What You Pay

We are paid directly and exclusively by our clients. This achieves two things. It aligns our incentives with our clients, so you can be sure our focus and recommendations are based solely on your needs and issues. In addition, it provides visibility into how much you pay, enabling you to see – possibly for the first time – exactly how much your investment and advisory services cost you.

In comparison, the following types of fees and expenses are typically charged by various financial firms. You may not see these charges on your statements since most firms show assets net of costs.

• Traditional brokers may charge commissions, or loads, on investments purchased through their firms.  These charges can reach up to 5% of assets for an initial or front end load.  This equals $5,000 for every $100,000 invested.
• Another approach a broker may use is to charge a wrap fee or asset-based fee which may range from 1-2% of assets annually, or $1,000-$2,000 in costs per $100,000 invested each year.
• Mutual funds, even no-load funds purchased directly through a fund company or discount broker, have management and administrative costs.  These are expressed as a percent of assets, or expense ratio.  The average expense ratio is currently about 1.0% for stock funds and 0.7% for bond funds (Investment Company Institute).  This equals about $700-$1,000 in costs each year per $100,000 invested.

As part of the investment strategy we develop for you, we work to manage your overall costs, typically recommending no-load funds with very low expense ratios and custodians with low transaction costs. In our planning we include an estimate of the costs of all investments we recommend and the transactions needed to implement the portfolio, along with our fee.

We believe that a visible advisory fee that directly and objectively addresses your needs and goals, combined with low costs for investment implementation, provides you with cost-effective professional management to help accomplish your objectives.

Below are some additional resources for researching investment fees.

"Sales Loads," and “Calculating Mutual Fund Fees & Expenses,” SEC