When choosing an a financial planner it is important to be aware of all potential fees you may encounter. Anyone offering investment advice is legally required to disclose these fees in a form called the ADV. Below are screenshots from the ADVs of two separate financial planners. Both forms were easily located in the fine print on their websites. From looking at these tables we can see that the first firm likely has a much larger amount of assets under management and as a result requires larger accounts for their cheaper fees. Unless your assets are upwards of $25 million, the first firm would likely be charging you more than double the second to manage an account of comparable size.

By: A. Taylor, UCSB