Can you name the number you paid your advisor last year?
Most people paying it cannot. Five questions, two minutes, and you get a personalized projection: your cost this year in dollars, the fees over the next 25 years, and what those fees compound into by the time you need the money.
Consumer education, not investment advice. Paul Powell is not currently a licensed financial advisor.
Roughly how much is in the account your advisor manages?
A round number is fine. The projection scales with it.
What advisory fee do you pay?
The percentage your advisor charges on the account. Not sure? Pick "I don't know" and we will use 1.00% and mark it as an estimate. Question 3 of the twelve gets you the exact number.
What do the funds inside the account cost?
Mutual funds and ETFs charge their own expense ratios on top of the advisory fee. Most people have never been told this number. If you don't know it, that is normal — pick "I don't know" and we will use 0.50% as an estimate.
How many more years will this money be invested?
Until you start drawing it down in earnest. This is the compounding window.
Where should we send your written projection?
Your numbers and your five-page PDF appear right here the moment you submit. The email is so you can find the document again when you need it for the conversation.
Here is your number.
Five pages: the full breakdown and the two checks to run on your advisor this week. The same link is in your inbox from paul@educatedinvestors.com, so you can find it when the conversation happens. And the twelve written questions turn this number into answers your advisor has to put on paper:
Percentages anesthetize. Dollars wake people up.
On a $500,000 account, a 2% all-in cost sounds like almost nothing. It is $10,000 a year — every year, in up markets and down. In our study of about 1,400 real consumer complaints, almost nobody woke up because of a fee disclosure. They woke up when somebody translated the percentage into an object they could picture.
The projection does that translation with your actual numbers, then goes one step further: fees do not just cost you the check. Money that leaves the account stops compounding for you the day it leaves. Over 25 years that difference is usually the largest number in the report.
Want the quick version without the email? The Fee Translator runs the one-year math right on the page, no email required. The projection is the full document: your horizon, your compounding drag, and the two checks to run on your advisor this week.