Fee-only, deliberately small, and slow on purpose.
Good financial planning is mostly listening, arithmetic and patience. Very little of it is choosing products.
Started by two advisers who wanted to charge a fee, not a percentage.
Hugh Sableford and Mei Lin Ford left a large advice group in 2011 to do one thing differently: charge a flat fee in dollars and be paid by nobody but the client. They took a room upstairs in the old post office building in Ascot, and they are still there.
Fifteen years on, the firm is still four people and a capped list of clients. Most arrive in their fifties or sixties with one question about retirement and stay for the yearly review.
Four habits behind every plan.
Listening
The first hour is questions. The plan is built on your answers, not a template.
Arithmetic
Every assumption is written down, including the gloomier ones.
Plain English
A Statement of Advice you can read in one sitting and explain to your family.
Patience
Nothing is rushed to meet a sales target, because there isn’t one.
Four people, deliberately.
Hugh Sableford
Financial adviser, founder — Retirement income and later-life planning. On the Financial Advisers Register.
Mei Lin Ford
Financial adviser, founder — Super, the Age Pension and aged care. On the Financial Advisers Register.
Tom Ashby
Paraplanner — Builds the cashflow models and writes every Statement of Advice.
Nadine Kerr
Client services — Answers the phone, books the meetings, and knows where every document is.
Ask us one question.
Plenty of people message us once and never become clients. That is a perfectly good use of us.