Fantastic Financial Planning (Part 2)

This is part two of a three-part series on fantastic financial planning. Stay tuned for the next installment next week. 
Read part one of our fantastic financial planning series.
PLAN A MENU OF SERVICES
A Menu of Services allows financial advisors to deliver an appropriate level of service for different clients at an appropriate price. When there is more value, there can be a higher price. Part of increasing value is helping with more areas, specifically the areas THE CLIENT wants the most help with. The areas that a financial advisor can help their clients with should be part of their menu of services. The best financial advisors include areas that Americans are looking for help with. Many financial advisors will start out with three levels of service. More advanced and larger practices have more. A great menu of services includes how the clients will get help, which can include the number of interactions and what they can expect.

PRICING IS A QUANDRY FOR MANY FINANCIAL ADVISORS
Some financial advisors choose to do financial planning and not charge for it. Would you trust your health with a doctor who was free? The value and quality would most likely be questionable. Once financial advisors break the barrier of charging for their advice, many struggle with appropriate pricing. Many will start by charging too little. They focus on if people will pay them instead of the value they will be delivering. According to the Financial Planning Association (FPA), the average financial planning fee in America is around $3,400 annually. Many top financial advisors derive their pricing from a percentage of assets or net worth a client has. Consider your largest client: what would 0.5% of their assets be? Some advisors will stagger the percentage of assets they charge from 0.25% to 2% depending on the size of client assets (smaller percentage for larger asset sizes and larger percentage for smaller asset sizes). Other advisors will charge a flat percentage fee for all of their clients. Some financial advisors will tie in a financial planning fee to asset management fees. A Barron’s Top 1,000 Financial Advisor says “when someone is paying you more for advice, you will want to deliver it to them.”