Fees and process
Fee-only. Fiduciary. Built for pastors.
You should know exactly what you pay and exactly who pays us. It is you. Nobody else.
No products. No commissions.
We are paid by the people we advise. That is the whole list.
We do not sell insurance. We do not sell annuities. We do not earn a commission when you move your money somewhere, and nobody pays us to put you in anything.
That does not make us conflict-free. Every advisory relationship has some of it, and the useful question is whether anyone will name theirs. Here is ours. Part of what we charge is based on the money we manage for you, so we have some incentive to want more of your money here. The place that matters most for a pastor is your church retirement plan, so we built the fee to take our thumb off that scale. We do not bill a dime on your church plan, and when we ever suggest moving money out of one, you get our reasoning in writing, including what it costs you. The rest is in our Form ADV.
Start here
The Pastor Retirement Checkup
$599 for an individual. $799 for a married couple. One time.
A focused review of where your retirement actually stands. You bring your situation. You leave with a written summary of what we found and a short list of the moves that matter, in the order we would take them. Specific enough for you to act on.
It is a review of where you stand against your retirement goals, and next steps to move you closer to those goals. It is not a full financial plan, nor does it constitute an ongoing advisory relationship. It covers the things that most often go wrong for ministers. From there it is your call: work the list yourself, or ask us to help you put it in place.
Ongoing work
The ongoing relationship
One relationship. Not a tier you get sorted into by the size of your account.
Ongoing Planning and Investment Management
We manage your investment accounts. You get a planning conversation every year covering the things that actually move for a pastor, a written review of your tax return, your whole financial picture in one place online, and our time at a reduced rate whenever you need more of it.
The same service at $80,000 as at $800,000. What changes is what it costs, and it stops changing sooner than you would expect.
It begins after the Checkup, for everyone. That is how we get to know you well enough to advise you specifically instead of generally.
What it costs
The ongoing relationship carries two fees, a planning fee and a management fee. You pay one of them, not both. Which one depends on how much we manage for you. The other is waived in full.
If we manage $100,000 or more
You pay the management fee below and no planning fee.
| What we manage | Annual rate |
|---|---|
| First $500,000 | 0.90% |
| $500,000 to $2,000,000 | Nothing |
| Above $2,000,000 | 0.40% |
Read that middle row again. Between $500,000 and $2,000,000 we charge nothing on the difference. Your fee is $4,500 a year at $500,000. It is $4,500 a year at $1,000,000. It is still $4,500 at $2,000,000.
There is not much difference between managing $500,000 and managing $1.5 million. So we do not charge you three times more just because your account grew.
If you are comparing us against a firm that charges one percent, the arithmetic on that same $1.5 million is $15,000 a year against our $4,500. We are not going to tell you what anybody else is worth. We will tell you what we charge.
Above $2,000,000 we add 0.40% on the amount over that line, and only on the amount over it. Crossing $2,000,000 never causes a jump.
Built for ministers who are still building
If you have ever looked at an advisor's website and found a number you did not meet, you know the feeling. You are not too small. You just did not fit their business model.
We have no minimum, and that is deliberate. A pastoral couple with two W-2 incomes, a church plan, and twenty-five years of ministry still in front of them does not need a five-thousand-dollar financial plan. They need somebody who understands how their pay actually works and a real conversation once a year that keeps them pointed the right direction. The decisions in front of them are the ones that are still open.
If we manage less than $100,000 for you: $199 a quarter, or $249 for a couple. That is the planning fee, and there is no management fee at all. Investment management is included at no charge.
It is a flat fee, so what you pay does not move as the account does. Same service as anybody else here. Same advisor, same annual planning meeting, same written review of your tax return.
How billing works
The Checkup is a fixed fee, billed when the engagement is scoped and agreed, before the work begins. You know the number before you commit to anything, and it does not move.
Ongoing fees are billed every quarter, after the quarter, based on what we managed at the end of it. They come out of your accounts with your written authorization, and you get an itemized statement every time showing the formula, the balance we billed on, and the period it covers.
Anything beyond that is quoted in writing first. Nothing gets billed that you have not agreed to. There is no exit fee and no notice period. If you stop, you stop, and you owe for the days we served.
Your custodian may charge its own fees for things like wires or transferring an account out. Those are theirs, not ours, and we do not receive any part of them.
Your church plan is not part of what you pay us
We do not bill on your 403(b)(9), a denominational plan, or any account we do not manage.
We will still advise on it. It just is not part of the fee calculation, so leaving that money where it is costs us nothing.
That is deliberate, and it is worth being blunt about why. Our fee is based on what we manage, so moving money out of a church plan and over to us would raise what you pay. A minister weighing that decision should not be getting the advice from someone whose pay goes up if the answer is yes. So we took our thumb off the scale, and any recommendation to move money out of a church plan comes with our reasoning in writing, including what it costs you.
When something needs more than a meeting
Buying a business. A spouse's equity compensation. A parent's estate. Work like that takes hours of analysis and it does not fit inside the annual review.
We do not have packages for these, and we do not sort you into a complexity tier. We look at what you are asking for, work out how long it should take, and give you one number before we start. You approve that number first.
That is the number. If the work turns out to take longer than we thought, that is our problem, not your bill.
Half is due when you approve the scope. The rest when we hand you the work.
Our hourly rate is $400. If you are already a client, it is $300.
How we work together
A conversation
Half an hour, no cost, no pitch. You tell us what is on your mind and we tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
The Checkup
Our first door, and where we start. One focused engagement, written findings, a clear end. Housing allowance, SECA and dual status, the church plan, what opting out of Social Security already cost you. You will not spend the first three meetings teaching us how your pay works.
Ongoing planning and management
We manage your investment accounts, and once a year we sit down and actually work through your situation. A raise. Next year's housing allowance designation. Whether to shift what you are putting into the church plan. We read your tax return every year as part of it. In between, you can reach us with the quick questions.
When something needs more than a meeting
Buying a business. A spouse's equity compensation. A parent's estate. Work like that takes hours of analysis. We scope it and quote it before we start.
What we do not do: we do not prepare tax returns. We read yours each year as part of the annual review, and we will get your CPA whatever statements and documents they need. We do not draft legal documents. We review insurance. We do not sell it.
Start here
The Pastor Retirement Checkup
One focused engagement. You bring your situation, we tell you in writing where your retirement actually stands, and you decide what happens next. No ongoing commitment.
$599 for an individual. $799 for a married couple.