What Is A Flat Fee Financial Advisor

This article may be a rather short one. You will definitely get through this in under two minutes.

I launched and run a Flat Fee financial planning firm. It has been around for about a decade. When I first opened my door there were lots of questions about what exactly is a flat fee financial planning firm. Heck, I think I was the firm of this type registered in the State of Ohio. I say this because my registration process was not the usual application.

I think there were lots of questions because the model was so simple. One Flat Fee for everything.

There are more Flat Fee firms out there now. I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me explain exactly what a Flat Fee financial planning firm is. This is based on how I operate with my select physician clients.

First, I charge one Flat Fee. This covers financial planning, investment management, risk management, estate planning reviews, workplace benefits, tax planning and more.

This Flat Fee is based on my knowledge, experience and service model.

While I can’t do away with fees investment companies such as Vanguard charge, my investment management fees are wrapped into my Flat Fee. No hidden fees here.

There are also no hidden revenue sources like commissions from recommending life insurance be purchased.

Additionally, there are no separate charges for things like reviewing estate planning documents, looking at workplace plans and benefits, and more. When it comes to risk management I dropped my insurance licenses years ago. Any recommendations here are done with outside insurance agents.

The point is all these tasks are done under one Flat Fee.

Now, about five years ago when the market dropped due to Covid I noticed quite a few other “flat fee” firms popping up. I put quotation marks around this as these firms are what I consider combo firms. For example, they may charge a flat fee for the creation of a financial plan and then a percentage fee to implement the plan such as managing your investments. Personally, I do not consider them Flat Fee financial planning firms.

A benefit of a Flat Fee financial planning firm is it is simple to explain your Flat Fee as there should be only one.

To wrap up, a Flat Fee financial planning firm is one that charges one fee for everything. No hidden fees. No outside revenue sharing. Nothing besides that one Flat Fee.