Executive Summary

Comparing financial advisors is difficult due to the lack of standardization in services and pricing
Look beyond labels and marketing hype to find real value
Specifically, look for advisors who:
- offer tax planning
- are leaders
- spot issues and proactively raise them for you
- can handle complex questions
- are fee only

Choosing a financial advisor can be daunting. It can involve scrolling through websites filled with pictures of cheerful retirees, listening to pitches and trying to compare confusing descriptions of services and pricing. Often, we short cut the process by asking a trusted friend or colleague for recommendations. The decision is based on our gut and first impressions. This usually works out OK, but you can do better.

In the personal financial advice arena, we do not have a good way of comparing the value of the services we receive to the cost. This is different from most markets. If we like the person/firm, they sound reasonable and they return our calls, we maintain the status quo. This is especially the case during the past ten years, when a steadily rising market (with a few blips along the way) has kept most everybody happy and helped gloss over mediocre service.

How should we assess value in this market? Start by critically examining what you are getting (or not getting, as the case may be). I believe anyone paying a financial advisor, planner or wealth manager in 2025 should insist upon the following services and skills, at a minimum:

Comprehensive Tax Planning

Yes, your tax preparer should be on the team. But it is not acceptable for your advisor to refer you to your CPA for every issue that has even a hint of tax ramifications. The advisor should be able to spot key tax issues and synthesize them for you in plain English. They don’t have to be tax experts or give formal tax advice, but they should have the capability to pull in experts (either internally or externally) to answer questions key to your financial situation without you micromanaging the process. Oftentimes, larger firms hold out “compliance” as a reason they cannot do this. That is ridiculous, in my opinion, for reasons beyond the scope of this article.

Leadership

An advisor should be the quarterback, and many firms say that they do this. Done properly, this role includes:

leading the other advisors’ delivery of services to you in a cost-effective manner
synthesizing and summarizing the technical jargon from the specialists so that you can make decisions without wasting time/energy

identifying areas of conflicting advice (between the tax specialist and estate attorney, for example) and facilitating the resolution of those conflicts
offering value-added, soft services as needed, such as negotiation assistance or coaching through a difficult family money conversation

Pro-Active Issue Spotting

You should be confident that your advisor is monitoring the complicated and changing world in which we live and flagging issues relevant to your situation before they become problems. Firms with lots of clients often struggle with this for anyone other than their largest clients, as individualized service is hard to scale.

Can Handle Complicated Questions

Many personal financial questions are not that complicated, at least compared to the issues we deal with in our professional lives. However, as we accumulate money, stuff, relationships and liabilities, complexity increases. Your advisor should have have the willingness, time and ability to help you with issues that are not solved with off-the-shelf advice. Test them with a one-off question about a private investment, trust or existing 30-page life insurance policy. A response of “I don’t know but will get back with you” is acceptable and better than an off-the-cuff answer that sounds smart but is wrong.

Separates Services From Products

If your advisor is affiliated, either through ownership or commission arrangements, with a firm that creates investment products, they are motivated to recommend those products to you. While these products are not necessarily bad, you can be sure that there are factors other than your best interest in play. One red flag is if your account holds any funds with the firm’s name on them. Another tell is if the firm is “fee-based” rather than “fee-only”. Why accept that in a market where there are plenty of options? It is easy to find a fee-only registered investment adviser that avoids this misalignment at the same or lower cost.

If you are interested in talking to an advisor who meets these criteria, please reach out to me at jouchley@jcoadvisors.com or schedule a discussion using the link at the top of this page.

Choosing a Fee-Only Financial Advisor in 2025