Financial Planning

Consider changing firms when the problem sits in how the firm is built, not in one person or one bad year. The strongest firm-level triggers are an ownership change that alters who serves you, your custodian, your fees or your investment menu; a move to a lower service tier or a higher account minimum; a product shelf heavy on proprietary funds or commissioned products; no integrated planning, meaning investments only, with no tax projection or estate coordination; steady team turnover; a fee that never steps down as your balance grows; and custody or reporting you cannot verify directly with the custodian. Fiduciary status matters too, so ask whether the firm acts as a fiduciary on every account you hold, in writing. Do not switch because of one weak year against a benchmark that does not match your risk level, or because a market decline felt bad. A simple test: can the firm show you what you pay all in, what you get for it, and who will serve you next year? If any answer is no, start gathering facts. Many firms of every size serve clients well, and staying is a perfectly good outcome.

A layoff in your 50s or 60s with a 401(k) containing appreciated company stock, a situation that's been common recently across Phoenix-area semiconductor and tech employers, puts several decisions on the table at once, and getting the sequence right matters. Vested company stock inside the 401(k) may qualify for Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA) treatment, letting you pay ordinary income tax only on the stock's original cost basis now and defer tax on the appreciation until you sell it later, at long-term capital gains rates rather than ordinary rates, but only if the entire plan balance is distributed in one calendar year triggered by the separation from service. If you're 55 or older in the year you're separated (age 50 for certain public safety roles), the 'Rule of 55' lets you take penalty-free withdrawals directly from that specific employer's 401(k) before age 59½, a narrower and more useful tool than most people realize in exactly this situation. Health insurance, unvested equity that's typically forfeited, severance tax treatment, and whether this functionally becomes retirement rather than a job search are all decisions that interact with each other rather than standing alone.

A genuinely flat-fee advisor charges one number for a defined scope of work, and that number does not change because your account balance crossed a threshold. A tiered-fee advisor charges different amounts at different asset levels, whether that's expressed as a percentage (1% up to $2M, 0.75% above that) or as a fixed dollar figure that still steps up as your balance grows ($8,000 up to $2M, $12,000 above that). Both can be legitimate pricing models, but they are not the same thing, and some advisors market themselves as flat fee while their own Form ADV Part 2A discloses a tiered schedule underneath. The test takes about two minutes: pull the advisor's Form ADV Part 2A from the SEC's free public database at adviserinfo.sec.gov, go to Item 5 (Fees and Compensation), and check whether the fee is a single number or a schedule with asset breakpoints. If it's a schedule, it's tiered, regardless of what the advisor calls it in conversation or on their website.

At least once a year, you should be discussing a written plan for how you will spend and withdraw money, a tax projection for this year and next, how Social Security and Medicare fit together, your investment plan for a down market, what you pay all in, and your estate and insurance paperwork. Performance belongs on the agenda, but measured against your plan rather than only against an index. A good meeting has an agenda sent ahead, notes afterward, and action items with an owner and a date. Retirement is where the stakes rise: withdrawal order, Roth conversions, required minimum distributions, IRMAA thresholds, the ACA subsidy cliff before 65, and survivor benefits all interact, and the decisions are often hard to reverse. Ask what changed in the rules and what changed in your life since the last meeting. Then ask for the answers in writing. A good advisor will welcome these questions, because they are the work. And if you ask them all and decide to stay with the advisor you have, that is a fine outcome. This agenda is useful whether or not you ever change anything.

Dave Ramsey's well-known, publicly stated position generally favors Roth accounts (Roth IRA and Roth 401(k)) over traditional pre-tax accounts, on the reasoning that paying tax now and growing tax-free later beats deferring tax into an uncertain future. He has also long recommended a roughly 8% annual withdrawal rate in retirement, based on an assumption of 10-12% average stock market returns, which is meaningfully more aggressive than the 3.5-4% range most fee-only planners and academic researchers consider sustainable over a 30-year retirement. On Social Security, his general framing has been to claim it as early as you're eligible if you don't need to rely on it as your main income source, since he considers it supplemental to a paid-off house and a fully funded investment portfolio. His well-known 'four types of mutual funds' framework from Total Money Makeover recommends splitting equity investments across growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, and international funds. None of this is really built around the specific mechanics of a multi-year Roth conversion program for someone sitting on $2 million or more in a traditional IRA facing RMDs at 73 or 75, which is a materially different problem than the debt-payoff and first-time-investor audience his framework is designed for.

Fee-only means an advisor's entire compensation comes from the fees clients pay directly, a flat fee, an hourly rate, or a percentage of assets, and from nothing else. No commissions, no revenue share from mutual fund companies or insurance carriers, no referral fees. Fee-based means an advisor charges client fees plus something else: commissions on annuities, insurance products, or certain investments, on top of, or instead of, the advisory fee, depending on which part of the relationship you're in. That single word, only versus based, is the difference between someone whose interests are structurally aligned with yours on every recommendation and someone who can be a fiduciary while managing your portfolio in one conversation and a commissioned salesperson recommending an annuity or a loaded fund in the next, often without a clear line between the two. The cost isn't always visible on a fee statement. A fee-based advisor recommending a commission-paying annuity or permanent life insurance policy can generate five to ten percent of the premium as an upfront payment to them, money that comes out of your investment before it starts growing, regardless of whether the product was the best fit or simply the one that paid the most. Fee-only advisors, including Singh PWM, are structurally unable to receive that kind of payment, which removes an entire category of conflict from every recommendation, not just the ones a compliance department happens to flag.

Paying off a mortgage before retirement can be the right move, but not because debt is inherently good or bad. The real issue is how the mortgage affects withdrawal pressure, liquidity, and the resilience of your retirement cash flow during market volatility.

For investors with $2 million or more, an advisor is worth it only if the advice extends well beyond portfolio management. At this asset level, broad diversification, low-cost index exposure, and rebalancing are accessible without a traditional advisory relationship. The actual differentiator is decision quality across taxes, withdrawals, Medicare, Social Security, and long-term risk, measurable over decades, not quarters. The fee discussion should move from percentage labels to lifetime dollar impact: a 1% AUM fee on $2M is roughly $20,000 a year, which compounds to hundreds of thousands across a 25-year retirement. If your advisor is primarily managing the portfolio, value can be thin at this level. If the advice is integrated and multi-year (coordinating tax, income, and estate decisions as a single plan), value can be substantial.

Yes for taxes and accounting, and it depends on the CPA for planning. A CPA is licensed by a state board of accountancy, has met education, exam and experience requirements, and can prepare returns, represent you before the IRS and advise on tax. That is real value for a retiree with pensions, rental income, a business sale or several account types. But the license covers a broad field, and many CPAs spend their careers on business clients, audits or bookkeeping, not on retirement income. A CPA is usually not the person who builds your investment and income plan unless they hold additional training such as the Personal Financial Specialist (PFS) or CFP® credential, work with many retirees, and are properly registered to give investment advice. For many households the simple, correct setup is a CPA who files the return plus a planner who builds the multi-year projection and hands the CPA a written action list. If your CPA already runs forward-looking projections for you, a CPA alone can be enough. Credentials are a starting point, not a guarantee of competence, so verify them with the official lookups. If your current professional does these things well, staying put is a fine outcome.

Neither the CFP Board nor the IRS publishes a cross-tabulated count of professionals who hold both the CFP® and Enrolled Agent credentials, so no precise percentage exists. What can be said with confidence: there are roughly 109,000 active CFP® professionals nationally (CFP Board, year-end 2025) and somewhere between about 68,000 and 87,000 Enrolled Agents depending on whether you use the IRS's active list or NAEA's practicing-EA estimate. These two populations are drawn from almost entirely different professional pipelines, wealth management and insurance for CFPs, tax preparation for EAs, require separate multi-year credentialing processes, and serve different default client needs, which is why the overlap is structurally small even though it's not officially measured.