7 years ago, an FZ Member asked “So what do you think about Betterment?”
“I LOVE the robo-advisors! They give average investors the ability to invest correctly, but at a fraction of the cost of traditional financial advisors AND with a small minimum account size, it’s accessible to almost everyone.”
“If it’s so great, how come you’re not set up that way?”
At that point, Financial Zen was still charging a 1.5% AUM fee.
I fumbled over some sort of answer to save face, but the real answer was simply inertia.
That’s just how 98% of financial advisors charge their fees and how my fees were structured at my old brokerage firm.
But that conversation sparked a chain of events that led to our current structure that separates investment management from the relationship stuff (the planning/coaching/accountability).
Now I’m proud to say we DO charge 0.25% to manage money and the Financial Zen Investment Management System operates exactly like any robo-advisor with automated rebalancing, tax loss harvesting and now even direct indexing.
As our Members continue to accumulate their life savings, our fees become smaller and smaller compared to the other 98% of traditional financial advisors.
Just check out how much our Members save below.
Basically if you are paying a traditional advisor, a traditional fee to manage any more than $330,000, you’re paying more than you should.
And while we’re not the cheapest option – nor are we trying to be – we ARE the best bang for the buck for the people who benefit most from our services.
