Facet Wealth Review
Ranking
9/10
Facet Wealth aims to make online financial planning personal and affordable. They offer seven pricing levels based on your specific financial planning needs as well as unlimited access to your CFP®.
Best for:
- Flat fees
- Fiduciary advice
- Financial dashboard
Finding a professional to help you manage both your big-picture financial future and every day financial needs can be overwhelming. There are a ton of options to choose from and each charge for their services in different ways that could conflict with the advice they give.
You could choose a local financial advisor, an online robo-advsior, or you could even do it yourself. Each option comes with benefits and drawbacks.
Until recently, these were your main options. However, a relatively new company called Facet Wealth is adding a new option you may find attractive.
Facet Wealth offers online-based Certified Financial Planners™ to help you plan your financial future for a flat yearly fee. You don’t have to pay commissions or pay assets under management fees.
What is Facet Wealth?
Facet Wealth is an online financial planning firm that puts your interests first by offering financial planning at an affordable price. They focus on your financial health and wellness.
Rather than charging you based on the assets they manage for you, Facet Wealth charges a flat annual fee for their advice and investment management. This is preferable because you don’t have to think about the potential impact commissions may have on the advice you receive.
Once you build a nest egg, you don’t have to worry about paying high fees just because you have a lot of assets, either.
Facet Wealth provides its financial planning services through the many Certified Financial Planners™ (CFP®) they have on staff.
After an initial call, you’re set up with a dedicated CFP® that best meets your particular situation. This CFP® will be your dedicated CFP® that you get access to for any of your financial questions.
An important distinction of using only CFP® financial advisors is the fact that each CFP® is a fiduciary. That means they’re required to put your interests first above everything else.
How does Facet Wealth work?
Facet Wealth starts the process with an initial phone call. It lasts for about half an hour and is a goal setting and introduction phone call. You don’t have to do any homework prior to the call.
Once Facet Wealth has the basic information, they’re able to set you up with one of their CFP®s for an initial complimentary financial review. This part takes less than an hour.
After the review, you can hire Facet Wealth on an ongoing basis. They have a variety of plans based on your needs. And once you’re a client, you can meet with your CFP® whenever you need to and can ask whatever questions you may have.
Note that your questions may be limited to the topics you pay for advice on. For instance, if you don’t choose a plan level that includes estate planning, you won’t be able to ask estate planning questions.
Which financial services are offered by Facet Wealth?
Facet Wealth goes beyond the simple investment management provided by robo-advisors.
They provide investment management, but also comprehensive financial planning services, including the following:
Retirement Planning: Your CFP at Facet Wealth will put together an action plan to help you reach your retirement goals, as well as help you to understand the strategies behind it.
Education Planning: If you have children, Facet Wealth presents options to pay for their future education.
Life Planning: Your advisor will help you to plan for what’s most important in your life.
Asset Management: This is the investment management part of the Facet Wealth program. It will include constructing a well-diversified portfolio to help you achieve your long-term goals.
Income Tax Planning: This service involves minimizing the impact of taxes while implementing your financial plan and investing activities.
Insurance Planning: If you don’t know a whole lot about insurance, your financial advisor at Facet Wealth can help. They’ll recommend the best types of plans to provide specific protections you need for yourself and your family.
Estate Planning: Facet Wealth will work with your personal attorney to create an estate plan to provide for your loved ones after your death.
Legacy Planning: This involves creating a plan to make provisions for either your family or a favorite charity. It will enable you to structure your finances in such a way that you will be able to provide for the people or organizations you care for most.
Retirement Income: Apart from retirement planning, it’s also important to successfully manage income in retirement. Your financial advisor will take into consideration your income from Social Security and pensions, in creating a distribution plan from your retirement savings.
How much does Facet Wealth cost?
The cost of Facet Wealth’s services depends on the services you want to pay for.
Facet Wealth fees range from $1,200/year (which is $100/month) – $6,000/year (which is $500/month) – and most clients fall in the middle of that range depending on the complexity of your financial landscape. They offer seven levels of services with prices that increase with the level of services rendered.
When you break it down month-by-month, you can pay as little as $100 per month to as much as $500 per month for their services. It just depends on your needs. And here, a Facet Wealth CFP can even help you choose your employee benefits and provide assistance in making the right decisions with your company’s stock option plan.
Facet Wealth features
Dashboard
In addition to being able to contact your CFP® whenever you need and the services listed above, Facet Wealth also offers a dashboard to help you keep track of your finances.
The dashboard allows you to link your financial accounts so you get a real-time view of your finances without logging into multiple accounts.
The dashboard also highlights your goals and objectives, as well as key metrics like emergency fund status, savings rate, debt score, credit score and more making it easy to see a snapshot of your overall financial picture.
Comprehensive planning
One of the big benefits of using Facet Wealth over a robo-advisor is Facet Wealth’s comprehensive planning offerings. Rather than focusing only on managing and growing your assets, Facet Wealth can help you with other important parts of your financial plan as well. For example, Facet takes a goals-approach to your investment management, aligning their investment advice to the goals you indicate are most important – such as buying a house.
Flat-fee
Finally, one of the biggest selling points is Facet Wealth charges a flat fee for their services. This means you receive value equal to what you pay, not based on how large your asset balance is or how big of a commission your advisor is earning from the services they recommend.
Who is Facet Wealth best for?
Those who want advice, but no high fees
Facet Wealth can be a great option for those looking for professional financial advice without having to pay large assets under management fees.
For instance, those with a $1,000,000 portfolio would pay $10,000 per year under a traditional financial advisor with a 1% assets under management fee. However, even with Facet Wealth’s most expensive fee, the cost would be nearly half the price.
Those who want a no-commission system
It’s also a great option for those that don’t want to wonder if the advice their advisor is giving them conflicts with the commissions the advisor may earn for suggesting a certain product.
Keep in mind, you need to be comfortable communicating through email or on the phone when you have questions. The good news is there is no cancellation fee if you find out Facet Wealth doesn’t end up being a good fit for you.
Who isn’t Facet Wealth for?
Beginner investors
Facet Wealth won’t work for everyone. In particular, those just getting started might not need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars each year for the advice Facet Wealth offers.
Instead, reading a good book on the basics of index investing could provide enough knowledge to get started. Once you build enough assets to need more guidance, Facet Wealth may be a good option at that point.
Self-starters
Once your initial financial plan is built, self-starters may not need to continue paying for Facet Wealth every year. That said, you’ll miss out on the benefits of continued advice to help you manage life’s changes if you don’t stay subscribed.
Those who want an in-person advisor
Finally, those that like meeting with an advisor face to face will likely be better off with a local financial advisor.
My experience using Facet Wealth
The Facet Wealth experience is focused on providing comprehensive financial life management at an affordable price.
Rather than focusing on their automated offerings and technology, Facet Wealth focuses on the relationship you’ll build with your dedicated CFP®, as you can see in the video below:
Instead of relying on the basics of asset management, Facet Wealth instead provides objective advice on comprehensive financial planning based on the level of service you need.
You’ll receive a welcome packet upon signing up
Once you sign up for their service, you’ll receive a welcome packet that describes Facet Wealth’s role as a fiduciary. It also shares the guidelines they follow to offer their financial planning services.
You’ll fill out a questionnaire
You’ll have to fill out an introductory questionnaire that includes basic information about yourself, your family and your finances, including any financial goals you may have.
Based on the results, your goals and financial information will be displayed on a dashboard. The dashboard’s goal is to provide all of your financial information and goals in one place in an easy to understand format.
You’ll then be assigned a CFP®
Next, your CFP® will help tailor the financial planning experience at Facet Wealth based on the services you need. This includes choosing the level of service you need.
Once you’re a client, you’ll have a series of planning meetings to help develop your personal financial plan which will ultimately result in a document called your financial blueprint. They can also break down individual goals into one-page plans such as preparing for college expenses.
Of course, you can call any time to speak with your professional whenever you have financial questions.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Fee-based model means no conflicts of interest — Advisors don’t receive commissions based on selling policies that may or may not be a good fit for you.
- Dedicated CFP® means someone knows your personal situation — You are more than numbers in a software program.
- No upfront fees to set up your account — Some services charge an upfront fee due to the upfront work required with new clients.
- No cancellation fees — If you decide to quit using the service, you aren’t charged a fee to cancel.
Cons
- High cost for some — Can seem expensive if you don’t have a large nest egg started. That said, the advice could help you get there.
- Can’t meet in person — If face to face communication is key to your success, Facet Wealth won’t be a good fit.
- Many different plans to choose from can get confusing — The different pricing levels can seem overwhelming, but an advisor can help you choose what would provide the most value to you.
Competitors
Facet Wealth has many competitors, but they all slightly vary in how they work and charge for their services.
Robo advisors
In a way, Facet Wealth competes with robo- advisors. Robo-advisors typically charge a relatively small percentage of the assets they manage and provide basic financial management. However, software manages your relationship rather than a human.
Robo-advisors will typically help you set up your initial asset allocation and rebalance your portfolio when necessary. Their software may even help you build a financial plan.
Due to the lower cost of a robo-advisor’s services, there will generally be very little, if any, interaction with a human professional. Robo advisors include companies like Betterment and Wealthfront.
Robo-advisor/brokerage firm hybrids
Another competitor, M1 Finance, is a mix between a robo-advisor and a brokerage account. M1 Finance allows you to pick an investment mix, which they call pies. If you’d like, you can create your own custom investment mix as well.
Once you pick an investment mix, M1 Finance will make sure you purchase the correct amount of each investment whenever you deposit money to keep your portfolio balanced.
M1 Finance stands out from other competitors because their service is currently free. There are no assets under management fees or other fees to use their service, but they do not provide financial planning.
Robo-advisor/financial advisor hybrids
Services like Personal Capital combine the robo-advisor model with a dedicated professional. They provide an online dashboard to help you track your finances and net worth for free.
If you’d like to use their financial advisor services, they charge a 0.89% assets under management fee for the first $1,000,000 in assets. The fee decreases on amounts above $1,000,000.
Depending on your balance, this fee can be higher than using a service like Facet Wealth. In fact, the fee could be quite large if you have a lot of assets.
Financial advisors
Facet Wealth also competes with traditional financial advisors you can find in your area or online. Traditional financial advisors may earn their compensation through commissions on trades, charging assets under management fees, or charging hourly consultation fees.
Summary
If you don’t have a professional that can help you manage your financial life and goals, consider setting up an introductory call with Facet Wealth to see if they’re a good fit for your needs.
There’s no risk upfront and Facet Wealth’s goal is to make online financial planning personal and affordable for you.
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