Canonical definitions for the key terms, standards, and concepts behind the Advice-Only™ Methodology.
40-Point Framework™ by establishing a shared, transparent language for clients, advisors, and educators. This advice-only glossary provides a clear reference for understanding the structural foundations of the Advice-Only model and how each term fits within the broader financial-planning discipline. For additional context on professional fiduciary and education standards, see the
CFP Board Code of Ethics & Standards of Conduct
Structural Terms
Structural Separation
Definition: The formal division between financial planning and all forms of implementation,
including product sales, portfolio management, and referral compensation.
Purpose: Minimizes structural conflicts by ensuring planning recommendations cannot be
influenced by downstream financial incentives.
Scope: Any situation where the advisor implements or profits from implementation within
the same relationship violates structural separation.
Fee Structure Firewall™
Definition: A structural rule prohibiting product commissions, AUM fees, referral kickbacks,
or any compensation tied to implementation.
Purpose: Ensures the advisor’s only financial incentive is to deliver accurate, objective planning.
Scope: Applies regardless of disclosure; incentive neutrality is required, not merely disclosed conflicts.
Zero-Influence Environment™
Definition: A planning context where no external financial incentives can influence recommendations.
Purpose: Ensures the planning process remains free from product, portfolio, or referral considerations.
Scope: Includes both direct and indirect incentives, such as business-model pressures and future AUM pipelines.
Two Masters Problem
Definition: A structural conflict where one professional serves two competing interests—typically
clients and revenue derived from product or asset management.
Purpose: Explains why impartiality is structurally compromised when the advisor profits from specific client decisions.
Scope: Extends beyond commissions to include AUM-based advice and any incentive tied to implementation.
Conflicted Pipeline
Definition: Any business arrangement where planning recommendations create future implementation
or asset-gathering opportunities.
Purpose: Identifies subtle forms of influence that distort objectivity.
Scope: Includes soft-dollar arrangements, brokerage relationships, and upstream pipeline incentives.
Implementation Independence
Definition: The requirement that the planning process operate independently of any implementation
channel or revenue opportunity.
Purpose: Prevents planning from becoming a sales-preparation process.
Scope: Applies where the advisor’s financial interests are directly tied to a specific implementation channel,
including separate entities under common ownership.
Planning-Only Engagement
Definition: An engagement where the advisor provides analysis and recommendations but does not
execute trades, sell products, or manage assets.
Purpose: Creates a clean structural boundary that protects fiduciary objectivity.
Scope: The engagement ends where implementation begins; coordination may occur, but not for any
implementation-based compensation.
Structural Conflicts
Definition: Conflicts created by a business model’s incentive structure, not by the advisor’s ethics.
Purpose: Shifts attention from personal intentions to system design.
Scope: Includes any compensation structure that rewards certain recommendations over others.
Our Truths
Definition: The foundational doctrine of the Advice-Only™ Methodology, outlining the non-negotiable standards
that govern the client relationship, including fee transparency, structural separation, minimum engagement components,
and documentation practices.
Purpose: Defines the ethical and procedural commitments that anchor the Advice-Only™ framework.
Scope: Applies across all planning engagements, advisor conduct, and educational outputs.
Singular Service Model
Definition: A structural requirement that the planning engagement remain exclusively focused on analysis,
education, and recommendations, with implementation fully excluded from the core service.
Purpose: Ensures that clients receive advice—not sales preparation—throughout the planning process.
Scope: Prohibits implementation discussions until after the plan is delivered and only at the client’s request.
Advice-Only Methodology & Process Terms
Advice-Only™ Methodology
Definition: A structured, standards-based model of financial planning built on structurally
deconflicted processes and repeatable diagnostic checkpoints.
Purpose: Establishes Advice-Only™ as a discipline, not merely a fee description.
Scope: Anchored in the 40-Point Framework™ and Advice-Only™ Standards of Practice.
40-Point Framework™
Definition: A diagnostic planning system composed of approximately 40 checkpoints across
nine structured modules.
Purpose: Ensures consistent, thorough planning regardless of advisor or scenario.
Scope: Checkpoints may expand or contract slightly with client complexity.
Framework Fidelity
Definition: The requirement that all planning recommendations be supported by specific
checkpoints within the Framework.
Purpose: Prevents arbitrary or advisor-biased recommendations.
Scope: A plan that omits core checkpoints lacks fidelity.
Process Integrity
Definition: The consistency and transparency of the planning workflow from intake through delivery.
Purpose: Ensures reproducible quality and clear reasoning.
Scope: Violations include undocumented assumptions or incomplete steps.
Documentation Integrity
Definition: Clear, consistent documentation of all assumptions, calculations, and recommendations.
Purpose: Supports transparency and auditability.
Scope: Applies to planning memos, tax projections, modeling outputs, and scenario comparisons.
Planning Memo
Definition: The core written deliverable summarizing strategy, tradeoffs, assumptions, and next steps.
Purpose: Communicates the plan in a structured, client-readable format tied to the 40-Point Framework™.
Scope: Must reflect Framework checkpoints and Standards compliance.
Present Position
Definition: The factual, math-based assessment of a client’s current financial reality following
the Paid Consultation and preceding scenario modeling.
Purpose: Establishes an objective baseline before evaluating strategies or alternatives.
Scope: Includes cash flow, balance sheet, tax exposure, benefits, and household risk factors.
No Holds Barred Planning
Definition: A professional standard applied during the Paid Consultation in which the advisor
provides specific, fiduciary guidance rather than withholding recommendations for future sales.
Purpose: Eliminates sales gating and ensures clients receive meaningful value from the first interaction.
Scope: All advice must remain structurally independent from any implementation channel.
Lifestyle Control™
Definition: A planning technique that evaluates lifestyle preferences and spending behaviors as
co-equal inputs to mathematical modeling.
Purpose: Aligns financial strategy with personal values by integrating subjective lifestyle factors
into objective planning frameworks.
Scope: Applied during needs-and-wants profiling, savings planning, and retirement modeling.
Solicitor Meeting
Definition: A meeting conducted strictly outside the core Advice-Only™ planning engagement in which
implementation options or referrals may be discussed at the client’s independent request.
Purpose: Preserves structural separation by ensuring planning is never influenced by future implementation opportunities.
Scope: May occur only after the plan is delivered; no implementation discussions are permitted during the Advice-Only™ planning module.
Assumption Transparency
Definition: Explicit disclosure of inputs used in projections and recommendations.
Purpose: Ensures clients understand the logic behind each planning choice.
Scope: Includes returns, inflation, spending, tax brackets, and timing assumptions.
Scenario Integrity
Definition: The requirement that scenario comparisons use consistent assumptions across all options.
Purpose: Prevents misleading or biased presentations.
Scope: Violations occur when assumptions differ in ways that favor a particular outcome.
Tax & Retirement Planning Terms
Tax Valley™
Definition: A period of unusually low taxable income before required minimum distributions
or full Social Security benefits, enabling strategic tax planning.
Purpose: Identifies ideal windows for Roth conversions and bracket management.
Scope: Not all clients have a meaningful Tax Valley; it depends on income timing.
Bracket Management
Definition: Multi-year coordination of taxable income, conversions, and withdrawals to
minimize lifetime tax burden.
Purpose: Optimizes long-term tax outcomes, not just single-year efficiency.
Scope: Includes federal/state brackets, IRMAA, and capital gains bands.
Income-Layer Compression
Definition: When multiple income sources begin simultaneously, pushing the client into
higher brackets.
Purpose: Highlights the need for sequencing and proactive planning.
Scope: Common at RMD age, Social Security onset, or pension activation.
Withdrawal Hierarchy
Definition: The optimal sequence for drawing assets to balance taxes, risk, and longevity.
Purpose: Reduces tax drag and extends portfolio longevity.
Scope: Must align with the Retirement Funding Map module.
RMD Drag
Definition: The increasing tax burden created by rising pre-tax balances and required minimum distributions.
Purpose: Supports early Roth strategies and Tax Valley™ opportunities.
Scope: Varies with growth rates, age, and pre-tax concentration.
Longevity Stress-Testing
Definition: Modeling of cash-flow sustainability under extended lifespan and poor market sequences.
Purpose: Protects against premature depletion.
Scope: Connected to allocation, withdrawal rules, and income timing.
Client Experience Terms
Doubt-Free Planning™
Definition: A communication standard in which planning conclusions are documented, explained,
and stress-tested so that avoidable ambiguity is minimized.
Purpose: Reduces uncertainty by pairing clear written recommendations with structured education
and open Q&A.
Scope: Focuses on the clarity of information and reasoning; individual client feelings may still vary.
Transparent by Design™
Definition: The principle that every recommendation must be observable, explainable,
and traceable to documented assumptions.
Purpose: Ensures clients can understand and validate the reasoning behind every decision.
Scope: Requires consistent documentation, transparent data, and aligned scenarios.
Total Risk℠ Assessment
Definition: A structured self-profiling method used to evaluate both financial and lifestyle-related
risk factors during the needs-and-wants phase.
Purpose: Reveals client-specific risk drivers that traditional risk tolerance questionnaires may overlook.
Scope: Integrates spending stability, preference alignment, income reliability, and long-term uncertainty.
Privacy by Design
Definition: A structural principle ensuring that client data remains private, minimally collected,
never sold, and always deletable by the user.
Purpose: Protects the planning relationship from becoming a data-extraction pipeline for marketing or lead generation.
Scope: Applies to all advice, assessments, platform tools, and communications.
Confidence Strength
Definition: A dynamic measure of how complete and reliable a client’s financial dataset is based on
their interaction with assessments and inputs.
Purpose: Indicates the confidence level associated with automated or semi-automated planning outputs.
Scope: Used internally for report generation and model precision scoring.
Client Autonomy Alignment
Definition: Designing the plan in a way that maximizes client choice and reduces reliance on the advisor.
Purpose: Encourages implementation independence and avoids advisor-dependency.
Scope: Achieved through clear next steps, neutral implementation options, and reusable planning materials.
Platform & Ecosystem Terms
Advisor-Instructor
Definition: A licensed financial professional who writes educational content or courses for
the Advice-Only™ platform and is available to be hired by the learner for one-to-one planning.
Purpose: Allows clients to work directly with the expert who educated them, fostering trust and consistency
between the learning and planning phases.
Scope: Applies to advisors who meet platform standards for both educational and planning engagements.
Merit-Based Ranking
Definition: The algorithmic system used to display advisors on the platform based on objective metrics
such as course activity, originality, responsiveness, and client engagement, rather than pay-to-play placement.
Purpose: Fosters organic competition and a level playing field for advisors while helping clients discover active,
engaged professionals.
Scope: Ranking inputs and weightings may evolve over time as platform data and standards mature.