from the investors who are now age 50+.
We need to separate investment management from financial advice.
Very few people need to pay anyone for ongoing investment management. There is barely anything to do. Choose an asset allocation, buy a small number of cap weighted index funds. Once a year, at most, check whether changes in life situation or tax laws indicate a need to change asset allocation. This could take some time to set up, depending on how far off the portfolio is to start. After that, most years can be managed at well under an hour annually. Investment management is not that different for different people, which is why it scales so nicely. A manager can charge an AYM fee to lots of people while doing the same thing for all of the- leaving the money in index funds.
This makes for a great business. High compensation for little work means ability to cover a huge client list.
It is why Vanguard can offer a cap weighted total market fund for an unlimited number of investors at near zero cost.
Since Vanguard and others will do this for you, let them. And don’t pay anything else to anyone.
Financial advice is a different matter. It is customized to the individual. That makes it time consuming. It is not possible to give the same advice about insurance, Roth conversions, charitable giving structures and other topics to everyone. Much of the advice has to be unique. That means one has to charge enough in effective hourly rate to make a successful business.
The logical solution is to avoid paying more than single digits expense ratios for fund management and layer nothing on top for overall portfolio management. Pay for financial advice by the hour, when you need it. Pay nothing for it the rest of the time.
If someone gets paid for investment management, they have no incentive to provide value for financial advice. If that advice is “free” once you pay for the portfolio management you can expect it to be limited. It is at best a loss leader.
If financial advice is the only business then the firm swims or sinks on its reputation for quality. It is motivated to keep advisors up to date and provide good service.
If you need someone to talk you out of drastic changes in response to a market dip, then talk to a psychologist. They will be much cheaper and less likely to distort your portfolio. They are also qualified to deal with panic reactions.
Clint Gossage of CMG Financial Consulting has been awesome. I found him from the WCI website. I’m finishing EM residency and I have prided myself on learning a ton over the past few years from WCI and many of it’s partners. Many of my classmates have came to me for financial questions, which shows how ignorant the majority of residents are. I am no “expert”. I was able to accrue 80k in Roth IRA between my wife (stay at home mom) and myself from med school and residency. However, my wife has absolutely no interest in finances and with the major explosion in income, taxes, insurance, kids, moving, studen loan repayment strategy…. I finally needed another pair of eyes for my own sanity and peace of mind. I definitely have got my moneys worth with Clint. I highly recommend him especially for the transition from residency to attending if you don’t have the confidence or knowledge to DIY.
I am semiretired and have most of my assets at Fidelity (>30 years) and get as much free advice as I ask for (I think you need a minimum of $500k). The advisor is compensated proportional to the amount I have at Fidelity, but they have never encouraged me to move any assets there. There is also a continuously-updating web-based retirement planner that is linked to my accounts regardless of where they are. If I asked for asset management they would charge a fee but I don’t use them for that. Because of my concerns about bond funds in a rising interest environment, I liquidated a portion of my bond funds and they recently acquired and will manage for me a portfolio of individual bonds that costs less than their Total Bond fund. What do you think of this arrangement?
Don’t know enough about what you or the advisor is doing to comment. It would be very hard to charge less than the Fidelity 0% ER total bond fund though, so I suspect you may be confused about what is really going on.
Thank you for providing this price comparison of some of the good guys/gals in the industry. Even if this info is present in the ADV, many may not know to look there or be able to look at so many at a glance. The problem, though, remains that only comparing price commodifies the advice. This may be less of a problem with this is a list of 4-5 star-advisors but wouldn’t work well in an unsorted list of all advisors.
PS: Aren’t the stingrays surprisingly gentle? I did the stingray encounter at Grand Cayman last yr (but definitely wasn’t brave enough to kiss one!).
Much of financial advice is a commodity. I mean, there is a right answer to most of the questions and issues. They either do your Backdoor Roth IRA correctly or they don’t. They either recommend the right retirement plan for your practice or they don’t. They either use index funds or they don’t. They either sell you whole life insurance inappropriately or they don’t.
Most of the differences between two good advisors charging a fair price really don’t matter all that much. So one likes international bonds in the portfolio and the other doesn’t. Big whoop.
The problem comes down to paying for advice when you don’t need it. It is reasonable to pay a substantial hourly fee to a high quality advisor, when you need financial advice.
It is completely unreasonable to pay any fee to an advisor when you don’t need advice.
Agree that the advice may be standard, once one has pinned down the question. But getting to the question, gathering all the related information and coming up with an answer that takes all that into account takes one-on-one time. Not like aggregating a million investors in one fund.
If someone actually needed an hour of financial advice, they could pay for it by the hour. At $400/hour they would spend $2,000 over 5 years, neglecting inflation and time value of money. To spend that much in ONE YEAR with an AUM arrangement on a $5M portfolio, the advisor’s fee would have to be 0.04%. Hard to believe there is anyone anywhere who works at that price point.
But let’s say you find a good advisor who charges a fee similar to a Vanguard index fund admiral shares or ETF. At $2,000 you would be paying for 5 hours of advice every year when you only need 1 hour. The other $1,600 is flushed away. And that is assuming you can find that 0.04% advisor. 0.4%, tens times as much, would be considered a bargain.
At that rate, one would be paying $20,000 each year for 1 hour of advice. That is an hourly rate of $20,000. Easy to see why advisors would prefer the AUM model.
Currently I’m with a NM financial advisor, but after reading your book as well as several of the recommended books, I have started doing it myself and feel mostly comfortable. Currently I only have my roth IRA with them, which is relatively low ($25k). I started a spousal IRA on my own and have the majority of my retirement savings in a 403b via my employer.
My question is, given a 1.5% AUM fee is ~ $375. Does it make sense to just stick with them for a couple of years since at this price the advice is super cheap? Or is there something I’m not considering?
Good advice might cost a bit, but there is no price low enough for bad advice.
What investments does your Northwestern Mutual guy or gal have you using for your Roth IRA? What are the costs on those investments, in addition to the ridiculous 1.5% AUM fees?
I think you should read this thread before making your decision about talking to anyone associated with that particular firm ever again:
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/forums/topic/inappropriate-whole-life-policy-of-the-week/
I wish I had permission to share emails I’ve received from people working at that particular firm, including one who emailed back months later to apologize and admit my criticisms were absolutely correct now that he had learned more.
I agree with Hank that there is no price low enough for bad advice, nor any price high enough for me to accept advertising dollars from that firm. But I think it’ll be pretty easy to demonstrate why you should be concerned. How about you just list the mutual funds in your Roth IRA with their associated expense ratios. I think that’ll demonstrate pretty well why $375 is not a deal.
I believe it. The impetus for me deciding I needed to learn to DIY is when the FA pushed WLI.
Expense ratios vary from 0.04 too 1.13, most somewhere in the middle.
WCI, in reviewing your list, I also realized that you were listing flat-fee only advisors. I have to say, in defense of the advisors that offer both, I do think it’s important to know some details about what you get with them.
I spent the better part of yesterday going down the original list you had published with an older blog post, trying to figure out what I needed for the best price. I really had to think about what I needed, what would be “worth it”, as well as considering ongoing/future needs. I was surprised that when I called some, I found out what they offered was actually NOT what I was looking for (and they weren’t looking for my type either). I started considering the hourly rate, but was worried about how those costs would add up, how easy it would be for me to get the advice when I need it (scheduling isn’t always easy), and anticipation of needing more help in the future.
Point is, I really had to dig in to find what they offered and how it would serve me. In the end I felt most comfortable with a group that did both AUM and hourly service, BUT they seemed to keep an ongoing relationship with you (keeping your info, keeping up with you) despite charging hourly (others would dump your info after each session until you set up another one, unless you were an ongoing monthly subscriber). Then when I saw your recent list come out, I started to panic that they weren’t on it anymore (I was actually going to reach out for any additional pearls you may know about them, since I was still kind of jumping in blind) — then I realized that it was because they do AUM too.
(Also fyi I noticed something that didn’t match with someone else I was looking into, will post those details separately.)
Fyi, this was the info on Panoramic published earlier (different from the stuff above). I left a message with them yesterday and haven’t heard back, so was not able to confirm.
Panoramic Financial Advice
Services
Young Physician Start-Up Planning
Young Family Growth Planning
Investment Management (Index Funds, DFA, SRI, & Shariah-compliant portfolios)
Tax Planning (Tax preparation can be coordinated)
Fees
Premier Package – Start at $200/mo (two focused meetings per year)
Executive Package – Start at $300/mo (unlimited meetings per year)
*Includes ongoing email/phone/text access
**Investment management included in both packages for no additional fee
***No asset minimums
Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, I’ve clearly got them confused with someone else’s fee structure. Panoramic’s ADV2 shows they charge $200 an hour for small projects. They will do just investment management or an AUM fee (1% on 1st million and 0.25% after that) but will do comprehensive financial planning plus investment management for $1200-$12,000 per year. Sounds like I need to update their listing on the main recommendation page.
Yes, they just called back and confirmed the $200/month rate for ongoing services (with 2 focused meetings per year with unlimited email/texting, etc) for those relatively self-sufficient, $300/mo for those who would need a lot of hand-holding (unlimited meetings).
For those who want upfront eval and advice so they can take care of everything themselves (with intermittent help afterward, on a can-do basis) he would charge $2400 (equivalent to a year of service).
I didn’t ask about hourly rate.
Did you tell them to update their ADV2?
No, actually at the time they called I didn’t realize what you’d said above was different from what I had seen posted (and also just found out what an ADV2 is!). Was a brief conversation about services only and may not have included details on all services (e.g. hourly rate).
And the firm I thought would work for my needs was Targeted Weath in CO. I didn’t find any reviews or anything anywhere, so any personal stories you may know of re: working with them, their strategies, etc would be great for peace of mind. 🙂
I obviously think they’re a good firm or I wouldn’t have them on my list. I certainly have not had any negative feedback about them in the time they’ve been partnering with me. You can see their responses to my questions in their application. Between that, their ADV2, and your discussion on the phone you should feel very comfortable moving forward.
Great, that’s what I was hoping to hear.
But where do I see their application with you? And what is ADV2?
https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersformadvhtm.html
I would have thought FAs were required to explicitly provide the ADV filing to potential clients before providing any services. Instead, it looks like the only requirement is filing the document with the government and making it publicly available. That’s a bit disappointing since it puts the burden back on the client to even ask about it.
Read this article:
Form ADV: Ignore it at Your Peril
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/form-adv-ignore-it-at-your-peril/
Advisors ARE required to make the ADV available to clients before they sign an engagement letter for investment management, but most just send clients to a link to it on their website. We haven’t handed out a paper copy in years. Advisors are required to update their ADV annually.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Absolutely I agree that some of the firms on my list that charge AUM fees are going to be the best match for some of my readers, particularly in the first half of your career. Plus, fees are almost always negotiable. If I really liked an advisor but they were becoming too pricey for me as my AUM went up, I would certainly ask for a lower rate before bailing. That might keep me with them a few more years or decades. I would expect most of them would rather keep you on the books for $10K a year than lose you completely.
Not just that AUM might actually be cheaper or more helpful earlier in your career (also true), but just because a firm offers both, doesn’t mean you have to use their AUM services.
In my case, the one that did NOT offer AUM (flat/subscription only) seemed less helpful/flexible with their hourly services than the one who offered AUM as well as hourly.
paying exorbitant fees in retirement, advisory and costly funds and excessive trading leads to higher withdrawal rates and greater chance of portfolio depletion
You say in the description that you are highlighting “the advisors currently on my recommended list who do not charge any AUM fees whatsoever”. However, as you mention, several on the list seem quite AUM driven, albeit with caps. That solves your fair price issue, but not your incentive issue (which you do a great job of articulating in the article above). Curious why you chose to include those? Also, Wrenne Financial and Stone Steps state very clearly in their application and in their ADV that they do charge AUM fees and have no clear caps. Not sure why they are included on this list at all.
Isn’t it wonderful that you now have all the information you need to decide who to hire? You can read the questions I asked them and decide if you’re okay with the answers or not. The truth is I have yet to find a “perfect” advisor who meets every single nitpicky criteria I can come up with that I like to see. When I first started compiling a list 8 years ago, I had a very hard time finding ANYONE specializing in physician financial advice who didn’t charge an AUM fee. Now there are lots of people. In addition, fee structures change. Daniel Wrenne’s, for instance. He used to (when this post was written) charge a flat quarterly fee for financial planning and investment management. Now he does financial planning for a flat fee and investment management for an AUM fee.
At any rate, if you don’t like paying fees, do it yourself. That’s what I do. If you have a lot of assets and want an advisor, then try to find one who charges true flat fees to keep the price down. If you have few assets and want an advisor, feel free to use one that charges an AUM fee. But as your assets grow, either negotiate the rate down, learn to do it yourself, or switch to a flat fee advisor.
There are malincentives no matter what your structure. For example, a flat fee advisor is incentivized to spend as little time with you as possible and an hourly rate advisor is incentivized to spend as much as possible.
Agreed, finding a perfect advisor is impossible. Even the truly hourly or flat fee aren’t perfect. I was just pointing out what I saw as a disconnect in the article. These advisors weren’t promoted as perfect. They were just promoted as not charging AUM fees.
To your point about incentives, I agree that flat fee advisors have the incentive to spend as little time as possible with you. But that is not a unique incentive. AUM has that same incentive. Even commission has the same incentive. Think of the real estate agent who would like to price your home slightly below market so he can make his commission (perhaps less than 5% below what it would have been) and sell the house in half the time. Doctors, dentists, accountants. We all would like to collect our fee with as little work as possible. What keeps people honest (apart from pure ethical commitment) is simply that in order to keep the business and hopefully get more business, you have to be providing a service of value. But I think this is the one thing that no service provider can escape. It’s certainly not unique to flat fee financial advisors.
The awesome article to know about the To figure out the financial advisor costs you may be charged, look at the firm’s Form ADV (SEC-filed paperwork). On this form, a firm must clearly note each fee type that it charges for its investment advisory services. Specifically, in Section 5, the firm must check off each type of fee that it charges clients for its investment advisory services.In Part II of the Form ADV (also called the firm’s brochure), the firm will provide greater detail. That includes information on whether the firm earns money in any way aside from client fees. The brochure will also include specifics on how the firm calculates fees.
Just wanted to say that Physician Wealth Services changed their pricing model. Hopefully, this article can get a bit of a refresh
Thanks for the update. Constant changes in this space as I’m sure you’re aware. We do update articles from time to time. But you can find the most up to date info on our recommended advisors here:
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/financial-advisors/
Would you consider adding Ellevest to this listing (or are there restrictions?) that includes planning ranging from $1250 to $2500 annually?
You can ask them to apply if they want to be listed at WCI.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/financial-advisors/
Transparency around fees is critical, especially when it comes to financial advisors. I appreciate that you took the time to highlight professionals who offer high-quality advice without charging AUM fees. It’s refreshing to see advisors prioritizing value and accessibility over profit. Thanks for sharing this important topic!