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Financial Advisor Fee Calculator
What it really costs

Four taps to what your fees take from your savings. Don't know your fees? No worries: our built-in fee finder looks up your funds by name. Free, no sign-up.

Our fees: Form ADV Part 2A, Items 5 and 610% growth before costsEducation, not advice
Question 1 of 4

Educational illustration only. Returns are assumed, not predicted, and real markets do not grow in a straight line.

Fee Report Card

Is your adviser earning the fee?

Ten yes-or-no questions about what your adviser does for you. You get a grade from A to F and a list of what to ask about. About one minute, no sign-up.

A checklist, not a rating of any adviser's skill or results. We are an adviser too, so weigh it with that in mind.

How financial advisers get paid

There are three common ways, and many advisers mix them.

  • A percentage of what they manage. A yearly fee figured on your balance, usually taken straight out of the account. Your cost rises as your balance grows.
  • A flat or hourly fee. You pay for a plan or for time, whatever your balance.
  • Commissions. The adviser is paid by the company whose product you buy, such as an annuity, insurance policy or fund. The cost is often inside the product, so it is harder to see.

On top of any adviser fee, the funds you own charge their own yearly costs, and some accounts charge trading fees. That is why the calculator asks for both.

What you get for our fee

One fee covers two jobs: planning your whole financial life, and managing your investments. There is no extra charge for either.

1. Your financial plan, built with you and checked every year

We follow the same seven steps that CFP Board sets for financial planning:

  1. Understand your situation. Your pension, 457, savings, debts, insurance, family and benefits.
  2. Set your goals with you. When you want to stop working, the income you need, and what you want to leave behind.
  3. See where your current path leads, and what the other paths look like.
  4. Build our recommendations.
  5. Walk you through them in plain words, so you know why, not just what.
  6. Help you put them in place: opening accounts, moving money, updating beneficiaries.
  7. Meet once a year to check progress and update the plan when your life or the rules change.

Where the plan starts: your numbers. We build your budget and cash flow (what comes in and goes out each month) and your balance sheet (what you own and what you owe). Those two pages drive every other decision in the plan.

How we test it. We plan around your goals, such as retiring at a certain age or paying for a child's college. Then we run scenarios, like retiring a year later or taking a different pension option, and a Monte Carlo test. That test runs your plan through thousands of possible market paths to show how often the money lasts. It shows the odds, not a promise.

Example: "We want to buy a home." This is how a goal moves through those seven steps. First we look at where you stand today: your income statement (what comes in and goes out each month) and your balance sheet (what you own and owe). Then we test whether the down payment, closing costs and the new monthly cost fit with what you have now, without starving your retirement savings. If they fit, we map out when and how. If they don't yet, we lay out the choices: costs to cut, a later date, a smaller price, or another way to fund the down payment, and show what each one does to the rest of your plan. You pick the path, we help put it in place, and we check it at every yearly meeting. This is an example of the process, not a promise of a result.

What the plan covers:

  • Retirement income. When to draw from your pension, 457, IRAs and savings, in what order, and when to claim Social Security.
  • Tax planning. Keeping more of what you earn: which account to draw from first, staying in lower tax brackets, and Roth conversions in low-income years.
  • Roth IRAs. You pay tax on the money going in, and qualified withdrawals come out tax-free. You are never forced to take money out during your lifetime. For 2026 you can put in up to $7,500, or $8,600 at age 50 and up, if your income is under the IRS limits.
  • Opening the right accounts. Traditional and Roth IRAs, individual and joint accounts, set up and titled to match the plan.
  • 401(k), 403(b) and 457 rollovers. If moving the money makes sense, we have it sent straight to the new account. That avoids the 20% tax withholding that comes with a check made out to you. Sometimes leaving the money in your plan is the better choice, and we will tell you when it is.
  • Insurance planning. Making sure your life, disability, long-term care and home coverage fit the risks you actually have. We do not sell insurance and take no commissions.
  • Estate planning. Your beneficiaries, account titles, will and powers of attorney, checked so they all say the same thing as your plan.

2. Your investments, managed all year by Will Harrison

Will Harrison, our Chief Investment Officer, runs the portfolios, and most of the work is research you never see. He studies and follows the companies we own and the ones we might own: their results, their managers, and the trends around them. He decides what to buy, when to add, and when to sell, and he writes up his thinking every quarter in Inside the Portfolio. His approach:

  • He owns good businesses. Companies with steady cash flow, strong returns, an edge competitors struggle to copy, and managers who own a real stake.
  • He thinks in years, not quarters. He judges each holding on what it can earn over three to ten years, not on the latest headline.
  • He buys when others are scared. When a price falls but the business is still doing well, he adds to it.
  • He keeps risk in check. New ideas start small, winners get trimmed when better ideas come along, and he will not chase the biggest names just because they dominate the index.

Day to day, the portfolio work also includes:

  • Rebalancing. When markets push your mix off target, we bring it back. That means trimming what went up and buying what went down, which is hard to make yourself do.
  • Tax-loss harvesting. When an investment in a regular taxable account is down, we can sell it to lock in the loss and buy something similar so you stay invested. The loss can cancel out taxable gains, and up to $3,000 a year of other income, with the rest carried to later years. It does not apply inside IRAs or 457s, where there is no tax on gains to save.
  • Watching for wash sales. The IRS throws out the loss if the same or a nearly identical investment is bought within 30 days before or after the sale, and that includes buys in your IRA or Roth IRA. We plan the replacement purchase around that window so the loss counts.
  • Putting each holding in the right account. Investments that pay a lot of taxable income go in IRAs, where they grow tax-deferred. Ones that are taxed lightly go in taxable accounts.

What research says advice is worth

Vanguard's research estimates that advisers who follow practices like these can add about 3 percentage points a year to net returns. The biggest piece, about 1.5 points, comes from coaching people to stay invested when markets drop. Vanguard is clear that this is not a steady yearly number. It shows up unevenly, mostly when markets panic or soar, and it varies a lot from person to person. These are Vanguard's estimates across many investors, not a promise of what we will add for you. Sources: Vanguard Advisor's Alpha and its research paper (February 2019).

How we are paid

We charge a percentage of what we manage, and we take no commissions. From our Form ADV brochure, Items 5 and 6:

  • 1% a year for first responders, active military, reserve and veterans.
  • 2% a year for other clients with accounts under $1.1 million.
  • Over $1.1 million: 0.5% a year plus 25% of profits above a 4% return.

The fee is taken from your account each month for the month before. Trading costs and the funds' own expenses are separate. How your adviser gets paid, in full.

A conflict you should know about. We earn our fee only on money you move to us. That gives us a reason to want your money. Weigh what we say about your current costs with that in mind.

Who we are

Sirmium Capital LLC is a small, independent investment firm in New York, registered as an investment adviser with the State of New York. You can look us up on the SEC's public adviser database under CRD #167682, where our full brochure is posted.

Common questions

It depends on how they are paid. Advisers who charge a percentage take a yearly share of your balance, flat-fee advisers charge a set price, and commission advisers are paid inside the products they sell. Ask for your total yearly cost in dollars, fund costs included, and put it in the calculator above.
Every dollar paid in fees also stops growing. Over 20 years, the growth those dollars never earn can be larger than the fees themselves. That is why the calculator shows a total cost, not just the fees.
Only if you get more for it than investing alone. Planning when to draw money, managing taxes and keeping you invested in a bad market can be worth more than the fee. A portfolio alone usually is not. The calculator shows the cost; the call is where we look at what you get for it.
Your adviser's fee is in their Form ADV brochure, which you can find on the SEC's adviser database, and on your statements. Each fund's cost is its expense ratio, listed in its fact sheet. Don't know your tickers? In the calculator, tap "Look up my funds by name" and search by fund name. It covers U.S. mutual funds and ETFs that file a prospectus with the SEC, plus the TSP and NYC Deferred Compensation funds.

Educational information only. Not investment, tax or legal advice, not a recommendation, and not a guarantee. The calculator assumes a steady yearly return before costs, which real markets do not deliver. Sirmium Capital LLC is a New York state-registered investment adviser and is not registered with the SEC. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.