Tools For Money Hourly Consulting Rates.

Both investors/consumers and financial advisors can get just about any kind of financial planning and/or investment management work done. You can have also have custom financial tools created.

We're also available as an Expert Witness, and we can audit your existing financial plan so you can get a second opinion before you make life-changing decisions.

For financial advisors, the most common service is making custom model portfolios from 401(k) plans, single mutual fund families, or variable annuities.

For consumers / investors, the two biggest items of interest are getting a financial plan created that forecasts one's financial future using the RWR retirement software, and managing money using one of the asset allocation software programs. Doing both usually takes about three hours of billable time. Maybe up to five hours if you want a full/detailed asset allocation report including 401(k) plans, and maybe a life insurance needs analysis.

You can download a free sample comprehensive financial plan to see examples what you'd get.

Investors: This is the place if you want great results while avoiding the usual parade of unsuitable investment recommendations, scams, tricks, lies, deceptive practices, conflicts of interest, illegal activities, and self-enrichment schemes of "respected professionals." Why deal with all that when you can get better results than going to a local financial planner's office, for less cost?

Whom work is done for, and what's done for them is 100% confidential - nobody will ever know but us.

Each job and person is different, so the exact sequence of events will differ too.

A good compromise between doing all of the work yourself and having us do it all, is to just have us do the proposed/recommendations part. You do all of the work generating the current/old version, then we'll take it over from there, just making the new version with recommendations.

You have to implement your plans, open accounts, and make your own investment portfolio trades (buys and sells). This is one reason why it's about one third of the price - the other two thirds that a financial planner would charge is for doing all of this trading and mundane paperwork.

Discount brokers make it fairly easy and inexpensive to do all of these functions these days. So you'll also save money on making all of your investment trades. Discount brokers will most always have lower ticket charges than a financial planner working through a Broker Dealer.

About opening a discount brokerage account so you can manage your own money

The Usual Sequence of Events

· E- mail or call (800) 658-1824 asking what this is all about.

· Once you know, you select what work you want done. We'll go over this in detail so you'll only get what you want.

· You'll get a price estimate and how many days it will take to do the work. Most of the time, it's less than week.

· Unless you only want printed reports sent to you in the regular post, or PDF files sent via e-mail, you pay a discounted price for all of the software tools needed to do the work. Consumers don't have to pay for Financial Planning Fact Finders, but financial advisors do.

If you want an RWR retirement report or an asset allocation software report, then you'd pay 75% of the cost of the software, then on top of that, the cost of doing the work.

The prices for the software are either the e-mail or full phone-supported prices (your choice). If you want to do it all via e-mail, then that's less expensive. If you like the human contact, then you'd probably want full phone support (and we'll talk our way through the whole process).

These sample prices may be using old hourly rates, as they change every couple of months. So please keep in mind that it's $100 per hour for actual work, and then $25 for prep work (as described below).

For example, if you wanted an RWR retirement plan, without doing a detailed family budget analysis (to get an estimated retirement income goal), and you wanted to do it all via e-mail, and not the phone, then you'd pay $86 ($114 x 0.75) for RWR with e-mail support, and then an hour to do the work - so the total would be $136 ($86 + $50), and so you'd pay $68 up front, and $68 when we're all done.

When we're done, you'd then have the software with your data input into it, and then you'd be free to play around with it all you want.

Shop around and see what that would cost by getting a local planner to do it in person. We doubt you'll find someone that wants to do it for less than $250. Even if you do, you won't have the retirement software, so you'd have to pay them again to get any changes made.

If you're already an RWR customer, then you'd just pay the $50 for one hour of inputting your current data, making it good, and getting it back to you with recommendations, comments, and opinions. If you inputted the current data yourself, and you just want someone to look it over, then you wouldn't have to pay any more if you bought a supported version, because that would be included in normal support.

This estimate example does not include billing for "prep work," as you can read at the bottom. So on average, add another $25 to $100 when doing anything significant amount of work.

The Process

· You'll receive, via e-mail, all of the pertinent Financial Planning Fact Finders. Then you'd fill them out and get them back to us via e-mail or fax or post. Directions on how to do that via e-mail are here. These are for gathering your information to input into the software.

· You'll probably get a list of questions/more data needed after we look the Fact Finders over.

· Once we have all of the data, you may get a revised price quote if it looks like it will take longer than originally estimated. This happens about a quarter of the time. You'd then pay half up-front using a method of your choice.

· When the work is done, the files are e-mailed to you (just as if you bought the programs, but with your data input into them). We'll discuss the results as long as you want.

· We tweak things until you're satisfied. If you make changes, or mistakes, then it's billable time to deal with that. Fixing mistakes on our part doesn't count toward billable time.

· If the billable time went over, then you'll be billed the difference. If it went under, then a credit will be applied (or the second half of your bill will be lowered).

· Periodic updates are up to you, and are billed at the same rates. It only takes a fraction of the time because your data is mostly already there. Some people can get a quarterly rebalancing asset allocation report in under 15 minutes of billable time.

About Billing for "Prep" Time

For some people, just getting to the point where work can be done (reading e-mails, digging through statements and previous e-mails, teaching, doing research, phone calls, etc.) can take up to five times more billable time than actually doing the work.

So all work done preparing to do work, answering questions, responding to phone calls and e-mails, tweaking the details of things after the work is done, and phone calls/e-mails explaining everything, directions, advice, etc. is $25 per hour.

Then when the actual work is done, it's billable at the normal rates above (which change).

So basically, when we actually use the software to make financial plans, all of this billable time is at the normal rates. ALL work done that is not using the software is $25 per hour.

So for example, if it takes an hour of phone calls/e-mails to get to the point of inputting data into the software, then it takes an hour to actually do the work (at $100 an hour), and then it takes an hour to make an e-mail answering all of the questions/explaining the work/etc., then the total bill would be $150.

Read about the mutual fund recommendation, screening, and analysis service where you can get professional, unbiased, opinions on just about any open-end mutual fund, with no conflicts of interest

Personal Finance Software Modules

Fully Integrated Financial Planning Software

Menu of Retirement Planning Software

Asset Allocation Overview with Our Historical Returns

Asset Allocation Calculator

Asset Allocation Models with Our Historical Returns

Monthly Updated Mutual Fund Picks

Financial Tools

Free Family Budgeting Calculator

Financial Planning Fact Finders

Investment Policy Statement Software

Bond Calculators