Although there is no pedagogical definition of “fee-only planning,” I have always been a planning purist and have been openly critical of financial planners who market themselves as “fee-only” but charge asset-based fee and are really more portfolio management-centric than planning centric. To my thinking, if one is going to market oneself as a fee-only planner, the fee must be removed from the portfolio management process. Even though I offered flat-fee planning at FPH, it still felt a bit hypocritical, since nearly all clients hired us with portfolio management as a primary objective.
In 2022, I hatched the idea of creating an entirely separate website for Fee-Only planning Hawaii that would serve almost as a "Chinese wall" from the parent company. Although both business models follow the same deep-dive financial planning process and provide clients with the same software platform to centralize and organize their financial lives, both business models are now equally visible and serve very different consumer segments. These days roughly 6-7 out of 10 new clients come through Fee-Only Planning Hawaii. As we explain to each prospective client, we are agnostic to model choice. It gives me great joy to be able to share our unique expertise with a broader audience.
So, if you are looking for a pure, fee-only financial planning shop, you have come to the right place. We are advice-only, fee-only, and fiduciary always.
Fee-Only Planning
The idea of offering fee-only planning as an entirely separate service model from the parent company, Financial Planning Hawaii (FPH) had been ruminating for many years. In the 2010s, FPH began offering flat-fee financial planning as an alternative to its flagship tiered asset-based pricing model. The flat-fee option was offered on the pricing page of the FPH website, but it never seemed to get the attention it deserved. As the founder of FPH, I am passionate about my craft and I always felt there is a large segment of the consumer population that craves comprehensive financial planning advice that goes far beyond just investment management. Many of these people either have no investible assets for an advisor to manage or simply prefer to manage their investment portfolios themselves.