How Financial Advisors Get Paid And Why Choice Changes Everything
Does the Account Structure Match the Service You Want?
To properly evaluate financial partnerships, it is essential to understand how different compensation structures operate across the wealth management landscape:
The advisor is paid through transaction charges or sales commissions each time an investment is bought or sold. No ongoing percentage fee is charged on the account balance.
Each model has its own pull: commissions reward transactions, asset-based fees reward gathering and retaining assets under management, hourly fees reward hours billed.
Your Investment Account Options with Us
We offer two investment account structures: advisory and commission-based. We work with our clients to choose between fiduciary-managed advisory and self-directed commission-based — or a combination of the two.
Advisory Account
See our advisory fee schedule below.
Assets placed in our advisory investment account are actively managed, and there are no transactional commissions paid to an advisor or another company. We are your fiduciary. Portfolios are built your way: choose from our suggested allocation models — researched and stress-tested — or we’ll work together to build one from the ground up using individual stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs, specific and unique to your goals and risk tolerance. Our advisory account minimum is $10,000.
Commission-Based Account
A self-directed investment account with no ongoing advisory management fee — you pay a commission only when you buy or sell, and as part of our process, we’ll ensure we clearly communicate what you’re paying before any decision. You direct the decisions; every trade goes through your advisor — no do-it-yourself trading, just professional guidance and plain-English explanations first. A natural fit for a concentrated holding you don’t want to sell, or investments you’d rather direct yourself while we monitor and explain. Our self-directed account options have no minimum to get started.
We believe true independence means offering real choice rather than a rigid, single-model approach. Ultimately, we believe that someone's access to our guidance should not be determined by the amount of investable assets they have.
E.P. Wayne Financial Group's General Advisory Fee Schedule
One annual rate applies to your entire advisory account's balance. This schedule applies to our advisory accounts — individual, SEP, SIMPLE, and Solo 401(k) alike. Group 401(k) plan costs are set by the plan's chosen providers and disclosed in the plan's fee documents that we review or explain to our clients before any plan is chosen or document is signed.
Starting with less than $10,000? Our commission-based accounts have zero minimums and no annual management fee.
Estimate only, based on our published tiered schedule shown on this page.
Financial Roadmap Construction
E.P. Wayne Financial Group provides financial planning as part of the client relationship — not as a separate service. We choose not to offer fee-for-service planning: no standalone planning fees, hourly consultation fees, or retainers to build, review, or update a plan.
No running clock, no extra charge — so you never have to cram every question into one meeting or wonder whether asking is worth the meter.
Learn more about our Financial Planning process or explore our core Wealth Management approach.
Questions About Fees and Commissions
No, strictly by definition — ‘fee-only’ means a firm offers only fee-based compensation, so our commission option disqualifies us from the label even if you never use it. We’re an independent firm offering both advisory accounts (fee-based, fiduciary standard) and commission-based accounts (self-directed, Reg BI). Across the industry, no compensation model is free of incentives — commission-based, fee-based, or fee-only. We believe the value to the client lies in the ability to choose. You can work with us exactly as you would with a fee-only advisor — advisory account, no commissions, fiduciary — but the reverse isn’t true: a fee-only firm can’t offer you a commission-based account. We explain the differences clearly, with the real numbers, and you decide with everything on the table instead of discovering the choice existed after the fact.
Yes. Neither Ed nor E.P. Wayne Financial Group will receive commissions or other transaction-based compensation from your advisory relationship. It’s stated in the advisory agreement.
Because not every situation calls for an ongoing management fee, and our clients deserve to choose. We offer the commission option not for the commission, but for the choice — we believe these accounts have a legitimate place in this industry, available when they’re the better fit and never pushed. Real example: you retire with a large single stock holding you don’t want to sell. In a commission-based account — zero minimums, no annual management fee — we can help you consolidate, monitor, and understand that one holding without charging you an ongoing management fee on it. An asset-based advisory fee would apply to the full holding, including the shares you didn’t want to sell. Whenever a commission-based product is on the table, we make sure you know exactly what you’re paying so you can make an informed decision — that’s built into our process.
No. You can keep an ongoing advisory relationship with us — fiduciary standard, no commissions — and also hold a brokerage account for a specific need. For example, advisory for your overall planning and active management, and a brokerage account for a concentrated holding or other buy-and-hold positions. The two coexist; you use what fits.
Our advisory accounts are provided under a fiduciary standard, and no commissions are earned on the advisory relationship.
Planning is part of the relationship here — not a separate service. We don’t charge by the hour, and we don’t charge separate planning fees. You also have access to a commission-based account when that’s the better fit, such as holding a concentrated stock position without paying an ongoing management fee on it.
Simply put: your advisory fee is based only on the assets held in your advisory accounts.
Because you should know what something costs before you buy it. We publish every advisory tier, right on this page — so you can see exactly what the fee would be, with full information, before we ever talk.
We set our general advisory fee schedule, so we publish it in full — see our advisory fee schedule. We’d publish a commission schedule too, if we reasonably could. We don’t determine the charges and commissions on the thousands of investments and financial products available to purchase in commission-based accounts — the product issuers and brokerage firms do, and those can change without our control. As part of our core process, we detail all charges and commissions prior to purchase — whether we suggest the product or you do.
Because there’s no single blanket number. A 401(k) plan’s all-in cost comes from the investments’ expense ratios, the recordkeeper’s and administrator’s fees, and the share classes in the lineup — each set by the provider chosen for the plan, not by us. Federal law requires every covered service provider to disclose all of its compensation to the plan’s decision-maker before anything is signed (the 408(b)(2) disclosure), and participants get quarterly statements showing the actual dollars charged. So instead of a marketing-page number that couldn’t be accurate, every plan sponsor we work with sees the real all-in cost — in writing — before deciding anything. And we don’t just hand you the documents: we walk through every fee with you and compare it against what you’re paying now — or what you’re choosing between — so you decide on real numbers.
You never hand us payment — we don’t accept checks, and money never changes hands directly. In an advisory account, the advisory fee automatically comes out of your account balance. In a commission-based account, the charge comes out of the transaction itself. Since every fund company and brokerage firm sets its own commission structure, here’s what it looks like in practice: invest $10,000 in a mutual fund with a 4% sales charge and $9,600 goes to work for you — the $400 goes to the brokerage firm holding your investments, which shares a portion with us as the advisor of record. Either way, we make sure you know the exact amount so you can make an informed decision.