{"id":652416,"date":"2026-05-19T13:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/652416\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:33:09","slug":"if-your-financial-adviser-is-earning-a-commission-i-say-run-an-investing-experts-advice-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/652416\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018If your financial adviser is earning a commission, I say, run\u2019: An investing expert\u2019s advice | Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Schneider has a $4m portfolio and says he spends about five minutes a year managing it. Investing<\/a>, he says, is dead simple.<\/p>\n

So why did he start a financial advising firm?<\/p>\n

Wall Street \u201chas taken this very, very simple thing [investing], and chopped it into 50 million ways to charge you fees\u201d, he says. He thought he could make financial advice more accessible and largely free of conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

So two years ago, Schneider founded Nectarine, a network of financial planners who charge for their time only: no commissions, no percentage of assets under management. The model is a challenge to traditional firms that he says are incentivized to sell financial products and make investing unnecessarily complex.<\/p>\n

In an age when automated robo-advisers can set up a successful portfolio in seconds and AI-driven apps can analyze and optimize your spending, Nectarine\u2019s approach helps to clarify the role of human advisers. They can help you answer the big, hairy questions that even the most powerful AI isn\u2019t yet nuanced enough to crack, says Schneider: Should I buy or rent? Can I afford to send my kids to college? When can I retire? It\u2019s \u201cthe vast world of financial advice that isn\u2019t clicking buy on an index fund\u201d, Schneider says. \u201cThat\u2019s where people actually need help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schneider, 45, grew up with uber-frugal parents who used to unplug his LED alarm clock to save money on electricity. After bootstrapping a tech startup \u2013 an apartment listing service called Rentlinx \u2013 and selling it for $5m in 2015, he began sharing money tips online via Personal Finance Club, a platform he has grown to more than 700,000 followers.<\/p>\n

The Guardian spoke with Schneider about living below his means, the weird ways financial advisers get paid, and what AI will and won\u2019t do for your finances.<\/p>\n

Like at least half of Americans<\/a>, I use AI chatbots to ask money questions all the time. Automated robo-advisers like Wealthfront and Betterment are increasingly popular<\/a> and effective. So what can a human adviser do that these tools can\u2019t?<\/p>\n

AI is really, really good at some things, like summarizing information. For example, \u201cHow does a Roth IRA work?\u201d I think AI would be good at answering that. \u201cCan you help me understand marginal tax rates?\u201d I\u2019m pretty sure it would crush that question.<\/p>\n

It would probably do a bad job answering the question: \u201cShould I do a rollover IRA or a backdoor Roth IRA?\u201d because it might not know current tax law. It might not know the full scope of your financial situation. It might not ask the questions that would be super obvious to a human. What\u2019s scary for the user is that its answer might look equally confident.<\/p>\n

I love robo advisers, and robo-advisers aren\u2019t great news for traditional investment managers. It holds their feet to the fire that they\u2019re providing value on the planning side, not just by buying index funds, because now there\u2019s a robot that can do that. But a robo doesn\u2019t do financial planning, so a robo adviser is not going to be able to answer the question of how much house can you afford or how different scenarios affect retirement. There\u2019s obviously software out there, but a human is an expert who can navigate the software and look at your situation and use their experience to translate that for you.<\/p>\n

AI is getting closer to that sort of thing, but it still doesn\u2019t have necessary context, and then it\u2019s confidently wrong.<\/p>\n

Your company Nectarine connects clients with advisers. What\u2019s the secret to finding a good one?<\/p>\n

I would say the headline is: understand how they get paid.<\/p>\n

There are three main models for financial advisers. The first is commission based. They sell investment products \u2013 insurance, mutual funds, whatever \u2013 and they make money from selling it. How are we allowing the people giving advice to be earning money based on what they sell? Clearly it\u2019s the most stark conflict of interest. If your financial adviser is earning a commission, I say, run.<\/p>\n

The second is AUM, assets under management. Their incentive is to have you transfer all their assets to them. If you ask questions like, \u201cHow much home can I afford?\u201d many of them do a great job at answering, because they\u2019re good financial professionals, but they only are incentivized to keep your money with them. [This model] could produce some weird incentives\u2013\u201cdon\u2019t buy a house, keep your money in the stock market where I get a piece.\u201d AUM fees can make sense for, say, older individuals who find a really good local adviser and want someone with an office they can walk into. AUM is not the end of the world.<\/p>\n

Business model number three is flat fee, where they charge by the hour, by the project, or by the month if it\u2019s an ongoing service. Advisers on our site [Nectarine] set their own rates. In my experience, they\u2019re in the ballpark of other flat-fee advisers. [Nectarine\u2019s advisers charge between $150 to $400 for one-hour sessions and up to $500 per month for ongoing support.] Their conflict of interest might be to keep you coming back, but they don\u2019t have a weird tie to what you\u2019re doing with your money. Their incentive is, how do I get more clients to pay me a flat fee? And so whether you\u2019re asking, Should I buy an index fund? Should I buy a house? Should I pay off debt? They have no little brain worm saying, \u201cOoh, if I tell them this, I\u2019ll get more money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFiduciary\u201d is a word that\u2019s popular right now, and it means a person who\u2019s obligated to operate in your best interest instead of their own. Many consumers look for that word. Every Nectarine adviser is a fiduciary. That said, I still wouldn\u2019t recommend clients rely on that word to separate the good from the bad. Every commissioned insurance salesman will say they\u2019re a fiduciary.<\/p>\n

To me, at the end of the day, the answer is flat-fee. Because if it\u2019s not, then you\u2019re in the world of weird incentives.<\/p>\n

Do you pay for any financial advice yourself?<\/p>\n

No. I have a tax professional who files taxes for me and my business. I would hire one of my own financial advisers when I get to a point in my life where I\u2019m doing something other than buying and holding, and I would pay them a flat fee. But for sitting there on my hands, letting the market do the work? That doesn\u2019t need ongoing engagement, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

There are two main categories that often get conflated with financial advice. One is investment management, and the other is financial planning. The investing part seems infinitely complex and is actually five minutes a year. It\u2019s dead simple. Financial planning is things like: Should you buy a house? How are you going to send your kids to college? When can you retire? Should you be doing IRA rollovers? It can be a million different decisions you make with your money.<\/p>\n

I run a company focused on the planning part. While it\u2019s not rocket science, there\u2019s absolutely a positive return on investment for talking to an expert when you get into a situation that calls for it.<\/p>\n

OK, so if you\u2019re just buying index funds and accumulating shares, you can do that on your own. What kind of questions might an adviser be helpful for, then?<\/p>\n

How much house can you afford? That\u2019s something you could tackle in an hour with a financial planner. You\u2019d look at how much money you make, your expenses, your debt, and use some calculators. People are early in the homebuying process and they\u2019re like, \u2018Should I be looking at $400,000 homes or $1m homes?\u201d Sometimes mortgage brokers will say, $1m. The only thing they care about is if you qualify, and nothing else. A financial adviser might be like, \u201cI see why you qualify for a $1m dollar home, but based on your income, based on your debt, based on your other goals, you should probably be looking more in the $400,000 range.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some questions require a longer engagement. This might be things like: If I buy that vacation home in three years, how much longer would I have to work? Or sending your kids to private versus public college. There\u2019s a lot of projecting and long-term analysis to answer those questions effectively.<\/p>\n

How much time do you spend managing your portfolio yourself?<\/p>\n

Every six months or so I might make sure there\u2019s not a big pile of cash that\u2019s been collecting because dividends aren\u2019t being reinvested and things like that. But the analogy I like is that your portfolio is like a bar of soap. The more you mess with it, the smaller it gets. If I have extra money, I buy [more shares of] a target date index fund and hold. [Editor\u2019s note: A target date index fund is a low-cost mutual fund that calibrates its risk level based on the year you expect to retire.]<\/p>\n

The money management and budgeting part is where all the active work really can and should be put into. Frugality is a skill you can work at. Look at your housing costs, your transportation costs, your food costs, your debt, your student loans \u2013 these are the things where you make the big difference.<\/p>\n

One of your mantras is to \u201clive below your means\u201d. How did you learn to do that?<\/p>\n

I had very, very frugal parents, especially my father. My parents got divorced in high school and I would rotate between them for the remainder of high school. When I went back to my dad\u2019s house, he had always unplugged my alarm clock \u2013 my little LED alarm clock that uses, like, three cents of electricity a year. This is dating myself, but I\u2019d sit there and press the button like 100 times [to reset it], because it\u2019s the only way I could wake up for school the next day. The lesson I got from that was that my dad cares more about three cents than he cares about me.<\/p>\n

I have two boys now, a four-year-old stepson and a 15-month-old baby. That\u2019s not the money lesson that I want to instill. But that\u2019s the tapestry of my life: I saw the importance of money, how much it was focused on in my household. And then I see people using it unwisely, whether it\u2019s spending or whether it\u2019s investing. I want people to live their best life, and I think my specific experience and penchant for math and understanding of the topics can help people who didn\u2019t have that.<\/p>\n

Do you have a budgeting tool or method that you recommend?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a little bit of a realist, in that 95% of people are never going to maintain a forward-looking budget. For the 5% who are, go get a YNAB account. You\u2019re my people. [You Need a Budget<\/a>, or YNAB, is a paid budgeting app, not affiliated with Schneider, that helps you create a \u201czero-based budget\u201d in which every dollar of income is assigned a job].<\/p>\n

For the 95%, set up some automatic transfers to force yourself into better behavior. Sign up for your 401(k), that\u2019s going to come right out of your paycheck before you even see it. Automatically send some to your Roth IRA. Automatically send some to a high-yield savings account. Automatically pay your debts. If you set those automatic transfers, what\u2019s left is what you can spend. I think that\u2019s realistic.<\/p>\n

Four Key Takeaways from Jeremy Schneider:<\/p>\n

Keep investing simple. One target date index fund works for most people.<\/p>\n

Use AI and roboadvisers for straightforward tasks \u2013 buying index funds, defining financial concepts, and summarizing information \u2013 but remember AI is not foolproof.<\/p>\n

Be frugal and live below your means, which will give you more money to put toward your goals.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for paid financial advice, learn about how the adviser gets paid \u2013 and what conflicts of interest might result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeremy Schneider has a $4m portfolio and says he spends about five minutes a year managing it. Investing,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-652416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}