Not Just Financial Planning - ICONIC Financial Planning.

By J.R. Robinson, Owner/Founder

There is no paucity of financial planning firms that say they do financial planning. Most just want to manage client investment portfolios and merely pay lip service to the non-investment elements. FPH is a true financial planning shop. In fact, we do not accept clients who are solely interested in investment management.

That is not to say portfolio management is unimportant. It is. But in our experience, there is tremendous opportunity to add tangible value by identifying the mistakes, oversights, and opportunities hidden in the non-investment elements of our clients’ financial lives. There is often a great deal of low-hanging fruit in tax planning, estate planning, insurance and risk management, and other areas.

The purpose of this essay is to articulate what makes Financial Planning Hawaii and Fee-Only Planning Hawaii stand out in a crowded sea of “advicers.” It should also help explain why the expertise and services we provide should enable us not merely to survive, but to thrive as AI expands into personal finance.

Deep-Dive Information Gathering Paired with Hand-Crafted Recommendations

Even among pure-play financial planning firms, we stand apart. Unlike most of our peers, we do not produce computer-generated financial plans.

As I have shared in other articles and videos, the enormous amount of time we spend gathering information with our clients is unusual. We understand that consumers do not know what they do not know, and it is our job to help raise their awareness. Many of the 20 to 30-plus findings and recommendations we typically deliver in our initial planning reviews go far beyond the generic guidance that planning software and AI reviews tend to produce.

All of our plans are written by hand, with no assistance from ChatGPT.

A Platform That Grows with You and Keeps Your Plan Current

We also understand that financial planning reviews can become outdated after just a few years. Accounts change. Jobs change. Family circumstances change. Tax laws change.

To address this inevitable obsolescence, we give all clients a platform that allows them to centralize, organize, monitor, and maintain all aspects of their financial lives over time. While much of the data in the original planning review will eventually become dated, the platform helps keep the underlying plan current.

Ongoing Education and Engagement

Our ongoing interactions with clients are also different. We do not call clients to schedule annual or semiannual reviews as most of our peers do. We are not your dentist.

Instead, we tell clients from the outset that we are working for them all the time and are available to meet as often as they wish, on their schedules. Consistent with this philosophy, we provide a service calendar that maps out important tasks for them and for us throughout the year.

To keep our clients engaged and educated, I publish a distinctly charismatic newsletter called Nest Egg News. Each issue features 10 to 15 articles covering a broad range of financial planning topics, presented in a format that makes it easy for readers to decide which ones are relevant to them.

The articles are often humorous or edgy because financial planning does not need to be boring. That added personality is reflected in our high engagement numbers and 70 to 80 percent open rates. Nest Egg News is an integral part of how we keep clients informed about important planning developments and engaged in their financial lives.

Domain Authority

With the rise of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube “finfluencers,” there is no shortage of content creators promoting themselves as personal finance experts. I believe that if you are going to give financial planning advice, you should actually be an expert in your field.

My economics background at Williams College introduced me to concepts that helped lay the foundation for our approach to investment management. To expand my knowledge beyond investments, I turned to writing research papers and articles.

Over the past quarter century, I have written ten papers that were accepted for publication in peer-reviewed academic and professional journals, including three award-winning contributions on retirement income sustainability. I have also published scores of articles and op-ed commentaries on a broad range of financial planning topics in editor-reviewed financial media.

As further evidence of my domain authority, I was twice included on Investopedia’s list of the 100 most influential financial advisors in the U.S. My commentary has appeared in virtually every major national financial news outlet, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Investopedia, NerdWallet, U.S. News & World Report, and Financial Planning.

Our Own Proprietary Retirement Saving and Spending Simulation Software

My research interest in retirement income sustainability also fueled the development of our proprietary retirement simulation software, Nest Egg Guru.

The application grew out of three papers I co-authored with professors from the University of Hawaii’s Shidler College of Business. The simulation methodology they introduced to me through our research offered an alternative to the well-documented limitations of the traditional Monte Carlo simulation applications used by much of the financial planning industry.

Nest Egg Guru is integrated into our website and is a powerful tool for making retirement planning tangible and understandable. It also helps our clients more realistically assess their retirement saving and retirement spending preparedness.

Other Differentiators

While many of our peers devote their energy to attracting high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, we fish in a different pond.

Clients who engage us for comprehensive financial planning that includes ongoing portfolio management tend to fall into the “mid-market affluent” segment, loosely defined as individuals and families with $1 million to $5 million in investable assets. Our tiered asset-based pricing begins at 0.75 percent per year and steadily declines to just 0.10 percent on assets above $5 million. We do not accept new clients with more than $30 million in assets.

Our flat-fee planning clients tend to be younger DIY investors. They often seek a professional assessment of their portfolio strategies but particularly value our expertise in the important non-investment elements of financial planning. These are generally one-time engagements. We are agnostic about whether asset-based or flat-fee planning is the better fit.

Consumers considering working with us should also know that we are structured to be a multigenerational family business. This matters because there is a major trend in our industry for financial planners in their 50s and older to sell their practices to private-equity-backed RIAs as a succession plan.

That will not happen with Financial Planning Hawaii or Fee-Only Planning Hawaii.

We are following what I call the Hermès succession model. Most consumers recognize Hermès as an international luxury brand best known for its handcrafted leather handbags. What many do not know is that it has remained a family business for generations.

We are following Hermès’ lead in two respects: elite craftsmanship and multigenerational succession. Both Itaat and I are bringing the next generation of our families into FPH. It is our hope and expectation that our children and grandchildren will someday be providing thoughtfully crafted financial planning guidance to your children and grandchildren.

A Final Word

We do not sell investment or insurance products. We are a fee-only, fiduciary-always financial planning shop.

We are intentionally different from other financial planning firms.

In a word, we strive to be iconic.