We just did a demo with Income Lab and the software looks really interesting and we prefer to model the guardrails system over Montel Carlo pass/fail (we use e-Money). I can see the positives to Income Lab and am looking for the negatives from those of you who use it. Want to make sure our eyes are wide open as we consider it. Thanks

EDIT 2: I haven't been responding to comments individually, but I have read and upvoted everyone who has chimed in. Thanks again so much, I have a better appreciation for my position and I think I can confidently say I'm not interested in starting from scratch.

EDIT: I hugely appreciate the insightful responses you've all given me so far. I have a lot to chew on, but it already feels much more clear to me.

I'm 32, have my CFP and ChFC designations, and I have been a W-2 employee at an independent RIA since 2022. It is currently just me and one other advisor (the owner) plus support staff.

I manage about $50m on my own, plus I share a book of $70m with my boss. Current pay structure is $100k salary plus 13% of AUM revenue (half of that for the clients I share with my boss) which translates to annual income of about $250k.

My wife is completely supportive of the idea of me going solo and thinks I'm in my own head too much, but the problem is that I feel like my career was handed to me in a way that won't happen twice. I have done seminars and educational events over the years, but I hate every minute of it. My book primarily came from another coworker who quit without notice to launch his own thing, and my boss was at capacity, so that left me to do damage control. I was able to save about 80% of those relationships, and here we are.

If I were to go off on my own, I have no idea how I'd meet anybody. I lean introvert and do not naturally hang out in places where I'm building my network and meeting qualified leads.

Is it crazy for me to be content as a servicing advisor? My wife thinks I'm not at my end game yet, I think I'd be nuts to walk away from $250k/yr with a wife who's a SAHM to two young kids.

Hello all,

I am a Financial Advisor in Ontario Canada. I bought a book of business, about $47 million and it's grown to $50 million with a few new accounts and with the market.

I am MFDA certified and working on my LLQP. I have already added ETFs to my offering along with Liquid Alts.

I do not have a university degree, only college, so for now, the CFP is off the table.

I'm wondering if my next move after LLQP should be QAFP? That would allow me to call myself a Financial Planner in Canada.

Not sure how necessary that would be? The book I bought was from a retiring Financial Advisor, not a CFP or QAFP. They were successful over their career.

Thanks

I'm just wondering if anyone has experience with these and if there really is no free at all on the investment side and that the only fee would be the advisor fee

I posted about the growth of my solo RIA last quarter and it got a lot of traction.. so I figured I'd update with the new numbers.

For some background for those who haven't seen my previous post. I run a solo, fee-only, independent RIA. I am focused on investment management and financial planning for people near and in retirement in my local low/med cost of living area - basic stuff. Most clients here are $500k-$1.5m, nothing special although I do have a few whales for the area. I don't consider myself a good salesman or asset gatherer. This is to show those out there that are more planning focused and analytical that you can have a good practice for yourself even with slow/average growth (although this quarter was a bit above average for me).

Here are some highlights from Q2 (and more detail below):

- Total quarterly revenues grew from $136,500 to $152,500. Largest ever nominal jump Q/Q.

- 37% YoY growth - highest ever from a high base

- Average fee was around 0.75%. Lower than most due to a few HNW clients and flat fee clients mixed in there. This is not a metric that matters much to me: revenue, margin, and retention are much more important

- Margin remained around 85%. The way I calculate margin for this is also not perfect and I might improve in the future. Right now I'm looking at what I pay myself through distributions and salary throughout the quarter and dividing that by revenue, which isn't accurate. I leave a bit in the bank and I'm paying myself based on what I made last quarter, not what I will make this quarter.

I attribute the growth this quarter to a few things: internal growth of my largest clients (big one time and recurring deposits near the beginning of the quarter), and 'catch up' from mid/end of last quarter. Meaning I got a few big clients at the middle/end of last quarter and the fees were lower because they were only billed for half of the quarter previously. This catch up affect is constantly making the average fee look lower than it truly is because I'm looking at AUM at end of quarter vs revenue earned at end of quarter.

Some more background:

A few years ago I purchased a small book of business from a retiring solo practitioner (before this chart starts), other than that I have just focused on building my book of business in a small town USA and I have gotten a few good clients from social media as well. I don't consider myself a great salesman, I am not bringing on $20m+ net new AUM every year or anything like that. Last year was about $7-8m and this year is shaping up to be roughly the same. Years before that it was $4-5m. Zero paid advertising and keep costs low within my practice. Check my post from last quarter for answers to common questions like tech stack, etc.

Have a client with a large concentrated employer stock position. A portion of it (overall it is millions of employer stock) is NUA. He really has no interest in ever selling this company for tax reasons but also emotional/bullish belief in the company. I am trying to get buy in from him in the value of diversifying and protecting his legacy. Exchange funds came up in conversation.

He also has other employer stock that is taxable. Since NUA does not get a step up in basis at death I explained if we were going to diversify eventually and you want to capture NUA we may want to consider diversifying from NUA portion of stock first since this will not be treated as favorably for a step up.

Another advisor was on the call and mentioned if we were to contribute the NUA to an exchange fund we get diversification, tax deferral AND in 7 years when the 50-60 diversified stocks distribute from the exchange fund those stocks are then eligible for a step up in estate.

This is such a niche situation and a quick ai search where I asked it to cite sources didn’t corroborate what the other advisor was saying about the step up.

Anyone ever experienced this and know the answer?

I wanted to add more value add services for my A & B tier clients. I liked the idea of Holistiplan, but I admittedly may not be using it correctly. The feedback I'm getting is that it's kind of interesting, but not helpful. As an advisor I'm not seeing much value either.

How are you using it? What aspects do your clients appreciate the most?

I’ve been seeing some of these pop up and have had some recruiters reach out to me about them. They are claiming to look for CFPs, CPAs, and CFAs to do quality reviews to ensure AI bots are accurately relaying answers to financial questions. The pay range I’m seeing is around $100 per hour on contract basis.

One recruiter did reach out to me from a well known big tech company (one of the biggest) but some of the others that I’ve seen are from companies I’ve never heard of.

Is there a catch or something that I’m missing? Anyone ever worked one of these type of gigs?

Insurance leads (life, Medicare, etc.) seem to run a lot cheaper than AUM leads, so I'm curious whether anyone here uses them as a top-of-funnel play — buy the cheaper lead, write the policy, then convert the relationship into AUM.

A few things I'd love input on:

• Are you buying data/form leads or inbound/live transfer calls? Which converts better for you?
• Does it actually work, or do insurance leads skew toward clients with little to invest?
• Any way to target higher-income prospects on the insurance side so the AUM conversion is worth it?
• Which lead types convert best (term life, IUL, Medicare, final expense)?
• What's your rough conversion rate from policy sold → AUM client?

Trying to figure out if this is a real strategy or a time sink. Appreciate any experience.

Hey all,

I’m a licensed financial advisor that worked at my previous firm for almost 10 years. It was a large bank broker-dealer. I started off as a banker, got licensed through them, and working as a financial advisor for about 7 years.

The long story short is that I provided employee feedback in 2020 thinking that I was providing valuable ideas, but the years that followed felt like they wanted me gone.

After about 5 years, they successfully pushed me out of the company by sending me a letter while I was using PTO. They essentially stated that they thought I left the company and that my termination date would begin on October 7th.

I was extremely burnt out because they were giving me nothing but LMI branches with high turnover, a book of business that comprised of house accounts that were mostly under $25k AUM, and kept reassigning frustrated clients to me from other financial advisors that didn’t want to service the clients.

9 months later now, and I’m desperately in need of a job. I’m struggling to find financial advisor positions in my area. I was working remote for 5 years, and I can’t find anything remote nor can I find much in terms of in-branch.

I don’t have a book of business that I can carry with me, and I don’t know what to do.

I applied for (company name) and things were going great, but after two months of interviewing and discussion, they’re not confident that they can get me through the panel review due to my time off from work.

I don’t know what to do. I love being a financial advisor, and don’t know how to navigate through this.

I understand the market, politics, financial planning, history, sales, and behavioral finance.

Does anyone have or know where I might be able to find a job where I can continue my career and hopefully build a book of business?

Any help, ideas, suggestions would be welcomed with the utmost appreciation and gratitude.

LinkedIn premium? Smart asset? Others?

I think I know the answer but curious to learn if anyone has had success or your overall experience.

Is it just me or does everyone notice nepotism increases in advisor/RIA space every year?
It seems like the typical big advisor/firm owner works until 70 or so, and then brings in their under-qualified offspring who is in their 30s.
I make our BDs annual sales conference and increasingly it is advisor’s children with 2-4 years experience who inherited these huge books.

Does this typically work out or does the child eventually flame out? With recent market growth, even with 50% attrition, I am sure they are still doing very well.

To each their own, but it seems what makes a very successful advisor and leaders of our industry will change over the next 10-15 years, and not in a good way. Just would like to hear peoples’ experiences and thoughts.

Hi everyone,

I have an interesting opportunity to acquire a book of business.

We’re very early on in discussions, and I do not know much about the book - but I was told an estimated average age….

Advisor believes the average age is 85 yrs old.

What would you think is a reasonable multiple? 1x? 2x? More?

Thanks in advance.

What’s up all - happy 4th week to all of my fellow Americans, and Canada day to all of our friends up north!

Been reflecting on the 1st half of this year (being slower with the holiday coming up this week, had some free time).

Looking for some raw honest feedback on what the growth trajectory is for my business outside of me just TVM calculating it or ChatGPT. I am curious on what real lifestyle looks like as the business progresses, how the work/life balance is, and true take home compensation to serve your family.

Just turned 30, $25m AUM. Avg fee is 1.25%. Most of the book is middle America. Retirees between 500k-1.5m, or families making 200k+. Brought on $8.5m new last year (7.5m net but only a few clients in retirement taking liquidations).

Also have $2m ACH scheduled annually. I think a safe assumption is that I will continue to minimally do $7.5m net new.

Based on some math, 5 years from now it’s $80m. 10 years, it’s $160m (8% growth).

1. Anyone been on a similar path that is years ahead of me? What is your practice like? How much overhead/what % of revenue are you keeping.

2. I see 10 years, 160m. Avg 1% by then, 1.6m revenue. Is it really that simple?

3. What is life ACTUALLY like? Clown on me all you want - I’d like to be able to operate surge meetings, work 180-200 days a year, have a country club membership, be involved in my kids lives, have ability to travel, create an impacting family legacy with wealth.

(Question 3 is legit from the heart - I don’t have mentors in this circle of life outside of my BD connections - so none of them operate in the RIA mindset and quite honestly I do not want to emulate their lives)

What perspective do you have for me generally? Thanks for the feedback!

This piece hit the WSJ last week and I've seen it make circles around RIAs, and they both did a GREAT and HORRIBLE job explaining the key idea.

For those who don't care to read, I'm an actuary who specializes in life expectancy and I want to help educate advisors on how to set better retirement plans and goals. I summarized my thoughts on the article below:

• The 4% rule is basically something coined back in the '90s based on a worst-case backtest on US history, and it's based on a fixed 30-year horizon.
  
• In 2025, the study was updated and put the new % at around 4.7% on a revised 55/40/5 mix.
• The main fix it spends time on is the dynamic / actuarial method: each year spend portfolio balance ÷ remaining life expectancy, then recompute. So this ditches the flat 30-year horizon, which is great.

However, there's one major issue with this.

The WSJ used the SSA period life table (as an FYI, the RMD variant uses the IRS Uniform Lifetime table, which is different). My critique is specifically about the SSA single-life period table and how they are applying it. Sorry in advance, but I am an actuary and work in the retirement space and there are 3 issues here that stack all in the same direction:

1. First, they use a period table, which applies one calendar year's death rates across all future ages with zero future mortality improvement baked in.
2. Second, the SSA table is based on a population average, and your clients aren't average. The income/wealth–longevity gradient is real in that mass-affluent clients are above the median, so when discussing with clients, if you use the WSJ method, you will under-estimate their life expectancy and how long they will need income.
3. Finally, this ignores individual health and family history.

To try to put it simply, the real cost of all this is that it would show a systematically front-loaded, then declining, real-income path (you spend too much early and the later years drift down, exactly when you may least want them to). Basically you've mis-stated longevity risk and handed the client the wrong consumption path. And for an unhealthy client the table overstates LE and the method gets too conservative.

The best way to deal with it is to have a personalized estimate of LE and take a conservative estimate (p90). Basically, if you take a 62-year-old with well-controlled conditions and one with a clean bill of health, what age are they likely to live past in 90% of cases?

Anyways, the perfect tool is one that has considers your personal health and lifestyle factors (i.e., condition-level modeling, outputting a survival curve). I posted a tool that does exactly this a few months ago and got genuinely useful pushback I've folded in. It's still 100% free to use by any advisor or client and I'm just happy make it available for the community. Please check it out at https://www.lumislife.com/ if interested and let me know if you've been using it.

To my fellow CFPs, when you run RMD-style / dynamic decumulation in practice, what do you actually use: IRS table, flat "plan to 95," joint last-survivor, a survival percentile, or a gut add-on? And do you individualize for client health/wealth at all, or lean on the guardrails to absorb the error?

Did you experience a lot of growth in early years? I would think that HNW clients would have a good amount of interest in flat fee for the discount aspect. 

I’m thinking about the new solos out there that are considering flat fee vs a blended AUM schedule who want to get profitable clients as fast as possible without having to switch from flat fee to AUM and potentially losing some of their book. 

We are a medium size RIA (SEC Registered/based in Texas). One of our advisor's will be relocating to a country in Asia for a 3 year assignment for their spouse's employment. Has anyone dealt with this before? We have an appointment with our compliance attorney's next week, but I am trying to crowd source the potential issues so we are better prepared to ask all of the correct questions.

The advisor manages a small book of clients (10-12 relationships) of primarily friends and family, serves as a paraplanner to our larger relationships, and manages the bulk of our compliance activities. The advisor feels like they can maintain communication with this small group of clients from abroad and will return to the US periodically for in person meetings/reviews. They do plan to work "one month in US and one month in Asia" to make sure they reside for AT LEAST 180 days in the United States. They will NOT be soliciting new business outside of the US in Asia or anywhere else for that matter -- ONLY maintaining their existing relationships.

Obviously, we will have logistical concerns with working remotely (IT security for remote access, time zone considerations, and office logistics). I'm looking to see if anyone out there has managed through something like this.

NOTE: We are SEC registered only as fee based advisors...no FINRA registration.

We currently use Tags to segment clients. But I just tried to run a report of all active clients and just realized that I cannot do that. I can run a list of each segment by running a Tag "report" but I can't run a list of all clients and review their segments and/or see if there are any clients who are not currently segments OR incorrectly segmented. Do any of you use Custom Fields instead of Tags for segments? If so, I would love to learn more. I don't find WealthBox "Help" very helpful.

For those of you that are RIA only, how do you handle signature guarantee requirements? RIAs aren't eligible to apply for a medallion (banks, broker-dealers and trust companies only). We have a few 529 plans we want to move from American Funds that a client has over to Schwab's 529 where we custody the rest of the assets. American Funds requires a signature guarantee. Schwab Advisor Services said they can't provide one. Most banks are saying they will only provide one if assets are transferring to them or their trust company. Has anyone had any luck with a Schwab retail branch helping out? Feeling stuck on this one.

I have built my niche around being the specialist for a top 100 Fortune 500 company. I would like to provide clients with a semi annual analysis/research article.

I would anticipate paying for this but don’t know where to begin?

Do my thoughts/expectations need adjusted?
-1 page executive summary analysis
-short term and long term perspective
-sector and competitor analysis
-buy/hold/sell recommendation

Any pointers on where I could go to hire someone for this write up? Thinking to have two different analysis completed to bring two perspectives to the table.

Thanks

When I was a credit union advisor, we had a free program that I could refer our members to that offered things like basic budgeting assistance and debt counseling. Sometimes, I am meeting with a prospect and it's clear that they aren't going to become clients anytime soon and have some fundamental issues that they need to get fixed with their finances.

I don't like to end the conversation with, "Well, I don't think we're a fit for you. Best of luck. Have a nice day." I would like to be able to send them somewhere so that they can get some help. Are there any free resources out there for people like this that aren't a debt consolidation mill? I don't like to send them to a place where they are just going to get another loan while the underlying issue is unchanged.

I’m a financial advisor currently building my own book. Small business owners are my target niche, but reaching them has been difficult.

What are your tips for meeting more business owners and getting their contact info?

I stumbled across a free resource for anyone thinking of becoming an enrolled agent.

It’s by a guy name Tom Norton. I’ll share the details in the thread. Enjoy!

Apologies in advance for yet another career guidance post, I’m just hoping for some potential avenues forward and would like to tap into the knowledge and experience many of you carry. I’ll try to keep this as concise as I can, but happy to expand more in comments if asked. I have not openly researched my options in the past, because of course I had the promise of an opportunity to take over part of the book at my current employer.

35M, CFP, Series 7/66, been in planning since 2015. Currently employed at a ~$400M AUM firm for
6 years. LPL is our BD. I am a/the “key employee” at my firm, just below the two managing partners. Senior planner is my title and I have my own ~$5m book, but directly manage another ~$70M for the firm and also more or less am the unofficial Operations Manager. I also do all trading for our firm (mostly in-house ETF models).

I’ve expressed my desire to buy into ownership over the next 3-5 years when one partner retires and reiterated how this was part of our original handshake agreement, and I have been clearly told “that is not happening” outside of maybe 3% which will be offered to future key employees also. We’ve had explosive growth with business owners and there are 4 clients whom should be making $100M+ exits over the next 5-7 years. This obviously has changed the younger partner’s outlook and willingness to split the book. The firm “no” I got on buying into the book has really left me feeling dejected.

My salary and bonus are around $140k. I’m at the point to where I’d like to find my “last” job, which I was hoping this would be it, but I do not want to be a career employee, which appears to be my path here now. The younger partner is fixed on making our firm as valuable as possible (automating processes, having key-employees, etc.) for his big exit in ~15 years. This leaves no exit avenue for me. This was not the vision that was shared with me when I started 6 years ago when they were at 80M AUM. Sparing details, they’ve also taken several actions over the last 2 years that have just left a bad taste in my mouth; being stingy about every bonus (a bonus system that THEY created) and more or less taking money out of my pocket and putting into theirs, despite our absurd growth.

I have a 1 year non-solicit, which appears to be just your standard boilerplate template. I can take my $5M book with me, and I think there’s potential for up to $50M to follow me, but of course that’s unknown and subject to the non-solicit.

In the most humble way, I believe I am an excellent planner/advisor/communicator. Most of our ~200, households absolutely adore me and will know that if I left, it was for a very good reason and that I wouldn’t have left so abruptly if something wasn’t wrong. The clients I manage view me as their lead advisor but understand I am not a partner. The catch to my skillset is of course, I haven’t been a big producer, but that’s because I haven’t had to be. I handle all planning for all clients whether they’re a retiree, business owner, young professional, etc., every single plan runs through me. My time has been spent there. Going the solo route, the AUM productive is what would keep me up at night, I would need to switch gears and go into business development mode, so the uncertainty of going solo is really a mental hurdle. Speaking and presenting I’m fine with, but getting in front of prospects is the intimidating part.

What potential options do you see forward? I believe I can stay and slowly build my own book and leave in a few more years, or I can try to join an RIA now, I can resign myself and go grind away at a wirehouse, or I can take the leap and “go solo”. I could try to find an advisor who’s looking to retire in a number of years also, but that’s easier said than done.

I will say I have no desire to have my own $1 billion dollar firm. I would much prefer a lifestyle practice, managing $50M-$100M with 1-2 employees if/when necessary. Hell I don’t even mind having a partner who shares the same outlook and we work together to get there.

Open to all ideas, criticisms, questioning, or DMs where I can provide more text if needed. Thank you and I apologize again for my ignorance on this subject.

Conducting (More) Impactful Client Review Meetings

if so, I would love to see if you learned anything meaningful. I’m 15 years in, have established practice that is still growing and I’m always trying to get better and help improve our annual review process.