What Exactly Does My Financial Planning Experience Include?

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Why Trust Kevin Burkle, CFP®?

 I have been a CFP® for 10 years, I've been in the financial advice industry for 15 years, and I started investing when I was 16.  I have a lot of experience and expertise for someone my age. Because of my flat-fee, advice-only financial planning model, you won't ever have to wonder if the advice I'm giving you is truly in your best interest. Without that mental roadblock, we are empowered to really take action and improve your financial wellbeing. 

Reviews of HCP Wealth Planning

*These testimonials were provided as Google Reviews by actual clients of HCP Wealth Planning.  The clients were not compensated, nor are there material conflicts of interest that would affect the given testimonials. To read all our Google Reviews, please click here.

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Process And Pricing

Over the years I have perfected a planning experience that takes the complicated process of retirement planning and makes it feel simple. My planning experience generally consists of three to four remote video meetings over the course of one to two months. But you control the pace that we move at. 

Step 1: Schedule An Intro Meeting (this part is free)

I'll  email you an Initial Planning Needs Questionnaire for you to complete. This will help us both gain an understanding of what your planning needs are. Don't worry, I won't force you to provide me with any account balances or financial details yet. We'll then conduct a complimentary video meeting so we can discuss your questionnaire and goals in more detail.

I'll  also share my screen so I can provide a live tour of the "Map Your Wealth" experience. This won't be a canned "strategy session" with a high pressure sales pitch at the end. This first connection simply arms us both with more information so we can begin to determine if we might be a good fit for each other.  

Step 2: Organize Your Financial Life And Create A Detailed Roadmap For Your Financial Future

Using my custom, easy to use digital template, we will organizer your entire financial life in a state of the art personal financial portal that will give you 24/7 access to keep track of your financial plan and progress in real time. 

We will then go through the process of creating a comprehensive retirement roadmap that will address all the financial concerns you already have, and even the ones you didn't know you should have. 

Step 3: Enjoy The Sense of Relief and Confidence That Comes From Knowing You Are On Track To Live Your Best Possible Life In Retirement

*Bonus: Free Ongoing Access To The Tools You Need To Stay On Track

At this point, we've worked really hard to organize your financial life and create a roadmap for your future, so I don't want you to lose access to all of it.  This last step is partly what separates me from a lot of other hourly or project plan advisors. Upon completion of our engagement:

• You will be granted free, ongoing access to your personalized financial portal. This means you can continue to leverage the budgeting tool, track your account balances, investements, net worth, and update your income, savings, and goals so you can see how those changes impact your projected lifestyle moving forward.
• Through the portal and app you will receive reminders throughout the year to review various aspects of your financial life. These reminders inlclude educational content so you can learn to do this without having to pay for another financial advisor engagement.  
• You will also have access to your secure digital vault where all your important documents can be safely stored for your loved ones to access in case something happens to you. 

Pricing

$2100-$2400 All Inclusive Fee 

That's it. There are no other hidden fees or expenses. 

How do you pay it? 

Your fee gets billed as six, equal monthly payments ($350-$400/month). The first payment isn't due until one month after signing the client agreement. You can choose to pay via secure, electronic funds transfers out of your bank account, or via credit card. There is no extra charge to use a credit card so most people choose this option to collect rewards points.

Repeat Clients

My goal is to do such a thorough job of:

• creating and implementing an action plan
• showing you how to update your financial portal yourself
• managing your investments on your own

that you shouldn't feel the need to pay me or any other advisor again unless life throws you a curve ball and your situation has  changed drastically, or you are planning on significant changes. 

When this happens, you can engage me for another plan update. Because I already have your entire financial life in your portal, and we are updating it rather than starting from scratch, this process will take less of our time, so it will cost less. I will quote you a fee based on what you tell me you want to accomplish and how many hours of my time I think it will take. 

Interested In A Live Step By Step Tour Of My Planning Experience? There Are Only Two Potential Outcomes:

• You determine we are a great fit and you decide to partner with me (our favorite of course).
• We decide we aren't a great fit, so I refer you to other flat fee-only CFPs who may be better suited for your needs (I don't receive any compensation for referrals but I still want to find you the help you need).
• By the end of this meeting you will be more educated on what planning needs you may have and what a truly comprehensive financial plan looks like. So you know what to look for when interviewing other advisors if you decide not to partner with me.

Schedule Your Complimentary Meeting

Advice Only Financial Advisors: Pay A Simple Flat Fee Based On The Help You Need, Not How Much You Have To Invest

At HCP Wealth Planning, we believe the fees you pay your advisor should only be based on the expertise and services you receive, not the size of your portfolio. We don't think it's fair that someone should pay an advisor higher fees, just because they have more money. Why is this? Because the little secret that many financial advisors don't want you to know is that it generally doesn't cost them any more time or require any more expertise to manage a $1,000,000 portfolio than it does a $100,000 portfolio.  Just because someone has a larger portfolio, that doesn't automatically mean their financial planning needs are more complex. Unfortunately this type of pricing model, which is known as the Assets Under Management (AUM) model, is still the most popular fee method in the industry.  

Advice-Only Financial Planners: Making Holistic Financial Advice Accessible To Everyone Including DIY Investors

What if you don't have a ton of assets saved up yet? What if all of your investments are tied up in your employer-sponsored retirement accounts? What if you simply prefer to manage your investments on your own, or use robo-advisors, or target date funds? If this describes you, the reality is that you may find it difficult to find an actual CFP® who is still willing to help you (unless they plan to try to sell you a product).  None of that matters to us! Because we charge a simple, flat dollar fee, our compensation isn't impacted by how much you have to invest, so we would love the opportunity to help you "Map Your Wealth"  and make the best possible financial decisions. 

Reduce Your Conflicts of Interest

One of the biggest issues with the traditional AUM model is that it creates many conflicts of interest when the advisor is delivering advice.  

• The Rollover Conversation: There are many scenarios where it could be in your best interest not to rollover your 401(k) or 403(b) after you stop working for your employer. But if the only way an AUM advisor is going to get paid is by managing those investments in an IRA, they have a financial incentive to convince you to rollover out of your 401k and into an IRA.   A flat fee advisor can give you an unbiased recommendation on whether or not to rollover because they get paid the same amount no matter how much you invest with them.
• Paying off debt:  What happens if it's in your best interest to pay down debt such as student loans or paying down a mortgage? That means less money to invest and less money in your advisor's pocket. They have a financial incentive to recommend you do not pay off that debt.
• Real Estate Investing: What if it makes more sense for you to diversify some of your savings and create passive income by investing in real estate? Let's say for example you want to spend $200,000 on a rental property. That's $200,000 that could otherwise be in your investment portfolio which means your advisor could be making $2000 per year in fees from that money. Can you trust that advisor to be unbiased when helping you decide if that rental property is a good investment? The same applies if you are considering paying a lump sum to buy into a business. 
• Inheritance: Over the course of the next couple of decades, the greatest generational wealth transfer will take place. Let's say you inherit an IRA worth $200,000 and it makes sense for your advisor to invest that for you. Should your advisor all of a sudden be paid $2000 more a year because you inherited this money, even though it will barely take them any more time to invest it? What if you inherit $500,000 or even $1,000,000?  Should they all of a sudden be paid $5,000 or $10,000 more per year?
• Social Security: In many scenarios, it makes sense to delay receiving Social Security benefits until you are eligible for the max benefit at age 70. This can be true even if delaying SS means you have to draw down more of your investments in the mean time. In this instance, your financial advisor has a financial incentive to recommend you take SS as early as possible, to reduce the drawdown of your investments and therefore prevent their fees from decreasing.
• Pension Options:  If you are deciding between rolling over a lump sum pension or annuitizing it as monthly payments, there can be a huge difference in financial advisor compensation between the twp options if they are an AUM advisor. If for example your lump sum option is for $1M, and they charge a 1% AUM fee, they could earn $10k/year more in fees if you decide to rollover that lump sum into an IRA for them to manage. But in many situations, it makes more sense to initialy your pension as a monthly distribution. With this option in this example, the advisor would lose out on $10k/year in fees. This is exactly why you should only have your pension strategy evaulated by a flat-fee advisor. 

The Typical AUM Advisor Excuse:

They will tell you that with the AUM model, their fees actually decrease if your portfolio value decreases.  So their interests are aligned with yours. Sure, over a short period of time, the markets may drop and your portfolio may decrease in value, so your advisor's fees temporarily decrease. But if you have a long term relationship with your advisor, odds are that over time, your portfolio value will increase and therefore your fees will increase. This is true even accounting for short term market corrections.  In fact, after every single stock market correction in history, the market has gone on to reach all time highs. 

 No Surprises

The majority of clients who work with an AUM advisor could not tell you exactly how much in dollar terms they paid their advisor last quarter. This is because those fees are buried in account statements that you probably won't look at and it's unlikely that advisor is going to be proactive in explicitly telling you how much you paid.  This is less likely to happen when you see the transaction fees on your bank account statements every month. 

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HCP Wealth Planning Is A Financial Advisor In Jacksonville, FL and Serving Clients Nationwide Through Virtual Meetings