FAQ

Here is the truth most people do not want to hear. At some point, likely every three to five years, you will face a financial decision that can completely wreck your future. It will come out of nowhere. A brutal market drop. A job crisis. A family emergency. A moment where fear takes over and every instinct in your body tells you to act fast and act emotionally.

This is the moment people lose decades of progress:
They sell at the bottom.
They take on risk they cannot handle.
They blow up their tax situation.
They abandon the one plan that was working.
They make decisions they regret for the rest of their lives.

You will almost certainly have one of these moments. It’s human nature.

My value is simple: I am here to stop you from detonating your financial life when that moment arrives. I am the one who steps in when your nervous system is flooded and your thinking is compromised.

One avoided mistake in one of these moments can repay the cost of advice for the next decade. It can be the difference between long term safety and long term damage.

On ordinary days, we plan, build, optimize, and stay aligned. That is the easy part.

The real value shines the moment your world shakes and you are seconds away from making a catastrophic decision.

Why not just use AI instead of a human advisor?

AI is great and I use it myself. It can run projections, analyze spending, surface ideas, and automate the technical parts of planning. Tools like Origin are impressive, and they’ll keep getting better.

But AI can’t do the part that actually determines long-term success:
helping you make good decisions when life gets messy or markets get scary.

Kitces put it well in his review of Origin’s new AI “robo-planner”: low-cost advice tools struggle because information is easy… but behavior, context, accountability, and real-world human complexity are not. That’s why even Origin admits their AI is “no substitute for personalized advice from a financial planner", and even offers the ability to book sessions with human advisors.

So the real answer is: you don’t choose between AI and a human. You use both.

And to be transparent: I do use AI to make my work faster and sharper — not just for analysis, but for back-office tasks like note-taking so I can stay fully present with clients. (In fact, I used AI to help write this answer — with my own guidance shaping the substance.)

The real truth is: you don’t need to choose between AI and a human. You can use both.

Percentage-based fees do not create an incentive for advisors to grow their clients’ investments. Markets, not advisors, are what provide investment growth. Advisors have no control over markets. Nor can advisors consistently know what parts of markets will perform best. Crystal balls don’t work. So, why would someone pay so much for an incentive that doesn’t exist? The reason is because they get duped by advisors who lack integrity.

My incentive is to keep my clients happy so that they want to remain my clients. I keep them happy by always acting in their best interests. Given my flat advisory fee, I cannot not act in their best interests. And that is why they stay happy and choose to remain my clients.

You can indeed buy index funds yourself, so you shouldn’t pay me just to do that. My clients pay me to be their financial advisor, not simply their investment manager. Investment management is but a part of being a true advisor. It’s for all the parts together that you would pay me, not for simply choosing your investments.

This is the single most important question you can ask a financial advisor. Sadly, very few clients of advisors can answer it correctly of their advisors. Far too few advisors have good answers.

Here’s my answer: from my flat advisory fee, and only from my flat advisory fee. Not a penny from any investments, products, or insurance policies I might recommend you purchase. No matter how much money you have, no matter where I recommend it go, my fee is the same.

I don’t try to beat the market — because beating the market isn’t a plan, it’s a wish. My job isn’t to guess what comes next. My job is to build portfolios that give you the highest probability of long-term success, measured in decades, not news cycles.

My approach draws heavily from academic literature.

Here’s what that actually means for you:

1. We invest for decades — never for the moment.
A good financial plan is built around your life, not market noise.
We don’t shift strategies because the market is up, down, sideways, or confusing.
We only shift if your life changes — career, family, cash flow needs, risk capacity, or goals.

Market timing is just another form of guessing. And guessing is not a strategy.

2. Own global markets broadly and efficiently.
The foundation of your portfolio is low-cost, globally diversified index and factor-based funds. Markets are incredibly hard to beat but remarkably easy to capture — if you stay disciplined.

3. Tilt toward proven, compensated sources of return.
Decades of research support thoughtful exposure to value, size, quality, and profitability. These tilts aren’t about chasing performance — they’re about improving the reliability of expected returns and investment experience.

4. Be cost-conscious — not cost-obsessed.
Most of the portfolio uses low-fee funds. But when a strategy offers a truly distinct, evidence-based return stream — and when implementation skill matters — I’m comfortable using higher-cost vehicles (e.g. AQR funds.)
Not to try to “win,” but to diversify more intelligently.

I won’t pay for stock-picking.
But, in situations where it makes sense, I do see value in paying for diversification that actually diversifies.

5. Behavior drives results.
The biggest risk to your portfolio isn’t volatility — it’s abandoning a good plan during volatility. My job is to design a portfolio you can stick with through recessions, booms, panics, and bubbles.

Because of these evidence-based tilts, your portfolio might look a little different from the total market — intentionally. Not to gamble, but to create a smoother path toward your goals.

In short:
I’m not trying to beat the market.
I’m trying to help you invest with confidence over the only timeline that really works: decades.

And of course — no strategy can guarantee results.

Not mine, not anyone’s, not even a simple S&P 500 index. Markets are uncertain by nature.

This approach is built to support long-term success.

The total time required of new clients to deal with it is typically minutes. (There are infrequent cases that require more, but those are always due to a new client’s existing financial custodian requiring its own paperwork before transferring accounts.) No, in most cases, there is no need for you to speak with your current advisor.

This is a great example of a very candid & fair question more people should ask of financial advisors. The security you have is that I cannot steal what I never possess. Clients NEVER send me investment money. (Interesting detail of history: Bernie Madoff’s clients wrote checks to Madoff Securities. He was his own custodian. That’s how he pulled off his scheme.)

The only client money I can direct to my personal account is for fee billing, Altruist must approve my billing requests before I can transfer it from my clients’ accounts. Altruist will allow any request that is not in line with my upfront fee charges, or my regular quarterly billing, or my contract paperwork.

In a sense, yes, in the same the way a doctor would limit a diabetic patient’s food options by forbidding high-sugar junk food such as soda, cookies, and cake. Is that patient better off or worse off with such “limited” options? I say better off, much better off. I also say that that patient’s, “good,” options are not, in fact, limited.

I act similarly as an advisor.

With very, very few exceptions (term life insurance and some income-only annuities are two), products that pay the salesperson a commission or other up-front payment are absolutely not in the client’s best interest. They are clearly in the salesperson’s and product provider’s (i.e. life insurance company’s, fund company’s) best interests, and by a lot.

Moreover, today, virtually any product or fund that pays a salesperson a commission (or sales load) is also available in a commission-free (or load-free) version. Commission-free products are far more in the client’s best interest (if advisors using them don’t tack on heavy fees to make up for the lack of commission, which happens a lot). Commission-free products have much lower internal expenses, precisely because there is no commission to pay, therefore the client receives far more, “bang for the buck.” That is why I bias towards commission-free products for clients who want or need insurance protection, for which I charge nothing extra.

The major conflict of interest problem other financial advisors have is that they are paid some percentage of their clients’ assets, either smaller percentages annually, or large percentages up-front as commissions. Because I am only paid my flat advisory fee, I have none of those conflicts. I am free to advise the client on what is in the client’s best interest, because I don’t get paid more or less for however much a client invests anywhere, wherever a client invests, or whatever a client buys.

My clear conflict of interest is pre-advisory relationship. If you ask me whether I think you should become my client, and I want you to become a client, clearly I stand to benefit financially from having you as a client. As a result, I cannot give you advice on that decision without a big conflict of interest. Once you are my client, however, my only incentive is to do excellent work for you to make you happy so that, candidly, you keep paying me quarter after quarter, year after year, to be your advisor.

So while it’s correct that all financial advisors have conflicts of interest with their clients, unlike almost all other financial advisors’, mine is only pre-relationship.

I’ve always lived in two worlds: the creative world and the financial one. I know firsthand how unpredictable a creative life can be.

What pushed me into financial advising was a growing conviction: people deserve better than the financial advice they’re getting.

Too many advisors hide fees, sell products, or quietly exploit the fact that most people don’t know what they’re paying for — or what conflicts exist behind the scenes. I’ve seen friends, and fellow creatives put their trust in people who did not earn it. And I couldn’t ignore that.

My “why” is simple:

I want to make financial advice honest, transparent, evidence-based, and human — especially for creatives and entrepreneurs who are often overlooked or taken advantage of.

I want people to feel clarity instead of confusion, partnership instead of pressure, and confidence instead of fear. I want to help people make grounded decisions so they can create, build, and live with more freedom.

And I want to do it in a way that’s fair — both to my clients and to myself.

No gimmicks. No hidden agendas. No selling. Just thoughtful planning, long-term investing, and someone who actually cares whether you end up okay.