Flat-Fee Financial Planning

I provide financial planning on an “advice-only” basis, for a simple, flat fee. (More details here.)

I work with retirees and near-retirees. Often, these are people who have been financial DIYers, but who are now interested in additional assistance due to concerns about:

• The transition to retirement and the various planning topics that become relevant, which were not relevant during the accumulation stage.
• Financial continuity planning. For example, you have always been the financial manager of the household, and you want to make sure your spouse will be taken care of, in case a time comes when you can no longer manage such things.

Areas of Non-expertise

It is my emphatic belief that the field of financial planning is too broad (and too deep) for one person to be an expert on all topics. While I believe that I have meaningful expertise on certain topics, such as those mentioned here, there are certain clients for whom I would not be a good fit. For example, the following are some topics where my expertise is not very strong.

• Education planning (e.g., FAFSA or Public Service Loan Forgiveness)
• Equity-based compensation, such as incentive stock options (ISOs)
• Rental real estate
• International taxation/Social Security topics for dual citizens, expats, etc.
• Establishing or maintaining defined benefit (i.e., traditional pension) plans
• Anything Bitcoin/crypto related

Other Reasons You May Not Want to Work With Me

I want to be as clear as possible up-front about what you can expect when working with me. So here are several completely valid reasons why you might not want to work with me.

• While I am a CPA, I do not provide tax preparation.
• I can be slow to reply sometimes. This is because 1) I am a sole practitioner, 2) I do not work evenings or weekends, 3) sometimes I get sick or go on vacation, and 4) I don’t generally schedule my day so that I have a lot of time sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Point being, if you email me with a question, it is often going to be the case that I cannot drop everything in order to reply immediately (especially given that many typical questions require me to review the details of your finances, potentially do some tax research, etc.). If super speedy replies are very important to you, I believe a larger firm would be a better fit, and I can provide the name of at least one such firm upon request.
• I do not answer unscheduled phone calls. Again, similar to the above point, if you’re looking for somebody who can always provide extremely quick answers, a larger firm (with employees whose full-time job is to answer the phones) would probably be a better fit for you than a sole practitioner.
• I won’t be recommending any super-duper clever asset allocation to try to squeeze out every last bit of risk-adjusted return. (I prefer simple portfolios, with a straightforward rebalancing plan.)
• I won’t be recommending any “aggressive” tax strategies to try to squeeze out every last bit of tax savings. (While tax planning is a core part of what I do, again, I prefer to keep things simple.)
• I am a vegetarian-atheist-treehugger-liberal-snowflake. It’s not mandatory to me that you share my views, but I don’t want to mislead you as to what they are — in case, for example, it’s critical to you that you work with somebody who shares your faith.

Mike Piper, CPA/PFS

I am a CPA/PFS in St. Louis, Missouri. I have written several books dealing with various tax and retirement planning concepts and have been quoted about such topics in numerous publications, from The Wall Street Journal, to AARP, to Morningstar.

I publish articles regularly (about tax planning, retirement planning, Social Security, and other various financial planning topics) on my blog at ObliviousInvestor.com. I am also the creator of the Open Social Security calculator.