How Do Our Fees Work?

Some may call us a ‘disruptor’.
You can decide for yourself.

Traditional wealth management charges a fee for 'assets under management' and does financial planning for free.  More often than not, firms don't actually do “full financial planning”. They do just enough to keep clients satiated and quiet, while they pay their 1%.

For Example: 
Take a client with $5,000,000 to invest. 
The average firm will charge around 1% for investment management (and tell you they do financial planning); that's $50,000 per year for this client. Then, they will invest the client’s money in mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, hedge funds, etc. The typical underlying fee for this is around .8%. So, with this particular example client, you can add another $40,000 per year. This is $90,000 total (can you see how Wall Street gets rich?). 

Again, most often, the client is not likely to get full financial planning and there's a huge conflict of interest here. Why is that? We are glad you asked. Here’s one example: Say, for instance, that this client goes to the adviser and is interested in buying real estate as an investment.  The money will have to come from the portfolio and when it does, the adviser's pay will go down.  This is called a conflict of interest.  The adviser has to juggle losing income to make the right decision for the client. This is what The Sum is NOT. 

Our Simple, Objective and Accountable approach is different.

Our service is a flat-fee based on a net worth calculation. 

For Example:
Reference again, the above example of the client with a $5,000,000 net worth. Based on our net worth calculation, The Sum will charge this client a flat $15,000 per year for Comprehensive Financial Planning, and $1,500 per year for Investment Management. Plus the portfolio is around .07% ($3,500). The Sum fee total in this example is $20,000 versus theirs of $90,000.  If you have been in this situation before, then you know this to be true. The common conflicts of interest found in our industry do not exist at The Sum. 

(*while each client's exact fee depends on their specific needs and desires, this example illustrates how the The Sum would reduce the client's fee by $70,000)

We believe that your wealth is too important to waste unnecessary time and money.

This is our story. 
This is our passion.
REAL financial planning without taking money out of your back pocket.