Maybe you were burned once. Maybe you have never let anyone near it, including me. Good. Here is the test I publish for anything with an incentive behind it, and I run it on my own firm first.
The fear is not losing money. You have lost money before and survived it. The fear is being the fool twice: handing your savings to someone who smiled, and finding out later what the smile was paid for. That is not paranoia. Most financial advisors in this country are dual-registered and can legally sell commission products alongside advice, and the advice gets filtered through what pays them. I know because I started on the sales side of this industry, at a life-insurance company, and left. This firm is that year, inverted.
I also watched a whole country run this experiment. In 1997 Albania lost half its economy to pyramid schemes; two thirds of my countrymen handed their savings to systems with no besa in them, and the government fell. Financial systems are where broken trust does its fastest damage, so money is where I keep score first.
And the quiet part: you suspect you cannot evaluate an advisor because you are not one. You can. The questions that matter never mention money, and they take ten minutes.
Fees compound exactly the way returns do, which is why the fee question matters more than the industry wants you to notice, and why fee alone is still the wrong question.
Nineteen questions, no pitch: it shows what a fee really compounds into over 30 years (in its own example, a 1% fee takes roughly a quarter of the ending value) and what real planning, behavioral coaching, and tax coordination give back; some people get told to keep their money.
Run your own balance and contributions over the same long horizon, so you can see the curve that any fee, product, or app is quietly taking its slice from.
The Besa Standard is the spine: Skin (do they gain only when you gain), Glass (every rule and every fee on one page), Storm (does it protect you from yourself on your worst day), Door (can you leave in one step with your money and your data), Mirror (do they keep score in public); these three Field Manual pages are how you run the same test on yourself.
Before you trust anyone, run the asymmetry on the trust itself: worst realistic case if they are wrong, whether you survive it, what you gain if they are right.
The Mirror question in human form: ask what they got wrong and what they changed so it cannot repeat; an advisor with no answer has either never been tested or is not telling you.
This is the Storm question: a plan that assumes you will be brave at the bottom fails, so the rules for your worst day have to exist in writing before the worst day.
Fee-only: you pay me directly and nobody else pays me anything. No commissions, no product sales, no revenue sharing. Every fee sits on one page and gets disclosed before you sign anything, and Form ADV is available on request, always.
Rules for a bad market are set in calm, before you need them. Your assets sit with an independent qualified custodian, not with me: I can manage the accounts, I cannot move your money out of them, and you can leave.
I score my own advisory at 4.5 of 5 on the Besa page, and the named gap is real: an asset-based fee still quietly prefers that your assets stay with me. You should know that going in.
Investment management starts at 1.00% a year and steps down at higher asset levels; comprehensive planning is a $1,000 to $3,000 setup plus $150 to $500 a month; modular sessions are $300 to $500 and the Purpose Pit Stop is $750 or $1,500, with no minimum on either.
If you want an advisor who never charges you anything, that advisor does not exist; someone is always paying, and the only question is whether it is you or a product company. If you have the time, the expertise, the discipline through three full market cycles, and a tax strategist on call, you probably should not hire anyone, and the calculator will tell you so.
Five, and they never mention money. Skin: do they gain only when you gain, or does someone else pay them for what lands on your plate? Glass: can you see every rule and every fee on one page? Storm: does the plan protect you from yourself on your worst day? Door: can you leave in one step with your money and your data? Mirror: do they keep score in public? One point per pass, and watch how they handle being asked. Honest systems answer; extractive systems perform.
Fee-only means the advisor is paid only by clients, directly: no commissions, no product kickbacks, no revenue sharing, no referral fees. The number on the invoice is the total the advisor earns from you. StandUP Advisors is a fee-only registered investment adviser and a fiduciary on every recommendation, all the time, which is a different standard from the Regulation Best Interest rules most brokerage advisors work under. Yes, StandUP charges fees too, and they are listed on one page.
Investment management: 1.00% a year up to $250,000, 0.90% to $500,000, 0.80% to $1,000,000, negotiable above $1M; a core-satellite option runs 1.25% with a $500,000 minimum. Comprehensive planning: $1,000 to $3,000 one-time setup plus $150 to $500 a month, 12-month minimum, and planning clients who add investment management pay a discounted 0.25% a year. Modular sessions $300 to $500. Purpose Pit Stop $750 or $1,500, credited toward later work. Custodian and fund expenses are separate and none of them come to me.
Run the calculators first; they are free and they do not ask for your email. If the numbers raise more questions than they answer, that is what the conversation is for.