What advice-only means
Advice-only financial planning is a model in which you pay a financial planner directly for their advice, by the hour, by the project, or a flat rate for ongoing services. The planner never sells financial products, earns commissions, or manages your money for a percentage of it.
No financial product sales. No investment minimums or management fees. Just clear financial guidance from an expert who works only for you.
Every advisor in our directory works this way, of course. It is why we named the firm AdviceOnly.
Think about how you work with other professionals in your life. When you see a doctor, they examine you and give recommendations. When you work with a lawyer, they give you legal advice. You pay them for their expertise, not for products they sell.
Advice-only financial planning works the same way. Your advisor focuses purely on giving you expert guidance. You keep control of your money while getting clear direction on what to do with it.
It sits inside the broader fee-only standard, advisors paid only by their clients, but goes further by removing asset management from the arrangement entirely. If that distinction matters to you, we compare the two directly in Advice-Only vs. Fee-Only.
Follow the money and the model explains itself. Every dollar an advice-only planner earns comes from the client in front of them, in one of three shapes. Nothing comes from anywhere else.
An hourly rate Included
For a single decision or a second opinion. You pay for the time it takes and nothing after.
A flat project fee Included
For a full financial plan or a defined piece of work, priced before it starts.
An ongoing planning fee Included
A flat monthly or annual fee for a continuing relationship, stated in dollars, not as a share of your money.
Commissions Never
No payment from an insurer, fund company, or anyone else for recommending a product.
A percentage of your assets Never
No management fee that grows with your balance whether or not the advice changes.
Product sales Never
Nothing to buy. Your advisor has no annuity, policy, or fund to place.
Referral fees Never
No payment for sending you to a lender, an insurer, or another advisor.
Whether a planner is paid this way is checkable, not a matter of trust: a firm's fee arrangements are spelled out in its Form ADV, and ours are on the disclosures page.
Fee-only advisors and advice-only planners share the line that matters most: neither is paid by a product company. The difference is what happens to the fee as your money grows, and whether you need a portfolio at all to be worth their time.
Many advisors are dually registered, acting as a broker on one account and an investment adviser on another, so a single person can sit in two columns. The Form CRS every firm must give you says which applies to your account. The fee-only column describes the common asset-management arrangement; some fee-only firms also offer flat or hourly planning.
Three steps, and none of them is a sales conversation.
Browse the advisors in our directory, filter by what you need help with, and reach out to the one who fits.
Browse the directoryEvery advisor lists which arrangements they offer and what they charge, so you pick the shape that fits your question before any work starts.
You get recommendations you can act on in your own accounts. Nothing to buy, nothing to transfer, and no follow-up sales call.
Most people do not arrive with "I need a financial plan." They arrive with a decision. These are the kinds of questions advice-only planners take on, grouped by the decision behind them. If yours is not here, it probably still fits.
Each advisor lists the areas they work in, so you can filter the directory by what you need help with.
How an advisor is paid shapes the advice you get, and the vocabulary is where most of the confusion lives. These are the terms worth knowing before you hire anyone.
Advice-only financial planning is a model where you pay a financial planner purely for their advice (an hourly rate, a flat project fee, or a retainer), and they never manage your investments, sell financial products, or earn commissions.
A fee-only financial advisor is paid exclusively by clients (hourly rates, flat fees, retainers, or a percentage of assets under management) and accepts no commissions, sales loads, referral fees, or any other payment from financial product companies.
Flat-fee financial planning is a model where a planner charges a fixed dollar amount (for a project, a plan, or a year of service) stated up front, instead of commissions or a percentage of your investment accounts.
Hourly financial planning is a fee model where you pay a financial planner a stated hourly rate for exactly the time you use, like hiring an attorney or CPA, with no products sold and no percentage taken from your accounts.
Subscription financial planning is a fee model where clients pay a flat recurring amount, usually monthly, for ongoing access to a financial planner, pricing advice like a membership rather than as a percentage of investments. It is the consumer-scale form of what the profession has long called a retainer.
Assets under management (AUM) is the total market value of investments a firm manages on behalf of clients. In financial advice, "the AUM model" refers to charging clients an annual fee calculated as a percentage of the assets the advisor manages, commonly around 1%.
A commission is compensation paid to a financial salesperson or firm when a customer buys a product or executes a transaction: a sales load on a mutual fund, a payout on an annuity or insurance policy, a fee per trade. The advice attached to commissioned products is "free" because the product pays for it.
A conflict of interest exists when a financial professional's own compensation or incentives could pull their advice away from what's best for the client: the central problem every advice model handles differently.
A fiduciary is a person or firm legally obligated to act in someone else's best interest. In financial advice, fiduciary duty requires an advisor to put the client's interests ahead of their own, with legal duties of loyalty and care.
A Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) is a firm registered with the SEC or a state securities regulator to provide investment advice for compensation. RIAs owe clients a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.
An investment adviser representative (IAR) is an individual licensed to give investment advice on behalf of a registered investment adviser (RIA). IARs typically qualify by passing the Series 65 exam (or Series 66 plus Series 7) or by holding a credential such as the CFP® certification that most states accept instead.
Form ADV is the registration and disclosure document every registered investment adviser files with the SEC or state regulators. Its plain-English "brochure" (Part 2) describes the firm's services, fees, conflicts of interest, and disciplinary history, free to read at adviserinfo.sec.gov.
Browse every term about advice and advisors in the glossary, or start from the Guide to Personal Finance.
More on the FAQ page.
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