Garrett Planning Network

The Garrett Planning Network is a U.S. membership network of fee-only financial advisors organized around hourly, as-needed financial advice. It was founded in 2000 by Sheryl Garrett, a financial planner who concluded that the industry's dominant models — commissions on product sales and percentage-of-assets management fees — priced ordinary households out of competent advice. Member advisors accept no commissions, impose no asset or income minimums, and must offer engagements billed by the hour, so a client can hire a professional for a single question as easily as for a full plan.

The Garrett Planning Network's contribution to the profession was proving that hourly financial advice could work as a business. Lawyers, CPAs, and consultants have always sold time; financial advice was instead sold through products or asset management, both of which require the client to have something to sell against — a purchase to commission or a portfolio to bill. Hourly billing severs that link entirely. The advisor's revenue depends only on the work performed, which removes both the incentive to recommend products and the incentive to gather assets, and it opens the door to clients the other models ignore: renters with 401(k) questions, young families, people with pensions instead of portfolios.

Full members must be fee-only, adhere to a fiduciary oath, offer hourly as-needed engagements with no income or asset minimums, and either hold the CFP® certification or be a licensed CPA with the PFS credential — or earn one of those designations within five years of joining. In today's landscape, the network sits alongside NAPFA (the fee-only professional association) and the XY Planning Network (the subscription-oriented platform) as one of the standard fee-only advisor directories — and it is the one most closely aligned, philosophically, with advice-only planning, since hourly engagements are by construction advice for a stated fee rather than ongoing asset management. Individual member firms vary, though: some also manage portfolios, so a specific advisor's Form ADV remains the authoritative description of how they charge.

A Garrett-style engagement is scoped like any professional's time: you describe the question, the advisor estimates the hours, and you pay for the time used.

A hypothetical example: Tom and Reiko, both 55, want a second opinion on whether Tom's pension election and their planned retirement date hold up. A percentage-of-assets firm would frame the engagement around moving their $700,000 of retirement accounts under management — roughly $7,000 a year at a 1% fee, every year. An hourly advisor quotes the actual work: perhaps six hours at $250 an hour, or $1,500, for the analysis and a written recommendation — after which Tom and Reiko owe nothing further and change nothing about where their accounts sit. If they want a check-in in two years, they buy two more hours then. The trade-off is symmetrical: nobody is monitoring their situation between engagements unless they schedule it.

Pros

• Pay only for the time your question actually takes — no ongoing fees, no minimums, no products.
• Fee-only membership standard means no commissions influencing the advice.
• Well suited to one-time decisions: pension elections, retirement-date checks, second opinions, plan tune-ups.
• Accessible to households that asset-minimum firms won't serve.

Cons

• Hourly costs can be hard to predict for open-ended problems; complex situations may make a flat project fee easier to budget.
• As-needed means nobody is watching between engagements — staying on track is your responsibility.
• Network membership is a useful screen, not a guarantee; verify any advisor's registration and fee schedule at adviserinfo.sec.gov.