The Monthly Retainer Model in Financial Planning

Conduct Coffee Meetings (AKA: Modern Market Research)

This becomes a question of “how do you actually build a viable, sustainable, profitable fee-for-service model to serve younger clients that sees them as profitable today and not just in the distant future?” The answer? Implementing the monthly retainer model, or said another way, doing financial planning for a monthly subscription fee. Next generat

Younger clients are dealing with issues like student loans, cash flow, debt management, buying houses, having babies, getting married, getting divorced, starting businesses – all things that Baby Boomer and retired clients generally don’t deal with (and certainly not all at once). Don’t work with next generation clients just because you think they’

I also recommend figuring out a niche as early in your process as you can and try very hard to stick to it, even if that means your growth is a bit slower in the beginning. In order to help from a cash flow perspective, offer some sort of quick start program but reserve your monthly retainer clients for your niche.

If you want to really connect with next-generation clients, or you want to build a pipeline of future affluent clients, that means creating an efficient, profitable way to serve less affluent clients now and grow with them.

In the U.S. alone, a recent Pew survey revealed that almost half of all Americans don’t feel financially secure.1 Among that group, over 83% worry about a lack of savings and almost 70% worry about not having enough money to retire. The numbers make it clear — people are scared.

Charging a monthly fee and tacking on investment management as a separate AUM charge allows you to clearly distinguish what you offer. You create two separate fees for two separate services. And to an earlier point, this also allows you to provide investment management without asset minimums, since it allows you to be profitable on the financial pl

Before you conclude your first meeting, be sure to ask if it’s okay to follow up in the future. You can say something like, “I’m going to interview several other people too, and I’d like to come back to you in a month or so to share what I’ve come up with. It would be great if you could tell me if it seems reasonable or not. Would it be okay to fol

When I changed the description to an annual retainer that I bill monthly, that seemed to resonate much better.