For this special episode of Friends Talk Money, I’m excited to be joined by my good friends and fellow personal finance experts, Terry Savage and Richard Eisenberg, as we dig into the conversations that matter most when it comes to your money.
We’re switching things up — Terry and Rich are turning the tables and interviewing me! I’ll be sharing how Wealthramp is transforming the way people connect with truly vetted, independent fiduciary financial advisors, and how our approach is nothing like your typical lead generation service. I’ll walk you through the rigorous vetting process behind our nationwide network of fee-only fiduciary advisors and explain how these professionals do far more than just manage investments. From holistic financial planning to retirement strategies, tax guidance, and more, I’ll cover what you should expect — and the smart questions to ask — when meeting a financial advisor for the first time. Whether you’re just starting to consider working with an advisor or searching for a better fit, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Listen Here
Watch Here
Terry Savage (00:00): Hello, I'm Terry Savage and welcome to Friends Talk Money. We're going to do something completely different today, and I'll explain in just a minute. We are always three coequal posts and lots of times we have guests or we talk about topics where one of us has some special expertise, but today we're changing it up a little bit. Our guest is going to be Pam Krueger herself and in person, and I want to do the kind of introduction I would've and explain why you really want to stay tuned for this discussion. Not about financial planning, but about financial planners, about how to find one, about what questions to ask, what they should ask you, what it should cost, and that is Pam's great area of expertise. You know her from her television appearances. She's widely respected in the financial world, but way back, gosh, a long, long time ago, Pam created something called Wealthramp.
Wealthramp.com is the website. When she first told me about this, I rolled my eyes and said, good luck. You go, girl. She said, I am going to match up trusted fee only, not commercials, not selling you stuff, not getting kicked backs, not taking trip to Hawaii fee only fiduciary. And that's a big buzzword in the industry. But these are advisors who will definitely put in writing that they will put your interests ahead of their own fee only fiduciary advisors. It was, I joked about it and it's up on my website, one of the key boxes to connect with Pam. I joked about it as sort of a match.com for people you could trust. And just to explain, starting in 2019, Pam now has more than 230 independent RIA registered investment advisor firms across the country and has made more than 25,000 matches for referrals. Okay, now I know that was a long-winded introduction to someone you all think you know and Richard and I know Pam so very well. But Richard, let me let you chime in on the intro before we start questioning Pam as a guest, you've watched Pam Grow Wealthramp. What else would you add to the intro?
Richard Eisenberg (02:17): Well, the only thing I would add is I love the questionnaire that I actually filled out over the weekend for Wealthramp as though I was going to sign up just to see the experience because she asked some interesting questions that I think more people should be asked before they're choosing a financial advisor. Like, well, what's your outlook for the future? Do you look at things as a glass half full or a glass half empty? And I don't think I've ever talked to an advisor who's ever asked me that question, or how often do you expect to hear back from the advisor? How fast should they be responding? So what I liked about it was it wasn't only about, well, are you a conservative investor? Are you aggressive? Are you risk averse? That's part of it, but that was not all of it. So I applaud this because I feel like the questions that Pam's asking is we're going to help people find the right match, not just somebody who can make the money.
Terry Savage (03:08): What made you start Wealthramp?
Pam Krueger (03:11): I've said this so many times, I actually didn't even want to do this. I only did it because I knew that this is a problem for people. I was hearing from people, they were telling me, Pam, there are lists. You're always telling us, Terry Savage is telling us, rich is telling us everybody's out there who we respect telling us that we need a fiduciary advisor who is a hundred percent fiduciary all the time and commission free means fee only, that they work only for the client. And they said the problem is is that there are lists, there is the napfa, which is an association of these advisors. There are other places you can find long, long lists, but they were telling me it's not helping me because have these advisors beyond just being fee only, have they been vetted? How do I know that they're being monitored?
How do I know which one of those might just give me the flick and say, I am sorry you don't have enough money for me. I don't want to have an awkward conversation with an advisor. I call out of the blue from a list and that advisor says, you don't have $500,000, at least I'm sorry. So Pam, can you help us? This was when I was doing Money Track, when I had the Money Track series and my initial response to it was, I can see that that's a problem. I don't know how I could help. But then I kept hearing that it was a problem persistently, especially as people are getting closer and closer to retirement and the stakes are getting higher and higher and the decisions they're going to be making about their money are becoming more important, so therefore the person they're going to rely on is even more important.
That's a big decision. So I decided, I talked to you early on, I talked to a few people I trust early on and I said, gee, should I do this? And then in 2019, it took me two years to curate this network. These advisors don't work for me. These are independent advisors. I want to keep it that way. I want to know that I have these advisors that are in a network that's stable. I get to know more deeply all the time that I have vetted and brought together with a constellation of different types of expertise, helping different types of people solve different types of financial problems at different ages.
Terry Savage (05:44): Before we go any further, so many questions. I have two big questions. First of all, explain to everybody how Wealthramp works. Richard, you just referred to the website where you let Pam know information, but there are many places where you put this stuff in and 40,000 agents, insurance agents. All you have to do is ask about a mortgage rate or ask about what life insurance would be. We need your name, address and zip code and 400 insurance agents call you. That's not how Wealthramp works. Please explain the process.
Pam Krueger (06:16): It’s really, really important that that is not what we're doing. That's called the lead generation business, if you will, or lead aggregation, and they're a completely different business model, so they share Richard's information. When he came in, I asked Richard about a minute and a half's worth of questions that were designed to get Richard thinking about, well, why do I think I want an advisor? What am I looking for? Do I want a male? Do I want a female? Do they need to be local? Is the glass half empty? Am I optimistic about the stock market? These kinds of things are very helpful. Now, once that's captured, then I have your email. Now a lead generator is going to share that with the advisors and maybe others. It's worth a lot of money. I can tell you this is the one thing I can say that I'm so proud of. I'm a one and only everything's private. So when people come through and Richard's profile comes in, I don't share that. You can see the results. You've got probably three advisor results.
Richard Eisenberg (07:23): I did. I have not gotten any calls yet.
Pam Krueger (07:25): That's right. You won't because they don't know that you are alive. You can see them. It's a one-way mirror, but they cannot see you. That protects you and frankly, how else are you going to go about trying to find an advisor? If someone's pestering? You need to have the ability to take your time and you have to be the one to reach out to say, you know what? There's two advisors here I think I actually want to make a meeting with, and that has to be up to you, the consumer.
Terry Savage (07:54): Wait, wait, Richard, how would you saw stuff explain what you saw when you signed up? So the system, Pam, did you have anything to do with picking the three advisors that Richard saw?
Pam Krueger (08:07): I set it up in the first place so that these questions, these answers that came from Richard that I ask, everybody will then screen out all the advisors out of the 230 who don't fit. And then when Richard sees these three advisors, he'll see a photo, he'll see their SEC records right there and he will see their profile stories and that's where you'll decide when you're reading those profile stories, Richard, that's the point at which you would say this particular advisor? I think I do.
Terry Savage (08:45): Okay. Richard, what did you see? You said, I saw two that might work what
Richard Eisenberg (08:52): You want. As Pam says, what I got were the names and information faces of three potential financial advisors, the only financial advisors who seemed to be a good fit for me based on what I told them about what I'm looking for, what I've got, how I'd like to work with advisors. And then it was going to be up to me to decide if I wanted to follow up with one, two or three of them or none of them. I'm in New Jersey, they happen to be in the New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey area, which I thought was a plus. I didn't feel like I would necessarily have to see somebody in person, but I liked the idea that to know that I could. And so these were the three. Now, I didn't pursue it from here. I was doing this for the test purposes of our podcast, but if I wanted to, I would now be ready to start making some calls myself if I wanted to.
Terry Savage (09:41): Okay. Now Pam, would, Richard, or any of you out there listening to this, you've got the names and addresses and you say, well, these are interesting people. That makes sense. You just expect that the person will then pick up the phone and call Sam and Joe and Mary, the three advisors. How should the person proceed in getting in touch with the advisor?
Pam Krueger (10:02): I'll explain more about how Wealthramp works and then we can get to the questions about what to ask the advisors. So what happens next has to be, I won't do this unless it's going to be up to the consumer to make the call or to make the meeting or to book the Calendly to click the button that says Talk to this advisor. Okay? I don't know Terry and Richard, if you are going to reach out to that advisor or not, I will email you. You're not going to hear it from the advisors. They don't know you exist, but I'm going to email you. Hi Richard, it's Pam Krueger. Thanks for coming by. Do you need any help? I'm here if you need me. I get calls from people all the time, oh, I didn't know what to do next, whatever. Now, X percentage of them may call it 40% are going to pick up the phone, not pick up the phone, but click the button and schedule the meeting right there.
And then when that does happen, I expect that advisor because I am the one who set this up and they're getting a referral, a referred client from me. I expect them to give me a referral fee, but I don't want the referral fee when they meet someone I don't want, when they sign up, I want to get paid. Usually three months goes by and I want to make sure the relationship has settled in. Once it's settled in, I am expecting that the advisors are going to send me a referral referral fee as per our contract. They are not allowed to punish the client and bump up their fee because they have to pay me something. They have to pay me the referral fee as per our contract. But here's the rub. I don't have any legal way to check in to see what's really happening between the client and the advisor at that point offline, it's gone. I can't check their accounts. I have to rely on the honor system and guess what? It works because I'm cashflow positive and they want to pay me and they want to stay on the platform. And frankly, they're all on the same mission that we are on here and that's why they're part of Wealthramp.
Terry Savage (12:09): Wait, you skipped something. Wait, wait. Just lemme just get one more thing in. So now Richard or at any of us who goes on gets two or three names. I know I've talked to you where you said Terry, I talked to Mrs. Jones, she signed up, she came from you and I talked to her. She was torn between two different planners or something like that. You're also talking to people. Some reach out directly to the advisors and go, great, let's meet, or they meet with two of 'em.
Pam Krueger (12:38): Most do, most do, but right after we get finished recording this podcast, I have a meeting with someone who wants to talk to me who's like Richard, who came through and might have a question about something. I literally just got off the phone with someone before we started recording who's in the Chicago area, a business owner. If I told you the name of their store, you would recognize it. And they came through and he had, Tom had a question for me. So I want people to know that they can reach me directly if they need to. Most people don't, but some people do and they want to ask questions and they want to just get a little bit more info.
Richard Eisenberg (13:18): Well, Pam, how do the advisors get on your list to begin with the big list, not the whittled down to three list and how do you get all the information about them?
Pam Krueger (13:29): I'm so happy that you asked that because let's start at the top because there are the questions at the bottom that you would need to be asking an advisor once there are vetted. Now we're talking about the vetting questions. How do you vet an advisor? You start by weeding out. It's all a screening out process because there are approximately 500,000 individuals in the United States that self-identify as financial advisors. However, 90% work four brokerage firms or work for insurance companies. It doesn't make 'em bad people, it just means that they're more sales reps. Back in the old days, do you guys remember the name broker? Broker? The reason they were called brokers is because they are and and have been intermediaries. They work for the brokerage firm and their job is to recommend that firm's products that could work for you, that has nothing to do with advice. So advisors, there's only 10%. So say that are fiduciary and family, so call it 60,000, roughly six zero, 60,000. So now how do you take a list of fiduciary advisors who claim to be fiduciary and fee only? How do you sift that list down? The way you start is you screen out from looking at their what's called their form a DV. It's right on my website for every advisor, you'll see the records right there
Terry Savage (15:06): From the SEC investment advisor registration. They have to say all that.
Pam Krueger (15:11): This is where they, it's not their fluffy website, it's their SEC filings. So they have to describe what are their fees, what is their business, what do they provide, what do they do? When you read that tip to tail and you take a yellow highlighter and you go through, you're looking for things to screen out and to screen in. And Richard, I'll tell you what, it's really quick because when you see that they sell insurance, when you see that you're looking at the fees they charge, it doesn't make sense. So right there, that's the first level of screening. And then from there it requires pulling all the pieces together of what I can see. And then having an interview with the firm, interviewing the founders. I want to know what's your backstory? Who are you? Where did you come from? Why did you start this firm?
I need you to have 10 years experience. I need you to have this firm be established the way it is for at least five years. There are a multitude of questions. I need to understand that you have a client retention rate that is not below 98%. Think about that client retention rate, 98%. I want to know what kind of software you're using to do your retirement income calculations. I want to know why you're using that particular software. I want to understand exactly who your clients are, how you charge your fees, how many clients are you willing to take on before you say I'm at capacity. Please don't send me any more referrals. I need to spend time on the clients I work with now because these are advisors who get paid by their clients to work only and directly for their clients.
Richard Eisenberg (17:03): And if they've had a problem with the SEC or with the state regulator, does that take them out of the system?
Pam Krueger (17:09): Yeah, most of the time, if I'm being honest, yeah, but I've also met some great advisors. I had one in particular that I kept. He had a black mark. What was it? Go look. It was back when he was 21 years old. He was arrested during some sort of fraternity prank. They took down a stop sign or something. Well, they never took that off of his record. I made an exception, a common sense exception. And that's silly. That's
Terry Savage (17:43): Not Sam. Where are they? Are they all, let's talk geography for a second. Not that it matters, as Richard pointed out, he would be comfortable in his town, but he's in the east coast. There's a lot of them. But someone lives in Denver, someone lives in Iowa or Arizona. Do you have advisors all over the country? But what percent of the time do people want to be in close proximity to their advisor?
Pam Krueger (18:09): About 65% want to be. I want someone who I can know that I can see locally or I'm willing, in the case of Saal Baum and for example at Odum where he's in Minneapolis, the firms in Minneapolis, but he gets to Chicago all the time. So even though his firm is located, headquartered in Minneapolis because he's from Chicago and he goes back and forth, I would say that that's someone who you're going to have a reasonable certainty of seeing.
Terry Savage (18:40): But do you have advisors all around the country? They're not just concentrated in New York, Chicago,
Pam Krueger (18:45): They're everywhere. They're everywhere. There are some places where I have not had success and I'm not going to settle. So I just finally solved New Orleans. Oh my gosh, thank goodness. But there are places you guys where for two years people say, well, why don't you have an advisor here in this particular town? And I say, I can't because I have not found an advisor who's outstanding. Well, this fiduciary and fee only I know, but they're not outstanding. They don't need,
Terry Savage (19:17): Okay, oh good. You've led me right to where I want to go. There are some big firms that advertise nationally. Well, they'll go on name. We make money when you make money. We're fiduciaries. We're are any of the firms, you have those monster firms that you see advertised or you figure people could find them on their own?
Pam Krueger (19:41): No, they don't pass my screens because the fees don't align with what they offer. So in those cases, many times I find that the bigger the firm gets, and I'm not talking about a hundred advisors, I'm talking about when they get really, really big, the bigger they get, I get to find one that doesn't become cookie cutter. And then what happens, Terry, is they have a lot of overhead and all of a sudden they're advertising on national tv. So guess what? Their fees tend to be high. They are fee only.
Terry Savage (20:17): Yeah. Who pays for those ads? Those are expensive.
Pam Krueger (20:20): But at the same time, what you're getting tends to get more and more cookie cutter, so you're getting less. So the real question is, and this is what I write about a lot, how do you as a consumer, how do you get your monies worth out of an advisor? Because Vanguard did a study, a gamma study they called it a few years ago that says, Hey everybody, if you work with an advisor, our research shows that you're going to add 3.4% to your portfolio after advisor fees after net of taxes, net of everything. Woo-hoo. Problem with that is that that's an average and it doesn't work for all advisors. So there are some advisors who are going to be able to not only give you back the fee that you just paid them in terms of value you're getting for your money and return, but they're going to give you more than that. Those are the only advisors that I want on Wealthramp because peace of mind is it.
Terry Savage (21:27): Okay, now let me change perspectives. All of you who are listening here, but Pam is our guest. She created Wealthramp, this matching firm for fee only fiduciary advisors. She's carefully selected. Now let's talk about you, all of you who are listening, who are going, okay, I guess this is a place I want to go, but first of all, what do these financial advisors do? I will start with this. Too many people say my financial advisor at X, Y, Z brokerage firm told me and I go, wait, they call themselves financial advisors, but they're either brokers or they're selling stocks or maybe they're even registered as investment advisors, but a financial advisor, what should all the people that you would match people up with, what's the range of things that they can help you with and as opposed to just investments?
Pam Krueger (22:18): So I'd say 80% of the people who are finding Wealthrmp are either five years out from retirement or all the way up through having just retired. 80%. The rest are younger people looking to build wealth or pay off dad and things like that get going or deal with very specific and unique situations. So you've got your mid-career people who are like, wow, life is becoming more complex. I really think we should because I might be married or have a partner and I really want to have our household really take a big picture, look at everything that what that means is that you've got to look at cashflow planning and you've got to say today, tomorrow, let's stress test our worst nightmares and make sure that we are never going to run out of money in retirement at the rate we're saving right now. The way we're investing right now. And if it looks like we are going to run out of money when we're 75, if we stop working at 65, what adjustments can we be making Now that has to align, excuse me, with your tax minimization strategy that has to align with your investment strategy, your Roth strategy, all of these things have to be combined and you can't leave out estate planning and you may have college planning and you may have special needs. You might be the one with special needs. Somebody pointed that out to me the other day.
Richard Eisenberg (23:56): Long-term care planning too.
Pam Krueger (23:58): Long-term care planning, it's it's health. How am I going to pay for unexpected? What if I need memory care? What if my aging parent needs memory care and I have to worry about my aging parent at the same time I'm worrying about?
Terry Savage (24:11): So you can find people for people that will do all of this. This is not about someone who will say, I think you should buy more tech stocks. This is about the big picture. These all of your advisors, your financial planners that you're matching people up with are going, they may not all be estate planning attorneys, but they have people that they will recommend you to if you don't have your own or accountants, although they know all the rules about tax free and taxable and all of that. So the whole idea of this is to get the bigger picture. You can't have, it's my portfolio look right
Pam Krueger (24:47): To you. That's right. You can't have piecemeal financial advice. You can't go to this person and get your tax advice and then someplace totally separate to get your investment advice. We can, but you're going to create a ton of confusion, Richard.
Richard Eisenberg (25:04): Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the questions that once people find an advisor or two or three that they think they might want to talk with the kinds of questions they should ask that advisor to see if it's a good fit and if the advisor might be right for them. So I scribbled on a few things that I would want to ask and I want to see Pam if they seem like good questions to ask or if they're better questions to ask. So a couple of questions I would have is for somebody who's near retirement, I think they might want to ask the advisor, what's your strategy for taking money out of retirement plans? Because advisors tend to be so much about accumulating but not so much about decumulating. So that's one question I would have. Another question I might have is how do you help your clients with the whole process of making financial moves? So not just advice, but I just want to sell something and get the money from this account to that account. Can you help me do that? And the last thing that I was thinking about is I would want to ask the advisor, how do you define success for your clients? So how will we both know that it's working? So lemme stop there, ask you what do you think of those questions and what other ones you might ask?
Pam Krueger (26:15): Okay, so let me start from the standpoint of the, I'm always taking the point of view of the consumer who's talking to an advisor. Just a step before we get to the questions, I want to point out that there is the consumer, the person, the individual, the family who's got a big decision in front of them. That's really all they can think about. They can't think beyond that. They can't even think about retirement right now. It's like they need to know if they're going to sell their family home and they've got one big decision that's looming, or I've got an annuity versus a lump sum and they can't see beyond it. So that person is going to engage with an advisor because they want to have a one-off. They want to have a real situation where they say, I'm going to pay you. I need you to help me collaborate with me, do the deep dive, help me make this decision, solve my problem.
Solve my problem the second person and then maybe I'll work with you in the future, but I can't see that far right now. Right now I got to solve this problem. Second person says, I know that I need some ongoing help with the cashflow planning and the tax planning. It's getting a little above my pay grade, but I don't need you to manage my portfolio. I don't want to marry you on the first date. So I just pay you to do the financial tax planning and all of everything and give me advice on the portfolio. Sure, I want to hear it, but I don't want you to manage it. And the answer is yes. Then there's that person who has a different set of questions and then there's the third person who comes and says, I don't want to do any of the maintenance of this portfolio because I don't trust myself to rebalance every quarter properly. I don't know what tax loss harvesting is and I don't know when to do it and I don't want to miss timing decisions. Please do the planning and the wealth management portfolio management for me. But the questions, no matter who you are, your questions Richard are excellent. Absolutely. What is your strategy for taking money out? What's your approach going to be? You're forcing the advisor to describe for you the process and how you're going to work together. But the two questions that I really like are asking the advisor, and again, kind of forcing the advisor to draw you a picture by asking, Terry, you're the advisor. Can you please describe your typical clients that you work with most? What kinds of problems are you helping them solve and what kinds of aspirations do they have that you're helping them achieve? Draw me a picture of that. So after they hear about you and your situation, just enough of a snapshot asking that question, it pulls out of them, them describing what they do for their clients and whether or not that resonates with you. Richard, does that resonate with
Richard Eisenberg (29:22): You? So you can see if they've got clients that are like me and then I'm not going to be so foreign to them that they won't know what to do with me, right?
Pam Krueger (29:29): Yes. Because in that answer, that advisor will say, many people come to us when they're looking for retirement income strategies to be able to know how to take their money out. So by asking them to describe the kinds of problems they help solve for the kinds of people they work with, it helps you to sort of say, ah, okay, this makes sense. And then the second question follow on to that is, so tell me about your fees.
Terry Savage (29:58): Oh yeah.
Pam Krueger (29:59): How do I pay you? How much typically is it? And those two questions together are going to help you figure out am I going to get what I'm paying for? Am I going to get the value that I'm actually paying for
Terry Savage (30:15): Pam right there. Okay, so everybody listening, I heard them all. I hear you out there saying, okay, well what should it cost? Now people ask me that they post on my blog and stuff like that, what should it cost? Now some, and we've talked about this, some financial advisors, mostly brokers and so forth, charge based on aum, assets under management. But I take it that's not part of this fiduciary thing. You want a fee that's not just a fee based on assets because then if they told you to take a million dollars and go buy treasury bills, it wouldn't be under their management. How could they charge a fee? So how do they calculate the fee? And let's take an example of someone, they're a family, they both work. They've got about, you could have this now, two and a half, $3 million in retirement accounts. They're in their early sixties, they have a home, they're almost finished paying for their kids' college, they have no real credit card debt, they have some money saved outside the retirement plans and they don't know what they don't know. How should it be calculated and what should it cost?
Pam Krueger (31:21): Okay, so in the should department, I'm very light in the should department when it comes to how the fees should because the fiduciary and the fee only model does include assets under management. That is a fee only model. Along with retainer fee or a flat fee or it could be a percentage of your income or it could be a percentage of your net worth or it could be by the hour. So here's how advisors today, most of them, some of them are still, I manage client's portfolios. Remember that third client I mentioned that says I don't want to do anything. Some advisors in this network are going to say that's the only kind of client I work with because they want to work with the client where they have everything, they're doing everything. But many of our advisors are fee model agnostic. They're fee only. They don't get any commissions, they don't get paid by anybody. But how do you pay them? What they want to do is they want to look at the scope of the work, whether it's a one-time engagement, a planning only engagement with just some investment advice or whether it's the third way.
You don't have to do assets under management. They can say, let's look at the scope of what you work, the problems you're trying to solve, what you're trying to accomplish, and then we're going to base it on time and complexity. So even if it's assets under management, the fee is going to be calculated based on how much time and how much complexity, how much time of the team am I going to pull into this On the estate planning side, what about the tax side? Do you have something really complex happening? So when they're looking at the ways they can charge, it can be a retainer, be a flat fee. I can discuss that with you. If I'm the advisor, I can sit down and say, Richard, Terry, you're a married couple and here's the scope of what we want to accomplish. Many of my clients ask me if I will manage their portfolio. You said you don't want that right now, at least maybe down the road. So we can charge you in the following ways. The fee's going to be the same pretty much. I mean the fee is going to be more when it's assets under management because they are managing the portfolio but not that much more because the value is in the financial cashflow planning, tax planning, estate planning.
Terry Savage (33:42): Okay, so alright, look, I gave you a sort of a couple. I think that might be our audience. They're intrigued by this because they know they don't have someone who's looked over their everything. They have their tax guy, they had their guy. Oh yeah, they did wills. Was it a trust, was it a revocable living trust? Was it a will? Well we did that. When was that? Well, the kids were in high school kind of a thing and we were really happy with our 401(k)s. We wouldn't be because the stock market at all to highs. So we just thought we would come to you and see what we might've missed. We'd like to have a first meeting with you. We saw the three advisors, Pam suggested we want to have a first meeting, we'd just like to come in. We don't know what we don't know. That first meeting, is that free? Is that,
Pam Krueger (34:33): Oh God, yes. So you can't possibly know if you're going to be a fit and the advisor frankly wants to make sure you are going to be a good fit because they limit the number of clients they have, so they want to make sure they can really help you. So that right there, it's a two-way street. They want to make sure, you want to make sure that this is a fit. That first meeting is free and guess what? If you want to have a second meeting, it's free. The way that you'll know you're starting to get charged is because you will have a fully transparent conversation that says Richard Terry, if you want to move forward, here's the next step. You would actually sign something and until that happens, you're not getting charged a dime. So you can have, I don't want you necessarily to have four or five hour conversations with advisors, but certainly more than one conversation
Terry Savage (35:26): In person meetings, Pam or over the phone or Zoom for the first meeting.
Pam Krueger (35:30): Depends on the person. Most people by phone or by Zoom, like the gentleman that I talked to, Tom right before this, we started recording, he's in Chicago and he owns a store, a supermarket, and he said, can I have Tom come to the store? And I said, sure. That's his preference. And then Richard, I promise we won't end this without me answering your question about how do you measure success too,
Terry Savage (35:54): But before we get there, we're now on the first meeting. Do the family that I described sixties getting ready, what should we bring to the meeting? What should we come to the meeting with, whether it's in person, how in order do we need to have our ducks to have this first discussion?
Pam Krueger (36:15): Sometimes people will be so ready to go that they have their Schwab information or their Vanguard or their whatever and they'll say, see I have this right here, but really the purpose of that first meeting, you don't have to do that. The first meeting is about understanding who do you work with, how do you work with your clients and let me tell you about myself. Let's see if this is a fit. Tell me about your fees. And then at the end of that meeting or the second meeting, then the advisor will suggest if you would like to continue the conversation and you want me to take a closer look at, for example, you mentioned you've been with Morgan Stanley. If you want, I can look at your holdings and I can even quickly tell you how much you're paying in those funds that you might not realize. So the conversation has to be organic and go from there so you don't have to come armed with all of your stuff, just come ready to express what it is you think you're trying to accomplish and then ask those
Terry Savage (37:22): Questions. I want to push it one more, Richard, just on the amount of money. This is what everybody writes to me and asks and I say it depends. It depends. So you can say it depends, Pam, but that's family pre-retirement, $3 million in retirement funds and kids in college and some other savings and maybe still working both of them over four or $500,000 a year and annual income. That'd be a pretty good client for someone. How much should that family expect to pay all in each year? What should it cost? People just want to know.
Pam Krueger (37:56): So it will equate, it could equate but it won't. At 3 million it won't. People like to use the benchmark 1% that would be $30,000 a year for that family. It's not going to be $30,000 a year unless they've got rental properties and they've got startups and they've got all kinds of craziness. It's going to be probably somewhere between 10,000, could be 15, could be 20 the first year if there is complexity. That's why you have to look at the scope of the work. Then you have to dial it back from there and say, but it's not going to be 1%. But if you come with and you have $300,000 and you have a lot of needs, you're trying to figure it out. Maybe it's not complex, but it's still going to take time, then you're going to pay the 1% $3,000 a year and probably if you're coming from a brokerage firm, you've been paying double that
Terry Savage (38:54): Without, anyway. Okay, Richard, I'm turning it over to you. I'm sorry.
Richard Eisenberg (38:58): Yeah, and I know we have to wrap soon, but I do want to ask Pam a little beyond Wealthramp itself. I feel like there are a lot of people who believe, I think rightly so, that if you're middle income or have moderate wealth, that it's very hard to find a financial advisor who will talk to you. And I'm wondering what you tell people like that and are there financial advisors who charge by the hour or particularly look for people who don't have a whole lot of money but do want some help?
Pam Krueger (39:29): Thank you. The answer is yes. Wealthramp for example. When I say different types of individuals, I'm not talking about people with a million dollars. Do we have clients with 40 million, 50 million? Yes. Do we have clients with 50,000, 25,000, 10,000, nothing in debt? Yes. So how do they afford an advisor? Because we have planners who are specifically, that's their client. We even have accredited coaches. So sometimes someone will come to me and say, I don't think I can afford an advisor, but boy I need help. And I'll say, you know what? I would really want you to talk with, we have financial coaches you can get matched with and instead who are charging very little and they're not going to manage your money or anything, but they are going to help really advise and get you squared away. We also have plenty of advisors who help people with a hundred thousand, 200,000. They should not feel in any way like they're apologizing like, oh, I probably shouldn't have an advisor. Sure you should. Frankly, you're the person I want to help the most because you're the one who with the right, just the right touch can get some confidence that you'll be okay. Even if it means the advisor says, let's do this, let's continue working until you're 70. Here's why. It gives them peace of mind. So there's every asset level has an advisor.
Richard Eisenberg (41:06): Thanks Pam.
Terry Savage (41:07): Success. Don't let us go without defining that. Is success peace of mind? Is it achieving a return on investment? What is it?
Pam Krueger (41:18): It is it's peace of mind. It's peace of mind because sometimes, as you know, the amount of money is not the definition of that someone's happiness. It nothing to do with it. It's really got to be, you need to be able to be calmed down and stop worrying, take the stress out. So that's what this is all about. It's about gaining a peace of mind by reducing the stress about waking up in the middle of the night with the monsters under the bed, the money monsters under the bed. What if so maybe you have an engagement with an advisor that sets the course, maybe they continue on and they help you so you can move and groove and change as life changes. So it's peace of mind. There's absolutely no other reason and I don't care if somebody has $50 million or if they have 50,000, it doesn't matter. They all want the same thing. I don't want to be stressed out about this stuff. I want to have somebody that I can collaborate with that I actually like talking to. That takes the stress off and that's why you guys finding these advisors is not just about the things that you think that it's about. It's about finding the advisors who love their clients and will go out of their way. I have one just on Friday, Andy Lawson in Dallas and he wrote me, Diane and I a note, and he said he has a English accent, so I'm going to use the accent. He says, I have to tell you, I did work with this client and they are signing on, but Pam, I hope you don't mind. I can't charge them anything. They can't really afford my fee, but I want to help them. So I'm putting this one down as pro bono. Every advisor in our network does pro bono work.
Richard Eisenberg (43:13): That's great. Thank you.
Terry Savage (43:14): Yeah, Pam, I think you've put your finger on it. You did when you started Wealthramp.com matching fiduciary fee only advisors with people and besides all their skills and their talents beyond just money management, but all the broad range of financial planning that you might need, I think you put your finger on it, peace of mind and that is priceless. Absolutely priceless. It's why I confidently when people say, yeah, sure, I know a bunch, I know a bunch of the advisors. I thought it was great. A bunch of the advisors I know in Chicago where I'm from are part of your Wealthramp group, but always work through Wealthramp because I know you will match them up to our podcast listeners, we thank you for indulging. I was the one that forced this because I am a big Pam Krueger fan and a big Wealthramp fan and Richard and I both respect Pam so greatly for doing this. It is a great service and I hope all of you will just take the time to go to Wealthramp.com. At least you know that any of the people Pam chooses or the system chooses for you to be matched with are people you can trust and people who are smart and people will help you grow into whatever your financial future is that you want it to be. That is priceless. Thanks everybody for joining us. We'll see you soon on another edition.
