Jordyn Bradley at Forbes Advisor wrote a guide to how much a financial advisor costs, covering fee structures, average costs and how to choose, and used my firm's approach as the example of a cliff-based fee.
The article walks through the main models: assets under management fees, which average around 1% across the industry, cliff-based or breakpoint fees, hourly rates averaging $307, flat fees averaging $2,926, retainers averaging $6,815, subscriptions averaging $595 a month, and hybrids. The hourly, flat, retainer and subscription figures come from Envestnet's 2026 State of Financial Planning Fees Study.
The cliff-based structure is the one I use. In the example given, a client with $2 million in investable assets pays 0.90% on the full $2 million, not a blended rate stacked across tiers, and once the client crosses into the $2.5 million tier the rate on everything drops to 0.75%.
I was candid about the trade-off. A client sitting just below a threshold has a real incentive to add assets, sell an outside account or consolidate an old 401(k) to cross the line and drop the whole rate at once.
The piece also explains the difference between fee-only and fee-based advisors, whether advisory fees are tax deductible, and the questions to ask when choosing an advisor.
Read the full article at Forbes →
