I'm a Financial Planner: My College House-Painting Job Taught Me the Best Way to Compare Professional Fees — and It Works for Financial Advice, Too
Whether you're looking for a contractor or a financial adviser, hiring a professional based on price alone is risky. These questions will help you find the right person for the job.
Whenever I meet with new investors, one of their first questions is, "What are your fees?"
While this might seem like a natural question, it's often misguided and asked too early in the process. Before you ask about an adviser's fees, you should first want to know what services they can provide.
When I was in college, I ran a house-painting franchise. Every spring, homeowners would collect bids and try to decide who to hire. This is when I discovered that a price is comparable only after you define the job.
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One painting crew might scrape, sand, prime, caulk, protect landscaping and do two coats, with a written warranty. Another might spray on a quick coat and disappear.
If all customers did was compare two quotes that were only a couple of hundred dollars apart, they weren't comparing value; they were merely comparing the costs of vastly differing services.
Choosing an investment professional works the same way. As one SEC article notes, "Just as a grocery store offers more products than a convenience store, some investment professionals offer a wide range of products or services, while others offer a more limited selection."
The key is to work with one that fits you well and can deliver advice specific to your needs and wants.
So instead of leading with a question about fees, here's the sequence that makes fees meaningful and helps you avoid paying for the wrong thing.
1. Name the job
One of the biggest mistakes people make when seeking financial advice is failing to clearly define what they need.
When I ask someone what they want from an adviser, the answer is often something vague like "to do better," "to get the highest rate of return" or "to make sure I'm on track for retirement." Those are ambiguous goals, not a clear job description.
Before you compare advisers, decide what problem you want solved. Do you need:
- A one-time second opinion?
- A written, comprehensive and holistic financial plan that connects retirement income, taxes and investments?
- Ongoing portfolio management?
- A "quarterback" relationship where one adviser helps coordinate investing, tax strategy and estate planning?
2. Understand what the adviser does for you
If you walk into a meeting and ask an adviser, "What are your fees?" and they say, "1%," what exactly does that number mean? What will you compare it to? Another adviser might also say 1%, but the two of them could provide completely different services.
One might be building a comprehensive, written retirement plan, coordinating tax strategies, helping with estate considerations and managing your investments. Another might simply be recommending funds from a menu their company provides.
The price might be identical, but the work behind it could be completely different. The depth and breadth of each adviser's capabilities would, in many cases, yield vastly disparate results.
If you only compare the cost, you may think you are comparing identical services when you are not. That is why the better question early in the conversation is not, "What do you charge?" but, "What exactly do you do for clients like me?"
Once you understand the services, the process and the expertise being offered, the fee discussion finally has context. And that is when you can decide whether the price is fair for the value being provided.
3. Determine adviser licensing, designations and background
Knowing what licensing and certifications your prospective adviser carries is critical to differentiating between professionals you may wish to engage. A narrow range of licensing may indicate both limited experience and limited access to industry products, services or strategies.
Also, certifications, such as the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® designation, may indicate the extent of training, depth and professional standards your practitioner brings to the table.
This can come into play when you notice an adviser does not use or recommend (or even denounces) certain financial instruments, which they are also conveniently not licensed to recommend or provide.
Unless you are aware of their licensing and certification, or even company affiliation, you may not be able to determine whether the advice you are seeking may have significant limitations.
The SEC's Investor Bulletin on using Investor.gov's Investment Professional Search tool suggests always researching an investment professional, including confirming registration and checking for disciplinary events, before deciding to work with them.
If your professional is licensed in the brokerage business, you can also use FINRA BrokerCheck. It's a free tool to research the professional backgrounds of investment professionals and firms.
You're not hunting for "gotchas." You're looking for patterns — repeat customer complaints, repeated job-hopping or disclosures that don't match the story you're being told. If you find something you are curious about, make sure you ask the adviser about it.
Ask for the documents that put fees and any conflicts of interest in writing. If an adviser is truly transparent, they'll gladly show you the paperwork that regulators care about.
If you'd like a ready-made interview script, the SEC's "Questions to Ask when Hiring an Investment Professional" bulletin includes practical questions that turn fuzzy conversations into measurable answers.
4. Now talk fees
Only after you've defined the scope and read the disclosures does "What are your fees?" become a useful question.
Since fees that look small can still have a major impact over time, ask what you will pay in year one and what you'll pay in a typical ongoing year.
Then ask what you can expect for those dollars, such as meeting cadence, written deliverables, tax coordination, rebalancing discipline and how recommendations will be documented.
Making better decisions
The real goal isn't simply to find the lowest fee. It's to find the right experience, the right process and the right fit for the problem you're trying to solve.
Once you know the job, understand the services and confirm the credentials, the conversation about price finally becomes meaningful.
When you follow this order, you don't just get clearer answers about fees. You make better decisions about the advice itself, and that's what ultimately protects your money and gives you clarity about your financial future.
Ezra Byer contributed to this article.
The appearances in Kiplinger were obtained through a PR program. The columnist received assistance from a public relations firm in preparing this piece for submission to Kiplinger.com. Kiplinger was not compensated in any way.
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