Amir and I met once per month until he revoked his availability to quarterly only. As soon as it was clear that I would not be scaling up to his asset management services, Amir complained about "losing money" working with me because he felt he was using too many hours servicing me - !
Having worked with CFPs in the past and unexpectedly laid-off a year from my planned retirement, I was thrilled to find Amir. I chose him for his clear and broad skill set, his engaging pitch, and technologic adeptness; and I have not been disappointed in any of these. I deeply needed expert help to understand if it was safe to stop working, how to plan for retirement withdrawals, and to model investment what-ifs going forward that included whether or not to purchase a second property.
Unfortunately, Amir's "Unlimited Hours of Financial Planning," as it turns out in the fine print, have explicit hour limits that are determined by Amir. During onboarding I provided a detailed view of my financial status and existing plan, which happened to have been created and delivered on the same software platform that Amir uses. so there was minimal startup burden and an instant shared language.
I was conscious of constantly being "sold to" (long-term care insurance planning, his tax planning, etc.) but overlooked it. The first true concern was that Amir was surprised that I wanted a written financial plan. Other than that all I would have is a bunch of emails summarizing what we had discussed in our calls. The real problem is that he refused to provide a second version without a 2nd property purchase, stating "If you never got the 2nd home and had a more aggressive asset allocation and only traveled on "good" market return years, the 2 scenarios would be pretty similar."
So, NOT unlimited hours, hours as determined by Amir as provider. This is not what I consider to be in my best fiduciary interest at all.
Relationship to Financial Advisor: Former Client
Compensation: This reviewer received no compensation for this review.
Conflicts of Interest: There are no material conflicts of interest.
Disclosure: Review contains a few materially incorrect items: 1. Text in quotations are not quotations of the advisor or even paraphrased words said by the advisor, they appear to be added by the client arbitrarily for emphasis 2. Client did not receive any invoices at the hourly rate (currently $400/hour) for any financial planning, meeting, or preparatory services rendered. All hours were included at the agreed upon rate paid by the client per month. A comprehensive financial planning email or solution rendered via email can typically take 2-4 hours. This was not billed to the client for any email exchanges. 3. Advisor is fee-only, and does not gain any additional revenue, nor is he compensated from any outside sources (ie. commissions, referral fees, kick-backs, etc.). Therefore the Long Term Care insurance discussion was not a sales-pitch, but due diligence on the part of the advisor to provide comprehensive financial advice. 4. Meeting availability is pursuant to agreed upon terms by client and advisor. Advisor typically offers quarterly review meetings. 5. All services agreed upon via the Client Engagement Agreement were provided to the client. 6. A client's prior advisor utilizing similar or the same software does not change any of the onboarding time required for new clients. Advisor builds all new financial plans solely using client provided information 7. Client had access to the financial planning software and dashboard, and also received multiple PDF reports detailing the analysis and results therein. 8. All permutations and what-if scenarios requested by the client were completed and mathematically analyzed to backup the advice rendered to the client during meetings or via email.