Flat-Fee Financial Planning
You've drafted your plan. Now you want to harden it — and there's a last ten percent worth running past someone who's built hundreds of retirement plans.
A flat-fee financial advisor charges a fixed price for a defined piece of work, and the fee isn't tied to how much money you have. Ours is $4,500.
Already working with an advisor? What you probably want is a comparison, not a plan — here's what that looks like. It costs nothing to start.
What you actually get out of it
A number you can spend. Not a range, not "you're on track" — an actual figure, with the tradeoffs behind it. Most people have never been told what they're allowed to spend. It changes how you plan a year.
Permission to put the cash to work. You've probably got more sitting in cash than you'd rather admit. Usually that's not a strategy, it's the absence of one. Once the income floor is built, the rest can go to work.
What happens if the first five years go badly. Your spreadsheet probably uses an average return. Retirements don't. A bad opening stretch does damage a good average never undoes — and knowing you can absorb one is most of what makes spending feel safe.
A Social Security decision you can stop second-guessing. Claiming is mostly a survivor question, not a breakeven question. You'll see both scenarios side by side and be done deliberating.
A straight answer on the mortgage. Low rate, cash flow you'd rather have back — the math and the feeling point different directions. You'll see what paying it off actually costs you and what it buys.
A tax plan, not just a Roth conversion. Conversions get all the attention, and they're often the right place to start. But they're one lever. Which account you draw from first, when to take gains, how a withdrawal today shows up in your Medicare premium two years from now — the sequencing over twenty years matters more than any single move.
Whether you can help the kids now. You already know you're leaving them something. The question is whether you can afford to do it while you're around to watch it land.
What it costs, and what's in it
$4,500. Two meetings — 60 minutes to gather, 90 to walk through what we found — over about a month. Thirty days of email support afterward, and an optional third call if you want to talk something through once you've lived with it.
Retirement stress test. A sanity check on what you can sustainably spend — run against market shocks and a long-term care event, not just a smooth average.
Social Security and pension. When to claim, and how the pension decision interacts with it.
Tax strategy. Roth conversions are the starting point. We run your situation against a handful of strategies, including several that don't show up in the DIY playbook.
Portfolio analysis. What you're actually paying, how much risk you're carrying, and whether you're as diversified as you think. We'll also show you how your portfolio would have held up in 2008, the dot-com unwind, COVID, and 2022 — the year stocks and bonds fell together.
What flat-fee financial planning is
A flat-fee financial advisor charges a fixed price for a defined piece of work, and the fee is not tied to how much money you have. You agree on the price before the work starts, and it doesn't change if your account grows.
That's the whole idea, and it's a genuine departure from how most of the industry prices. The standard arrangement charges a percentage of the assets an advisor manages for you — typically around 1% a year. Under that model, two clients with identical questions pay very different amounts, because one of them saved more.
Flat-fee arrangements generally come in three forms:
Project-based. One engagement, one fee, a defined scope. You bring a set of decisions, the advisor works through them, and the relationship ends when the work is done. This is what we offer.
Annual retainer. A fixed yearly fee for ongoing planning, usually without investment management attached. You're paying for continuous access rather than a single deliverable.
Hourly. An hourly financial advisor bills for time, which works well for narrow questions and less well for anything requiring a full picture of your finances — most of the work is in the analysis you can't scope in advance.
None of these include managing your investments day to day. That's the tradeoff, and for the right person it isn't a tradeoff at all.
What flat-fee planning costs
Published figures put annual flat fees roughly between $2,900 and $6,800, with project-based engagements averaging around $3,000 and ranging from about $1,000 to $7,500. Hourly rates typically run $150 to $400.
Our plan is $4,500, which is above that project-based average. Worth explaining why rather than leaving you to guess.
A lot of what gets sold at $2,500 or $3,000 is a document. You fill out a questionnaire, you get a bound plan with projections in it, and the engagement is over. That's a real product and for some people it's enough.
This isn't that. It's two meetings over about a month, plus a retirement stress test run against market shocks and a long-term care event, a Social Security and pension claiming analysis, a tax strategy review that goes well past Roth conversions, and a portfolio analysis that shows what you're actually paying, how much risk you're carrying, and how your allocation would have behaved in 2008, the dot-com unwind, COVID, and 2022. Then thirty days of email support afterward and an optional third call once you've had time to sit with it.
If what you want is a plan document, there are less expensive ways to get one, and we'd rather tell you that now.
Flat fee or a percentage of assets?
We do both, so we don't have a stake in talking you into either one. What we'd push back on is the framing.
People usually compare these on price. At $1 million, a 1% fee is $10,000 a year against $4,500 once, and the flat fee looks like an obvious win. But that comparison quietly assumes the two things are the same product, and they aren't.
A flat-fee plan buys you answers. You leave with decisions made and the reasoning behind them. What happens after is yours — the rebalancing, the tax-loss harvesting, the conversion you decided to run in three years. Deciding whether a good couple of years in the market means you can spend more. Stress testing the plan again after a rough stretch to see whether anything actually broke.
An ongoing relationship buys you someone else carrying it. The portfolio gets managed, the tax return gets prepared and filed. When the tax code changes, someone applies it to your plan that year rather than three Aprils later. When your attorney drafts the trust, someone makes sure it actually gets funded and the beneficiaries get updated. You're not paying for a smarter plan. You're paying to stop being the one who has to remember.
The right question isn't which costs less. It's whether you want to keep doing the work.
Some people genuinely do. They read, they rebalance, they understand what they own, and handing it off would make them less comfortable rather than more. For that person, paying an annual percentage for management they'd rather do themselves is a poor deal at any price, and a flat-fee plan is the better structure.
Other people have done fine on their own and have simply decided they'd rather not spend the next thirty years on it. That's not a failure of competence. It's a legitimate preference, and it's what an ongoing relationship is for.
Who this is a good fit for
You manage your own investments and intend to keep doing it. You're somewhere between five years out from retirement and a few years into it. You've built something substantial and you're capable of running it — but there are two or three decisions in front of you where the stakes are high enough that you'd rather not be the only person who's looked at them.
You want to be told what you're missing, not reassured that you're fine.
Who it isn't
If you want someone to take the wheel — manage the portfolio, handle the tax return, keep an eye on things between now and whenever — a one-time plan will frustrate you. You'll get good answers and then be the one implementing them. That's what our ongoing relationship is for.
If you're currently working with an advisor and mainly want to know whether you're in the right place, this isn't the way to find out. Start here instead — that begins with a look at what you have now, and it's free.
Where we are
Heritage Wealth is in Naperville, and we work with people throughout the western Chicago suburbs. Flat-fee plans work perfectly well over video, and plenty of ours are — but if you're nearby, we'd rather sit down with you. Two meetings in a month is enough time to get to know somebody.
Common questions
Do you manage my investments as part of this?
No. The plan tells you what to do with your portfolio and why. Executing it stays with you.
What if I want to keep working together afterward?
Some people do, and we welcome that conversation. But the one-time plan is self-contained — it isn't a trial run for something bigger. You get the whole engagement whether or not anything follows it.
What should I look for in a flat-fee financial advisor?
Ask what's actually included and what isn't — flat-fee arrangements vary a lot, and some are a plan document while others are months of work. Ask whether they're a fiduciary. Ask how they're paid on anything they recommend, not just what they charge for the plan. And ask how many plans they've built for people in your situation. NAPFA and the CFP Board both maintain searchable directories if you want to compare a few.
What do I need to have ready?
The things you'd expect — account statements, recent tax returns, your Social Security estimate, pension paperwork. We'll send a full checklist at the start and help you track down anything you can't put your hands on.
Can we do this remotely?
Yes. Both meetings work fine over video and many of our flat-fee clients are outside Illinois. If you're in the western suburbs, we'd rather meet in person.
Is the fee negotiable?
No.
How is this different from a free consultation?
A consultation is a conversation. This is analysis — your actual numbers run through actual modeling, with decisions at the end. If you already have an advisor and want to know how your current arrangement stacks up, that's a different process — a couple of meetings comparing what you have now against what you'd get here. It doesn't cost anything, and it's the better starting point.