I want to answer a question I get asked at almost every intro call, usually somewhere around minute five, once the small talk winds down. It’s some version of “so what exactly is advice-only, and how is it different from what my bank or my advisor already does for me?” It’s a fair question, because the financial industry is full of titles that sound similar and mean very different things, and nobody hands you a glossary on the way in.

So let’s clear it up properly, since it affects how much you pay, what you actually get, and whether the person across the table is legally required to put your interests ahead of their own.

What advice-only financial planning actually means

Advice-only financial planning means you pay a planner directly for their advice, like you would a lawyer or an accountant, and that planner never sells you a product, never manages your money, and never earns a commission of any kind. The fee is the whole relationship. There’s no mutual fund tucked into the plan, no insurance policy waiting at the end of the meeting, no percentage of your assets being quietly deducted every year. You pay for the advice, you get the advice, and then you decide what to do with it.

That last part surprises people. In an advice-only relationship, I don’t hold your money, I don’t have trading authority on your accounts, and I don’t get a cut of anything you buy or invest in afterward. You keep your accounts exactly where they are, at whatever bank or brokerage you already use, and I build you a plan and a road map for what to do with what you’ve got. The execution stays entirely in your hands, or your accountant’s, or whoever else you choose to bring in.

How this is different from a fee-based advisor or a bank advisor

This is where most of the confusion lives, because “fee-only” and “fee-based” sound almost identical and mean something quite different in practice.

A bank advisor or an insurance-licensed advisor is usually paid, at least in part, through commissions or trailing fees embedded in the products they sell you. That doesn’t automatically make the advice bad, and I’ve met plenty of advisors in that world who truly care about their clients. But the incentive is baked into the model. If an advisor’s income depends on which fund you buy or which policy you sign, that’s a structural conflict of interest, even when the person recommending it has the best intentions.

A fee-based advisor charges you an ongoing fee, usually a percentage of the assets they manage for you, and may also collect commissions or referral arrangements on top of that. It’s a step toward transparency, but it isn’t the same as removing the conflict entirely, since the advisor’s compensation is still tied to how your assets are invested and where they sit.

An advice-only planner has none of that. The fee is flat or hourly, disclosed up front, and completely separate from any product, account, or investment decision. Essentially, you’re hiring the analysis without hiring the sale.

What a real advice-only engagement actually covers

A good plan isn’t a stack of investment recommendations with a bow on it. The way I think about it, a real financial plan touches every account and decision that runs through your household, including:

Tax strategy for high-income earners, since the gap between doing this well and doing it by default is often five figures a year once you’re earning well into six figures. Cash flow and lifestyle design, because most high earners I meet don’t have a savings problem, they have a structure problem, where the money moves without anyone deciding where it should go. Registered account strategy across your RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, and if you’re incorporated, your corporate account, so each dollar lands in the bucket that actually makes sense for your tax bracket and your timeline. Retirement and early retirement scenarios, modelled out with real numbers rather than a rule of thumb pulled from a magazine. And insurance and estate planning analysis, which tells you what coverage and documents you actually need without anyone standing by to sell you a policy the moment the analysis is done.

For incorporated professionals specifically, like physicians with a medicine professional corporation or business owners running an Opco and a Holdco, this list gets longer. Salary versus dividend decisions, corporate investment structure, and how to pull money out of the company in the most tax-efficient way all become part of the working document, not a side conversation.

Who this actually works well for

I think of a couple I worked with recently, both in their late thirties, one a specialist physician and the other running her own consulting practice through a corporation. They were earning well past the point where “just save more” was useful advice, and they had accounts scattered across three institutions, a corporation nobody had really optimized, and a nagging sense that they were leaving money on the table somewhere. They didn’t need someone to manage their portfolio. They needed someone to look at the entire picture, tell them the truth about what was working and what wasn’t, and hand them a plan they could execute themselves alongside their accountant.

That’s the profile advice-only tends to fit best. You already have accounts at a bank or brokerage you like and have no interest in moving. You want to see the fee before you agree to anything, with no fine print about trailing commissions buried in a fund fact sheet. And you’d rather have a clear game plan in hand than sit through another pitch disguised as a meeting.

If instead you want someone to actively manage your portfolio day to day and you’re comfortable paying an ongoing percentage for that, a fee-based or discretionary manager might genuinely be the better fit. Advice-only isn’t the right answer for every situation, it’s the right answer when what you’re missing is clarity and a plan, not hands-on portfolio management.

What it costs, and why the fee structure matters

Advice-only planners typically charge a flat project fee for an initial comprehensive plan, followed by either a flat annual retainer or an hourly rate for ongoing work, depending on how the practice is set up. There’s no asset minimum in most cases, because the fee isn’t calculated as a percentage of what you hold. A household with two million dollars in investments and a household with two hundred thousand can pay the exact same fee for the exact same quality of plan, since the work involved doesn’t scale with your account balance, it scales with the complexity of your situation.

This matters more than people expect. Under a typical percentage-of-assets model, your cost quietly rises every single year your portfolio grows, even though the actual work being done for you often stays flat. Under advice-only, you know the number up front, it’s disclosed before you sign anything, and it doesn’t move just because your net worth did.

What you keep control of

You keep the pen. A plan tells you what to do and why, but you, or your accountant, or a discount brokerage, execute it. For a lot of high-income professionals, this is actually the appeal rather than the drawback, because you’re not handing over control, you’re gaining a second set of expert eyes on decisions you were already going to make.

Common questions I get asked

Is advice-only financial planning regulated in Canada?

Yes. Advice-only planners who hold the CFP® (Certified Financial Planner) designation are regulated through FP Canada and its provincial bodies, and are bound by a code of ethics that requires acting in the client’s best interest. The designation itself isn’t optional or self-declared, it comes with continuing education requirements and a formal complaints process.

Is advice-only the same as fee-only?

Mostly, yes, though “fee-only” is sometimes used more loosely in the industry. Advice-only is the more precise term, since it specifies that the planner never manages assets or earns commissions, only charges a direct fee for advice.

How much does an advice-only financial plan cost in Canada?

It varies by practice and complexity, but most comprehensive plans for high-income households land somewhere between two thousand and six thousand dollars for the initial plan, with ongoing work billed as a flat retainer or hourly rate after that. The point of the model is that the fee is disclosed and fixed before you commit, not a moving percentage of your portfolio.

Do I need a lot of money to work with an advice-only planner?

No, and this is one of the bigger differences from asset-managed relationships. Because there’s no asset minimum tied to a percentage fee, advice-only planners often work well with high-income professionals who have strong cash flow but haven’t yet built a large portfolio, like a resident physician a few years from staff pay or a founder whose net worth is still mostly in the business.

What happens after I get the plan? Do I still need an accountant or lawyer?

Usually, yes, and a good advice-only planner will tell you exactly when to loop them in rather than trying to be everything. The plan often becomes the coordinating document that your accountant, lawyer, and any other professional you use can work from, so everyone is pointed in the same direction instead of giving you advice in silos.

The bottom line

Advice-only financial planning strips out the sales incentive and leaves you with the thing you actually came for, which is honest, comprehensive advice on your entire financial picture, not just the part that happens to pay someone a commission. If you’re earning well and want a clear plan without a product attached to it, the first step is a conversation, not a contract.

If that sounds like what you’ve been looking for, I’d be glad to have a no-pressure chat about your situation and whether advice-only is the right fit. Simply start here: https://tally.so/r/3XXaBj