Imagine hiring a real estate agent to help you sell your home.
They tell you their fee is 1% of the sale price. Seems fair — until you realize something:
Whether they’re selling a $500,000 condo or a $5 million mansion, the work involved isn’t 10x more for the larger home. The paperwork’s the same. The open houses are the same. The market research is the same.
Yet, they make 10x more just because your home is worth more.
Would you accept that?
Now ask yourself: why are you okay with it when it comes to your financial advisor?
AUM stands for Assets Under Management
It’s the percentage-based fee model most financial advisors use. Typically, it’s 1% of your investment portfolio annually. On paper, that doesn’t sound like much. But let’s break it down.
Say you’re a successful physician with $2 million invested.
At 1%, you’re paying $20,000 every year — and growing.
You’re not paying for time. You’re not paying for advice. You’re paying a tax on your success.
If your investments go up, your fee goes up. If you save more money, your fee goes up. But the actual work your advisor is doing doesn’t.
Many physicians assume they’re paying for financial advice.
In reality, they’re often paying a fee based primarily on the size of their portfolio.
For successful professionals who have spent years building wealth, this can create a disconnect between the cost of advice and the value being delivered.
The question is worth asking:
Are you paying for expertise, planning, and strategy—or simply for asset management?
At RFL Wealth, we believe advice should be priced based on the value it provides, not the size of a client’s investment account.
That’s why we’ve eliminated AUM fees and adopted a flat annual fee structure centered around a comprehensive Financial Life Plan.
That plan is designed to help physicians:
Our focus extends beyond investment management. We help clients make informed decisions across all areas of their financial lives.
A Financial Life Plan should provide more than investment oversight.
It should help answer questions such as:
These are the decisions that often have the greatest long-term impact on a physician’s financial future.
Investments play an important role in any financial plan, but they are only one piece of a much larger picture.
For physicians, meaningful financial progress often comes from coordinated planning across taxes, retirement, corporate structures, cash flow, estate planning, and wealth transfer strategies.
A well-designed Financial Life Plan brings those elements together, providing clarity about where you are today and confidence about where you’re headed.
As your career evolves and your wealth grows, your financial needs become more complex. That’s why advice should focus on outcomes, not simply account balances.
At RFL Wealth, we believe physicians deserve a financial strategy built around their goals, their family, and their vision for the future.
A Financial Life Plan helps connect your wealth to what matters most—greater flexibility, more confidence, and the ability to build a Rich Fulfilling Life on your own terms.
AUM stands for Assets Under Management. It refers to a fee structure where an advisor charges a percentage of the investments they manage on your behalf.
Under an AUM model, fees are typically calculated as a percentage of your investment assets. As your portfolio value rises, the amount paid in fees generally rises as well.
A flat-fee model charges a fixed amount for financial planning services rather than a percentage of investment assets.
A Financial Life Plan should address areas such as tax planning, retirement planning, investment strategy, corporate planning, cash flow management, and legacy planning.