When seeking financial advice, you’ll encounter a confusing mix of terms—all promising “unbiased” help. Advice-Only vs Fee-Only vs Flat-Fee vs Fee-For-Service all sound like they should be conflict-free. But what’s the real difference? Here’s the uncomfortable truth: industry definitions leave room for hidden conflicts that shape your plan before you realize it.
Even when no commissions are charged, the CFP Board defines compensation broadly to include sales-related compensation and indirect benefits—like referral fees, awards, or reimbursements—that can subtly influence recommendations.
Many of these models, while a positive step away from commissions during planning, still share a fundamental flaw: they mix financial advice with product sales or asset management during the planning process. In my opinion, it’s not necessarily the commissions themselves that are the issue, but instead that they are a component of the actual planning process. In my experience, the same goes for any form of compensation—monetary or non-monetary—other than billed invoices. Other forms of compensation create a structural conflict of interest, where an advisor’s earnings may still influence the recommendations they make.
The Motorcycle vs. The Modified Car
Imagine shopping for a motorcycle—engineered from the ground up for speed, agility, and independence. This is the Advice Only™ financial planning methodology. Every component is engineered for one purpose: delivering pure, objective advice.
Now, imagine a salesperson shows you what looks like a motorcycle—but it’s actually a four-wheeled car with two wheels removed. That’s the problem with many fee-only and flat-fee models. While they’ve stripped away the most obvious conflicts (commissions), they’ve kept the underlying chassis of a financial sales-driven business. The weight balance, steering, and braking are still designed for selling advisor-implemented services and managing assets as part of the planning process.
Clients think they’re getting a motorcycle—but they’re actually getting a modified car. The most visible conflicts may be gone, but the chassis still ties advice to implementation in ways that can subtly tilt incentives.
The “Co-Mingled Meeting” Problem (Fee-Only, Flat-Fee, Fee-For-Service)
The issue isn’t always intentional deception; it’s a structural flaw in models that mix advice with implementation.
Consider the following scenario: a flat-fee advisor or fee-only financial planner also offers asset management services. They deliver your plan and, in the same meeting, pitch asset management for an extra fee. Presenting advice and implementation options side by side can unintentionally blur the line between objective planning and sales.
Under CFP Board standards, a fiduciary must fully disclose material conflicts of interest, obtain the client’s informed consent, and adopt practices reasonably designed to manage those conflicts—even within the same meeting. The CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct explicitly outlines this Duty of Loyalty, which allows disclosure and management as an alternative to avoiding conflicts entirely.
Similarly, NAPFA requires its members to provide full disclosure of their compensation methods and any potential conflicts to clients. Their Fiduciary Oath and Code of Ethics reinforce that fee-only advisors must act in the client’s best interest. While they prohibit commissions and referral fees, NAPFA recognizes that ethical, client-focused advice can still be deliverable alongside implementation—so long as conflicts are properly disclosed and managed.
The Advice Only™ methodology goes further—structurally separating these steps. A ‘co-mingled’ meeting violates the methodology by blending advice and sales. This structural safeguard is in place to prevent subconscious bias from influencing recommendations.
Case Study: A retiree couple’s Advice Only™ plan recommends a Roth conversion ladder and portfolio simplification. After the plan delivers—and only after a deliberate cooling-off period—the clients independently decide to hire their original advisor to carry out the recommendations under a separate engagement. The structural separation means the advice itself is not shaped by expectations of implementation, while still allowing the clients the continuity and convenience they prefer.
Fee-Only Vs Advice-Only™: The Crucial Difference
How Advice-Only™ Protects the Client
In other models, you have to trust the advisor’s intentions. With the Advice Only™ methodology, you can trust the structure itself.
Key protections include:
- Structural Separation: Advice and implementation stay separate. No advisor can deliver your plan and sell you services in the same engagement.
- Process Over Pricing: The methodology is a standardized workflow—every client gets the same high-quality experience, regardless of assets or income.
- System-Based Trust: The process is a standard that is publicly available and transparent, reducing reliance on individual advisor discretion.
- Structural Fiduciary: The design is built to avoid conflicts in the first place, removing any dependence on good intentions alone.
Comparing Advice-Only, Fee-Only, Flat-Fee
| Traditional Fee-Only | Flat-Fee with Asset Mgmt | Advice-Only™ | |
| Paid by commissions? | No | No | No |
| Equal access? | Often limited by asset minimums | Typically asset-based | Yes |
| Manages assets? | Yes | Usually | No |
| Fee tied to portfolio size? | Yes | No | No |
| Advice influenced by keeping assets? | Potentially | Potentially | No |
| Who handles implementation? | Advisor | Advisor | You / 3rd parties |
| Permits Solicitor referrals? | Prohibited (but loopholes exist) | Not formally prohibited | Strictly prohibited, by design |
| Less conflicted by design? | Varies by advisor | Varies by advisor | Yes |
The Referral Loophole Problem
Fee-Only prohibits referral fees in theory, but in practice, non-monetary reciprocity (e.g., “I’ll send clients to you if you send some back”) creates a blind spot that even well-meaning advisors may not recognize. Because these favors aren’t monetary, they’re nearly impossible to track or enforce.
Advice-Only™ eliminates this gray zone by prohibiting all referral incentives—monetary or not—ensuring advice remains independent of cross-referral influence. We reinforce this through a Truth in Advertising standard: the way we describe our methodology must match the way we deliver it. In other words, our language is specific, with no wiggle room for interpretation. If we fail to abide by how we present and solicit the Advice-Only™ process, we are accountable to the very standard we promote.
Being Pragmatic with Structural Separation
The Advice-Only™ methodology ensures your financial plan is fully developed before any implementation decisions are made, structurally separating advice from sales. Once your plan is delivered, you remain in full control. Because it’s your money, you can work with any qualified professional—including the same advisor if you choose—but only at your independent request and outside the Advice-Only™ process.
This approach is pragmatic and forward-looking. The vast majority of advisors are good people who want to help their clients. But the profession has struggled with structures that unintentionally pull advisors away from objectivity. Rather than repeat the mistakes of Fee-Only—which too often created new divides and an “us vs. them” culture—the Advice-Only™ methodology offers a way forward that includes advisors of all backgrounds.
Instead of excluding, it filters advice through a standardized process, so objectivity isn’t left to personal discretion or marketing labels. The structure itself restores trust, levels the field, and gives consumers confidence that fiduciary advice shapes their plan—not sales incentives.
Learn more by reviewing our FAQs.
Media Amplification of Conflicted Models
Financial media often gives disproportionate visibility to firms and models that align with its own business interests—such as asset-based or network-driven practices. This isn’t always intentional, but it reinforces consumer confusion by presenting conflicted models as if they were the industry’s gold standard.
In practice, some outlets go further by offering their domain authority to preferred firms. This artificially boosts competitors’ search rankings and acts as an implicit endorsement. Whether offered free, at cost, or as part of exclusive arrangements, such promotion functions as a form of non-monetary compensation—raising questions about whether it introduces conflicts of its own.
This selective amplification inevitably leaves other firms overlooked—not because their methodology lacks rigor, but because they don’t align with media-driven business interests.
The Advice-Only™ methodology stands apart because it doesn’t rely on sales-driven business models or media favoritism to justify its legitimacy. Its strength comes from structure: a transparent, standardized process that holds up regardless of industry trends, endorsements, or marketing spin.
The Battle for Definitions
We’ve seen this before with “fee-only,” which in the marketplace is sometimes stretched or used inconsistently, blurring distinctions for consumers—even though groups like NAPFA and the CFP Board maintain clear definitions. Now, the same thing is happening with “advice-only”.
In today’s marketplace, labels like Advice-Only vs Fee-Only vs Flat-Fee vs Fee-For-Service are inconsistent. Broad definitions—such as allowing asset-based fees or simultaneous sales—blur the lines, turning true motorcycles back into modified cars.
The Advice-Only™ standard exists to stop this dilution. Precise definitions and built-in safeguards matter—without them, consumers can’t reliably identify truly objective advice.
The Bottom Line: Choose a Motorcycle, Not a Modified Car
Fee structures don’t guarantee objectivity—a defined process does. The Advice-Only™ methodology delivers that process, reducing the risk that advice shaping incentives or expectations of future compensation, and giving consumers advice they can trust.
When you’re making financial decisions that will shape your life for decades, choose advice built independently from the start.
Find an advisor who uses the Advice-Only™ methodology to experience truly conflict-free planning. The methodology is detailed in Advice Only: A Retirement Planning Methodology & Handbook and is available to any licensed advisor committed to following the complete process.
Editor’s note: This blog offers informal investment and financial planning advice. We know nothing about your unique financial situation. The buying and selling of any financial product or security should only be a consideration with context. If appropriate, seek the counsel of experienced, ideally objective, financial, tax, retirement planning consultant or estate planning professionals. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
