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

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: Getting To Know Each Other (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

I'll provide you with my custom digital financial organizer. This online tool will make it easy for you to provide me with all of your financial life details. Once you complete it, we will use the provided information to build your own personalized financial portal and electronically sync all your accounts.

You will then be able to track your entire financial life 24/7 from any device.  This includes account balances, monthly spending, investment allocations and holdings, net worth, and more. We also load any important financial documents to your secure digital vault. That way if something happens to you, your loved ones know where all your accounts and important documents are. 

 Step 3: Review Your Initial Goals And Assumptions

We will conduct a video meeting where we review all the information in your new client portal and discuss the initial planning goals and assumptions we will build into your plans. This is a deep dive conversation which enables us to be extremely thorough when building your plan. However, none of these goals and assumptions will be set in stone.

In fact, most people end up adjusting them after viewing their plan and visualizing how the tradeoffs between these goals and assumptions impact their financial future. And that's one of the greatest benefits of going through this process: determining what your true values are so you can align your money with those values. By the end of this meeting, I will be equipped to create your personalized rough draft planning scenarios.

Step 4: Start To Create An Action Plan

We will conduct a live video meeting where I share my screen as we update and compare various planning scenarios in real time. These scenarios consist of multiple action items/financial levers that I recommend based on your situation. 

Since you most likely don't have unlimited financial resources, you will need to consider and evaluate multiple trade-offs when it comes to allocating your money. Throughout this meeting, we will work towards determining which scenarios make the most sense and deciding on single combination of action items that should be implemented. 

Step 5: Your Investment Strategy

Advice-only planning doesn't mean I ignore your investments. Far from it.  I'll teach you to simplify your investments and manage them yourself so that you can avoid paying a financial advisor potentially thousands of dollars year after year for portfolio management.  We'll determine exactly how you should be investing in any applicable accounts.

For any old or active employer-sponsored plans that you participate in, I will ask you to share your screen as you are logged into those accounts so we can review those plan investment choices, fees and expenses, and resources.  Based on the plan options I will tell you if rollovers make sense, and how to invest in them. 

For any other investment accounts (IRAs, brokerage accounts, etc), I recommend a specific allocation, as well as provide specific model portfolios comprised of low cost ETFs that align with that allocation. If we determine it makes sense to make any changes to your current portfolios, I'll will help you process those online or join in on a conference call with your service provider.

Step 6: Analyze Insurance Coverage Needs And Estate Planning Documents Needed

I will also analyze what type of insurance coverage you should have, and how much. In my experience, this it one of the easiest ways for me to add value to our relationship. All to often, I come across people who follow generic rules of thumb, and are either under-insured, or over-insured. Both can end up costing you or your loved ones either a lot of money, or a lot of heartache.

Don't worry, I don't actually sell insurance or get paid to refer you to anyone who does. So my advice is completely unbiased. But it is my job to know if you are over or under-insured, and to help you shop for the best pricing when it comes to life, property and casualty, disabilty, personal liablility, and any other insurance.

This part of the process also includes me recommending what specific estate planning documents you need. For example, some people think they need a trust when they don't. Some people do need a trust and they don't have one. At the very least everyone should have the essential documents in place. I'll tell you what those are, the various ways to create them, and the cost of doing so. We also make sure you have beneficiaries properly assigned to all your accounts.

Step 7: Follow Up Meeting To Confirm Final Plan And Implement Recommendations

After the first meeting where we explore your rough draft planning scenarios,  you'll probably need time to digest everything that was discussed. After all, it can be a bit overwhelming to have your entire financial life mapped out in front of you for the first time. And I would never expect you to make any big decisions about the tradeoffs you need to make without sleeping on it.

This is especially true if you plan with a significant other as it will be important for you two to discuss everything on your own. Most clients end up thinking it over, and wanting to revise the combination of levers that we are pulling in their planning scenarios. So we conduct another meeting to do just that.

The goal will be to ultimately drill down to a single combination of levers/action items that gives you the best chance of reaching your financial and non-financial goals. After this, we will work on implementing any action items that still need to be taken care of. 

Lastly, we will make sure you know how to navigate and update your personalized financial portal yourself. Why is this important?...

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

At this point, we've worked so 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 Planning: 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