I am grateful and excited to be writing a WCI column again. My last column ran nearly 10 months ago, and since then, my life has taken some exciting, if not tumultuous, turns. Most notably, I left my steady 9-to-5 job and accepted Jim and Katie Dahle’s offer to join them in starting White Coat Planning.
This opportunity to work with and for people I have looked up to for so long, to finally take the entrepreneurial leap after being an employee my entire life, and to be asked to protect and honor the White Coat name with all the expectations it evokes for so many has served up a complex cocktail of emotions in me. A short and incomplete list of feelings I routinely experience over a 24-hour period includes gratitude, fear, anxiety, honor, humility, elation, imposter syndrome, exhilaration, nausea, exhaustion, hope, fascination, hunger, overwhelm, and joy.
I knew this cocktail was coming my way and signed up to guzzle it down with enthusiasm. TV and movies taught me that agreeing to lead a startup means agreeing to lose yourself for a time in exchange for bringing your vision to pass. I am now mid-guzzle, and the complexities are real. The relentless hustle, sacrifice, and unglamorous execution required to turn an idea into a sustainable business is staggering. This mix of sleepless nights, self-doubt, and pivoting while also simultaneously thriving is wild.
I have never enjoyed my work so much or been so committed to it. I have never felt such conviction that I am in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time. I have never felt so valued, supported, or trusted by those I work with and for.
To be building what Jim and Katie believe will be the ideal advisory firm for our WCI community is a surreal privilege that I neither take for granted nor take lightly. It’s a scary thing to offer this service to a community that is rightfully skeptical of it and that has been correctly taught to ask the question, “Is it worth it?” Our mission is to provide good advice at a fair price to all those who want it. Our goal is to make the financial planning process feel decidedly worth it for those who trust us to walk beside them in their financial lives. I feel both the weight and the excitement of delivering that goal.
Alongside my conviction and enthusiasm is the reality that I have also never worked this much for this long. Since October 2025, I have averaged a 70+ hour work week, giving me some small glimpse into what life for medical residents may be like (I'm not making a comparison; residency is clearly WAY worse, but it's just a glimmer of understanding and empathy I didn’t have before). My week is seven consecutive Mondays that run from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 or 9:00 at night, every night. Dental school was arguably more emotionally demanding, but even then, I had more free time than I do now.
In short, the sacrifices are real.
Lest I be misunderstood, let me be clear that no one needs to shed a tear for me, and I am not asking for anyone’s sympathies. I love my problems. These are the best possible combination of problems I could ever imagine. I have traded in the problems of clinical burnout, chronic pain, and professional hopelessness for the problems of working for my hero, building a company I deeply believe in, and pursuing my passion without compromise from the comforts of my own home.
I am healthy, wealthy, and getting wiser every day. I do exactly what I want with my life. I have a sustaining 20-year marriage, kids who tell me they love me, and the capacity to live my purpose.
In the words of NFL coaches and brothers Jim and John Harbaugh, “Who’s got it better than us? Nooooooooooo Body!!!”
Like the Harbaugh brothers, I am no longer on the field of play doing the blocking and tackling of financial planning directly with clients but rather have been handed the proverbial headset and asked to teach, train, coach, and support our team of amazing planners. I am thrilled and humbled to work alongside ~20 staff members who are passionate about the WCI principles, skilled at their craft, and dedicated to our mission. I love these people, and I am inspired by them every day. I am so grateful to have their friendship, knowledge, and integrity.
I know the results will be amazing. I know we are doing the right thing. I know it will be worth it.
Financial Planning — Worth Paying For?
Since starting White Coat Planning, Jim and I have received a number of emails asking, in essence, “I am X years old, I have $Y dollars invested, I save $Z per year. I read the blog and listen to the podcast. I think I have a pretty good beat on things. Do you think hiring your firm would be worth it for someone like me?”
This is a completely reasonable and totally unanswerable question.
My best answer is . . . Maybe, I have no idea. I don’t know you, I don’t know what you value, I have no clue what ‘worth it’ means to you. When you say worth it, what is “it?”
I don’t mean to sound dismissive; I get what people are trying to say. If I were to translate their question, it would be something like, “Will the $XXXX dollars I pay you in fees be less than the dollar value I get from the plan?”
Sadly, to that I still am forced to say, I don't know. In my experience, the answer is almost always yes, but I can't and won't promise that.
There are many areas where having an experienced and competent financial planner can result in measurable increased dollars in your pocket. An incomplete list of hard dollar value adds that come up regularly for me with new clients includes. . .
- Tax mistakes and oversights
- Spending audit
- Student loan mismanagement
- Uninvested cash
- Not maximizing workplace benefits
- Unnecessary or overpriced insurance
- High-expense investments
- Poor debt management
- Inadequate or ineffective estate planning
- Inefficient planning for college/young adult children
- Inadequate planning for business exits
- Suboptimal Social Security strategies
Many more examples could go here.
So, sure, you may “come out ahead” due to some strategy we implement or just some mistake we prevent you from making, but the truth is that I don’t know if that will be true for you until after you have paid me to go on the deep dive into every corner of your financial life.
I totally understand that people are trying to do an objective math equation about this relationship. It's completely reasonable; I just think it is, at best, an incomplete thought and, at worst, a misguided understanding of the true value of financial planning. The more interesting and more valuable angle in the “Is the fee worth it?” conversation is when people realize that “it” is something non-monetary and subjective.
After having done many hundreds of financial plans for WCIers, it has become clear to me that a financial planning relationship is not really about dollars and cents. It is about peace of mind, hope, confidence, ease, clarity, and calm. I can't put a dollar amount on those felt comforts for someone; only they can. It’s not as clear-cut as “I paid you $4,800 this year. You saved me $7,900. So, it was ‘worth it.'”
If you and I both pay $5,000 to go see Taylor Swift and then ask each other, “Was it worth it?” we may have very different answers because the experience is subjective and personal. My wife, Megan, thinks a $100 steak at STK is “worth it,” and I do not. I am happy to pay 10%-20% more to sit anywhere other than coach on an airplane, and many of my friends think that is a waste of money. In the financial services world, someone might pay four figures to have their taxes done and feel it was “worth it.” Others would feel ripped off.
Financial planning is like that; its value cannot and should not be measured solely by objective relativism of dollars made vs. dollars spent. Rather, it ought to be measured by the life it lets you live and how you live that life—by the value you feel from being organized and intentional with your cash flow, by the ease you experience once you have thoughtfully and accurately found every dollar and given it a job, by the peace of mind you notice from having thought through the things that can go wrong and adequately protecting against them, by the satisfaction you enjoy when you know what your savings rate is and when that rate will allow you to be financially independent.
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‘Is It Worth It' Is a Question Only You Can Answer
At White Coat Planning, it costs most clients just under $10,000 for their first year of financial planning when there is more work to be done (more if they want investment management as well). In the subsequent years, it can be anywhere from $1,800-$6,600 a year, depending on how much help they desire. We think this meets Jim’s goal of “good advice at a fair price,” but the fairness of that price is decidedly in the eye of the beholder. Like so many financial decisions (Roth vs. pre-tax, invest or pay down debt, this allocation or that one), whether that price will be worth it to you, frustratingly, can only be known in hindsight.
What I am trying to say is that I understand why people ask me the question, “Is your service worth it?” But the question is going the wrong direction. It’s not a question I can answer; it’s a question only you can answer. In fact, it is a question I love to ask my clients each year during our annual review: “So, you paid $4,800 this past year to have me around in your life. You could have done a lot of cool stuff with that money. As you think about our time together, was it worth it?”
The various answers to that question have led to some of the most rewarding conversations in my professional life. We have laughed together, and we have cried together. And I’m happy to say that there is often no uncertainty for either of us about the answer to that question.
Likewise, once my laughing and crying are over during this startup phase, only then will I be able to report back whether turning my life upside down like this has been “worth it.” I am optimistic that there will be no uncertainty about my answer.
More information here:The Bottom Line
- When it comes to evaluating the worth of a financial planning relationship, the comparison of dollars spent vs. dollars generated/saved is reasonable but significantly misses the mark on the real intent and deeper purpose of a long-term financial planning relationship. Each person must determine what, if any, price they are willing to pay for help obtaining ongoing financial peace of mind.
- I am working my butt off to chase my dream by working for my hero and trying to change the financial planning industry for the good. It feels very “worth it” to me. What is “it,” in my case? A lifelong partnership with my mentor, changing the industry, providing a path for career-changers like myself to work in this industry, delivering peace of mind for my peers, handshakes and hugs and laughs, showing my girls it's never too late to go for your dreams, showing them that sacrifice is not hypothetical but very real and very hard and very late at night and very unrelenting, eventually more trips, more choices, more impact, more joy. It's amazing, and it's rough. It's right, and it's gnarly. It comes at great cost, and it feels profoundly worth it.
What do you think? What is “it” to you? Is there a reasonable way to answer the “Is it worth it?” question before actually going through the experience?
White Coat Planning is a Division of Extraordinary Trust, LLC.