What Is Financial Planning?
We’re often asked what financial planning is, so we’d like to make our definition clear: to us, financial planning is the practice of taking multiple areas of your financial life, analyzing them, and coordinating them with a goal of creating more advantageous outcomes. It’s comprehensive financial planning in the truest sense: retirement, taxes, investments, estate, benefits, and insurance, examined together instead of in isolation.
What Is Financial Planning?
We’re often asked what financial planning is, so we’d like to make our definition clear: to us, financial planning is the practice of taking multiple areas of your financial life, analyzing them, and coordinating them with a goal of creating more advantageous outcomes. It’s comprehensive financial planning in the truest sense: retirement, taxes, investments, estate, benefits, and insurance, examined together instead of in isolation.
Comprehensive and Emotionally Intelligent
Hamewith Wealth was built around providing financial planning and wealth management guidance across nearly every part of your financial life. But where we set ourselves apart is in our curiosity about your relationship with money and how it impacts you on a daily basis.
From our very first meeting, we work to understand the financial reality in which you live, where you hope to be, and what barriers might stand in the way of getting there. Sometimes those barriers are technical. Sometimes they’re behavioral. Sometimes they’re barriers you’ve imposed on yourself without realizing it.
There are usually two answers to a financial question: the financially optimal answer, and the answer that works for you. We see our role as attempting to bring those two as close together as possible by creating a financial plan of action customized just for you.
Getting You Up to Speed, Quickly
We understand that you’re likely experiencing a pain point that needs attention sooner rather than later. That’s why our process was designed to get us familiar with your financial situation quickly and start making meaningful financial planning recommendations in a short period of time. You won’t spend months in “onboarding”, you’ll spend that time making progress.
Investment Management That Follows the Plan
As part of our financial planning process, we offer to manage our clients’ investments following a disciplined, evidence-based approach built on research instead of which fund company’s wholesaler takes us to play golf.
Your portfolio is built to serve your plan, not the other way around. We manage investments through Charles Schwab using tax-conscious strategies. And if your investments are in an employer-sponsored plan like a 401(k), 403(b), 457, or TSP, we might be able to manage those investments for you without the need to roll over the assets from where they are.
The result is a plan-driven investment strategy that allows you to focus on what actually matters.
Cost Based on Circumstance
We charge our clients their financial planning fee in two fee-only formats: by managing their investments and charging a fee, or by charging a flat fee for advice. Both methods have minimum fees based on household characteristics. Whether you’re looking for a fee-only investment advisor or a flat-fee financial planner, both options provide the same depth of planning.
Fee-for-Planning
Wealth Management
Financial Planning Only
Financial Planning + Investment Management
For people who want a comprehensive financial plan, ongoing guidance, and a professional in their corner, but prefer to manage their own investments.
This isn’t a one-time plan that lives in a drawer. You get the same structured relationship, the same access, and the same depth of analysis as our Wealth Management clients.
Everything in Fee-for-Planning, plus we manage your investment portfolio. This is the full relationship: planning, implementation, and ongoing management working together under one roof.
Investment decisions are made in the context of your full financial plan, your tax picture, and your goals.
What’s Included:
• Annual financial planning process
• 1-4 meetings per year
• Check-ins and timely updates
• Tax planning and Roth conversion analysis
• Retirement projections
• Estate plan coordination
• Employee benefits and insurance review
• Annual Impact Report
• Your Path Forward document to stay on track
What’s Included:
• Everything in Fee-for-Planning
• Ongoing investment management
• Tax-conscious portfolio construction
• Rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting
• Asset location strategy (if applicable)
• Held-away account management via Pontera
Fee-for-Planning
Financial Planning Only
For people who want a comprehensive financial plan, ongoing guidance, and a professional in their corner, but prefer to manage their own investments.
This isn’t a one-time plan that lives in a drawer. You get the same structured relationship, the same access, and the same depth of analysis as our Wealth Management clients.
What’s Included:
• Annual financial planning process
• 1-4 meetings per year
• Check-ins and timely updates
• Tax planning and Roth conversion analysis
• Retirement projections
• Estate plan coordination
• Employee benefits and insurance review
• Annual Impact Report
• Your Path Forward document to stay on track
Wealth Management
Financial Planning + Investment Management
Everything in Fee-for-Planning, plus we manage your investment portfolio. This is the full relationship: planning, implementation, and ongoing management working together under one roof.
Investment decisions are made in the context of your full financial plan, your tax picture, and your goals.
What’s Included:
• Everything in Fee-for-Planning
• Ongoing investment management
• Tax-conscious portfolio construction
• Rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting
• Asset location strategy (if applicable)
• Held-away account management via Pontera
What It Costs
We believe ardently in fee transparency. The accompanying .pdf shows exactly how we charge our clients for our financial planning and wealth management services.
Both Fee-for-Planning and Wealth Management services share the same minimum annual fee structure based on household characteristics. You can find the fee schedule and minimums in this document.
What you won’t find: commissions, product sales, 12b-1 fees, or hidden charges of any kind. We earn money one way: directly from you, for the work we do. That’s what fee-only means, and it’s the only way we operate.
What a Year Looks Like
We don’t disappear after the plan is built. The relationship has a rhythm designed to keep your financial life on track without overwhelming your calendar.
If you’re curious as to what our cadence looks like, be sure to check out this document. Please note that not all services are applicable to all households, and a different service calendar may apply to your household. If this is the case, we will have that discussion with you to make sure you are fully informed.
Frequently Asked Questions
A fiduciary is legally required to act in your interest, not their own. Unlike many financial professionals who are only held to a “suitability” standard, we are legally obligated to recommend what is genuinely in your interest at all times.
Not necessarily. Fee-for-Planning clients can continue to manage their accounts on their own where they are. Generally, our Wealth Management clients custody their accounts at Charles Schwab. However, if you have retirement accounts with a current or former employer that can’t be moved, we may be able to manage those accounts where they are through our software partner, Pontera.
Both include the same comprehensive financial planning, the same access, and the same ongoing relationship. The difference is whether we manage your investment portfolio (Wealth Management) or you manage it yourself without our investment guidance (Fee-for-Planning).
Our minimum annual fee starts at $3,000. For Wealth Management clients, investment management fees are based on a tiered percentage of assets under management, starting at 1.00% on the first $1,000,000. Full pricing details are listed on this page.
Yes. While we are based in Rochester, NY, we work with clients across the state and can serve clients in other states depending on registration. We are a fully virtual firm, and all of our meetings can be conducted virtually.
We work with professionals and retirees whose financial lives have grown more complex than any single decision can solve. If you’re managing multiple accounts, navigating tax questions, and starting to feel like the DIY approach has a ceiling, we should talk.
