You’ve Saved $1 Million. Do You Really Need a Financial Advisor Now?

You’ve hit $1 million… now what? That milestone puts you ahead of most Americans your age, but it also changes the game in ways you might not expect. The biggest risk is no longer saving too little; it’s making less-than-optimal decisions with what you’ve built. So should you stick with the DIY approach that got you here, or is it time to bring in professional help? The answer isn’t as simple as your net worth. Here are nine signs you’d benefit from a financial advisor, and five signs you’re doing just fine on your own.

If you’re, say, in your early 50s and reached a $1 million net worth, kudos!

Hitting $1 million is a big milestone, and one worth celebrating. You’re ahead of roughly three out of four Americans your age. But unless you’re comfortable with a modest retirement budget, think around the median U.S. household income, you need to keep building.

But now that you’re “worth” seven figures, the game changes in ways you may not expect. At this point, the biggest risk is no longer saving too little. You’ve already proven you can save and invest. It’s making less-than-optimal decisions with what you’ve built and will keep building, and, without realizing it, giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. Money that could let you retire earlier and/or live better once you do.

That’s why it’s worth stepping back and asking the question differently:

Is your best move to stay the DIY course, or would you do even better with professional support?

Things That Could Be Costing You Sleep

If you’ve crossed the $1 million mark, you might be asking yourself:

• I’ve done well, but will staying solo get me to the finish line, or am I at the point where DIY stops being enough? In other words, isn’t this a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? 
• Am I leaving money on the table by not using an advisor? Am I being penny-wise and pound-foolish? 
• I don’t want to pay 1% unless it’s actually worth it. Is it? 
• What does a good advisor actually do that I can’t do, or do as well, on my own? 
• I don’t want to get sold things I don’t need. How do I avoid being pitched products and investments that benefit the advisor more than me? 

These are all excellent questions. And not the kind you want to leave unanswered.

That’s exactly what we’ll walk through here.

The Core Question Isn’t What You Think It Is

Now that you’ve saved $1 million, do you really need a financial advisor?

It seems like a simple yes/no kind of question, right?

Unfortunately, it runs afoul of something Albert Einstein warned us: “Every problem should be simplified as far as possible, but no further!”

Posing this as a “Do you or don’t you?” question oversimplifies the issue to the point that it sets you up to get it wrong.

Because the answer isn’t based on a single number, even if it’s relatively large, like $1 million. Lots of people with more than $1 million manage just fine on their own. I did, for many years. At the same time, many people, even with less than $1 million, would benefit from professional advice.

The question isn’t if you could do it on your own. You’ve already proven that you can.

The better question is this: Would hiring the right financial pro help you do better than you could on your own?

In other words, which approach gives you the best fee-adjusted outcome, financially and behaviorally?

A Quick Way to Think About It

Before we go deeper, here’s a simple way to frame it.

You’re more likely to benefit from working with a financial advisor if:

• Your financial life is getting more complicated, especially around taxes (hello 150-page tax return! Am I being tax efficient?), retirement planning (I need to plan to what age?! Is the 4% rule the best strategy?), or other major decisions (think providing for special-needs kids, negotiating a compensation package, etc.). 
• You’re not certain you’re optimizing what you’ve built.
• You’d rather not manage every detail yourself or worry about missing something important, and worse, setting your spouse up for an unmanageable scenario if you die first.

You’re more likely to be fine on your own if:

• Your finances are relatively straightforward (think W2 wages, renting, investing in low-cost index funds, etc.) , and you may be single with no kids.
• You follow a disciplined, low-cost investment approach (e.g., a basket of Exchange-Traded Funds, or ETFs, charging sub-0.1% annual management fees).
• You enjoy managing your money and can consistently stay on top of it.

Most people don’t fall cleanly on one side or the other. And even if they do today, they may find themselves changing sides in the future.

And that’s the point.

How to Use What Follows

This isn’t about checking off a bunch of boxes on a checklist and calling it a day.

Most people who can benefit from professional financial advisors don’t have just one reason for it. They typically see themselves in several of the “yes-side” items we’ll cover below.

So, as you keep reading, rather than asking yourself if you match all of them perfectly, ask yourself if you’re closer to “yes” than “no” for enough of them.

That will make your personal answer clearer.

With that in mind, we’ll walk through the signs that suggest you might benefit from professional advice, starting with those that tend to have the biggest long-term impact.

Nine Signs You Might Benefit from Working with a Financial Advisor

There are several common scenarios where professional advice can make the biggest difference, where things gradually become more complex, and mistakes become more costly.

1. Complicated tax situations

Early on, your tax situation was likely simple.

You had W2 income, took the standard deduction, and perhaps funded a traditional IRA and/or a pre-tax 401(k) account.

But now, with over $1 million in net worth and the income that helped build it, things stopped being so simple. Most likely, more than one of the following describes your current tax situation:

• You own a business (or five) that brings in enough money that self-employment taxes are uncomfortably high.
• Your taxable brokerage account generates qualified and unqualified dividends, and both short-term and long-term capital gains.
• You have a mix of pre-tax and Roth IRAs and 401(k) accounts, and tapping them each has different tax implications.
• You’re starting to hit income phase-outs for Roth contributions and certain deductions (or have long ago passed that marker).
• You’re facing a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) cliff in a couple of decades, so you want to do Roth conversions, but are not sure how much to convert and when.
• You’re receiving multiple K-1 forms from different states and/or own properties in more than one state.
• You’re thinking of moving to a different state.

Individually, these aren’t too complicated, at least not beyond tax season. But taken together, you have a system where a change in one place affects everything else, and where even small inefficiencies could be costing you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars each year.

For example, it took a while until I learned that electing to have my consulting practice, a sole-member LLC, taxed as an S-corp would save me tens of thousands in self-employment taxes.

It took changing accountants to teach me that.

And if I had had a good financial advisor back then, he or she would likely have suggested making the change a few years earlier.

It may not be flashy like identifying the next Amazon or Nvidia when they’re still small, but a good advisor adds value by coordinating decisions across your entire financial picture.

2. Approaching or entering retirement

I won’t lie.

I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool personal-finance DIYer for decades.

I reached “work-optional” status and reduced my workload by 90%. I describe myself now as “mostly retired.”

I put together a monster spreadsheet that tracks and projects our finances, revenues, business expenses, personal expenses, estimated taxes, and investment outcomes for the past 12 years and almost forty years into the future. Call me weird, but I enjoy it.

But one thing I’ve never done before is to retire and live off a portfolio. So, I started wondering, how many things are out there that “I don’t know that I don’t know” and that could end up biting me on the rear end?

I tried two flat-fee advisory companies. Both were epic failures.

Then, I found a sort of “family office light” service, where I work with an experienced advisor rather than a different fresh-out advisor each call.

We just kicked things off, so I’ll report on my experience with him in the future. But thus far it’s promising. I especially appreciated his plausibly pushing back on some of the assumptions in my projections spreadsheet that put me at risk of retirement failure in a few decades.

When you’re in the accumulation phase, things are relatively simple. Save (a large enough fraction of your income) consistently, invest for growth, and stay the course. But when the flow reverses? When, instead of feeding your portfolio, you now need it to feed you?

Now you need to figure out:

• How much can you safely withdraw each year?
• From which accounts should you withdraw money, in what order, and in what proportions, to minimize taxes and maximize your long-term results?
• How do you mitigate sequence-of-returns risk? I.e., how do you prevent an early-retirement market crash from eviscerating your retirement plan?

And the real problem is that there isn’t a single “right” answer for everyone.

Your personal answer depends on:

• Your mix of taxable, pre-tax, and Roth accounts, and how that mix evolves throughout your retirement.
• Your Social Security claim timing.
• Your spending needs and how those evolve, especially with any large unplanned expenses that may crop up.
• Your legacy desires, and how those might change.
• Market conditions for equities, bonds, and other asset classes you may invest in.

Getting things right in all these domains can add to your discretionary spending in retirement, reduce the risk of running out, leave more for heirs and/or charities, and even let you accomplish all these with fewer years of full-time work.

Getting things wrong, or even less optimally, will likely not immediately show up on your radar, but you’ll face a less friendly outcome when it’s too late to do much about it.

3. Dealing with a major life transition or financial event

Every once in a while, something comes up that raises the stakes and/or reduces your margin of error. Things like selling a business, going through a divorce, having to support aging parents or adult children, or, on the more positive side, receiving a major bonus, stock option award, or inheritance.

These aren’t everyday things.

They come with considerations for tax impacts, timing, and hard-to-reverse tradeoffs, and you’re likely dealing with a lot emotionally. Having an experienced, objective advisor can help make decisions that will more likely turn out to your satisfaction.

4. Estate and legacy planning

You’ve hit and exceeded $1 million. That means your financial plan isn’t just about you anymore.

What if something happens to you (and possibly your spouse, too)? 

How do you want your assets to be passed on? How can you set that up to minimize your heirs’ red tape nightmare?

You need estate planning, including wills and trusts, designating primary and secondary beneficiaries (I just revisited mine), coordinating accounts, ensuring legal documents are easily found by your heirs, and optimizing taxes on assets you leave behind.

And all this has to be done in a way that will work in real life, not just on paper.

This is where a good financial advisor can help, crafting a comprehensive, coordinated plan that addresses and minimizes complexity and reduces risk.

Having addressed complexity, we move on to how you react when life happens. How do you make the best decisions possible when things go wrong?

And even if you make good decisions, do you lose sleep because you’re not sure they’re the best possible ones?

5. You struggle with market volatility

When the markets keep climbing, everyone’s a genius, long-term investor. But about once every four years, the bear strikes. When it does, it isn’t as easy to stay unemotional and disciplined. The headlines are screaming that the sky is falling, and recency bias makes it look like the red ink will keep flowing indefinitely, so you’re wondering if you shouldn’t cut your losses and sit out the rest of the drop.

When this happens, even if you know a crash is just an opportunity to buy stocks at a discount, it’s beyond difficult to do the right thing, and buy the dip, or at least follow the saying, “Don’t just do something! Stand there!”

Because knowing the right thing to do (or not do) and being emotionally capable of executing it are two completely separate things.

Even smart investors get caught up in the drama and sell at the wrong time, sit on the sidelines in cash way too long because they’re afraid the most recent move back up is a “dead cat bounce,” and even when they do move back in, they chase what’s worked for others recently, which is more than likely no longer the best bet.

This is where a financial advisor’s value can be huge. Not just helping you manage your portfolio, but more importantly, managing your emotional response to what’s happening to it.

6. You stress over your decisions

In today’s financial environment, if your net worth broke through seven figures, there are a lot of decisions to be made, sometimes a few a year, but other times several a day. So you decide and act. But then, you start wondering:

• “Does my Roth conversion plan optimize taxes for my heirs and me?”
• “Is my portfolio allocation too aggressive, too conservative, or just right?”
• “Can I really retire at age X?”
• “Does it make sense to buy that vacation home my spouse wants?”
• “How much can I donate to our congregation?”
• “How much can I give my kid to help with buying a first home?”
• “Am I missing something obvious?”

These are all financial decisions, but they’re also deeply emotional.

In extreme cases, you may be losing sleep. I’ll confess, this has happened to me more than once, especially around the decision to mostly retire at age 63.

But even in less extreme cases, you may feel stressed, which isn’t good for your next decision, and even more so for your physical health.

A financial pro can add a pair of knowledgeable eyes, helping you validate your decisions when you pick the best option, catch things you may have missed, and give you confidence in moving forward.

Having a neutral third party can also help keep things calm and constructive when you need to negotiate these decisions with your spouse or kids.

7. You don’t have the time or, frankly, the interest in managing everything

It’s not (just) about picking investments. You’ve done enough of that to reach a net worth higher than most.

But you still need to:

• Monitor your investment allocations and rebalance when appropriate.
• Manage and optimize taxes, including harvesting tax losses.
• Review accounts for unexplained charges or withdrawals.
• Make sure your spending aligns with your priorities and stays within your budget.
• Stay current with changes in law, rules, and regulations, and how they impact your plan.

You can do all of this, especially if you keep up with financial and tax changes.

However, doing all of it takes time, attention, and emotional bandwidth. You may miss something important. And even if you don’t, it still takes time and energy away from the rest of your life. What’s more, you may simply not enjoy doing it.

I mean, I enjoy reading about the markets, optimizing our portfolio, and especially running multi-decade projections (I told you, I’m weird!)

But I very much doubt you’re that weird.

And if you don’t enjoy it, having to do it adds to your everyday stress, and adds to your “to-do list” things that feel like nagging chores. And if you’re like me, things that feel like that get put off until you can’t put them off anymore.

And by the time you get to them, they’re no longer just important. They’re urgent too. And you may not have enough time to address them well.

And you may also miss something from time to time, and over time, small missed actions can compound into major missed opportunities.

If this sounds like you, wouldn’t outsourcing these things improve not just your outcomes, but also your quality of life?

Would you rather spend the time and energy on tracking everything and optimizing your finances, or delegate as much as possible to a professional advisor so you can concentrate on work/business, family, friends, health and fitness, hobbies, and travel?

8. You’ve become a single point of financial failure

Even if you have everything down to a science, with systems in place to keep everything humming along, what happens if, heavens forbid, you get hit by the proverbial bus?

Could your spouse step in without missing a beat? Could even your kids step in and help your spouse without anything important being dropped?

This is something I’ve been pondering a lot, especially in recent years, after hitting age 60.

And my answer is still, “Not really.”

Frankly, that’s scary. And it’s another reason to have a financial advisor’s support. Our advisor can help by providing continuity of decision-making, serving as a resource to negotiate a painful time, and helping ensure my plan continues providing for my wife.

9. You want to do better than just “fine”

You’ve already shown you can do just fine as a DIYer.

But what if “fine” isn’t enough?

What if you want things optimized so you aren’t leaving money on the proverbial table?

A good advisor can help you optimize, structure things more efficiently, find smarter and easier ways of reaching your goals, and have all that happen without increasing the load on you.

Things like optimal tax efficiency, safe withdrawal strategies that let you spend more in retirement without increased risk of running out, and allocating assets so your returns can cover your expenses, inflation, and a bit extra for growth.

These are all signs that hiring a financial advisor may benefit you.

But that’s not the case for everyone.

Next, let’s look at who, having hit $1 million, would do just as well without paying an advisor.

Five Signs You’re Likely Fine on Your Own

The above 9 signals all point in the same direction – getting an advisor can be helpful and very much worth it.

But in many cases, the opposite may be true.

Plenty of people have reached seven figures and are perfectly capable of continuing the DIY path, saving significant money in fees that aren’t worth it for them.

Here are the 5 most common signs.

1. Despite being “worth” $1 million, your financial life is still simple

If, despite your net worth milestone, you still have just W2 income, a 401(k), some IRAs, and a couple of checking and savings accounts, and especially if you’re single with no kids, your financial situation is simple enough that you don’t need a financial pro’s help.

2. Your investment strategy is simple, low-cost, and adequately diversified

You have money in a basket of low-cost, broad-market index ETFs, and enough money in low-risk, liquid accounts to cover an emergency. You understand how asset allocation works, and your allocation makes sense given your age and net worth. When the market crashes, you stay the course or even take advantage to buy temporarily discounted assets.

If that’s you, you aren’t paying high fees (this was one of my portfolio’s weak points for a long time, paying about 0.8% annual mutual fund management fees, rather than sub-0.1% index ETF management fees).

You also don’t constantly tweak things, and don’t chase yesterday’s hot assets, which by now are likely overpriced and ready to revert to the mean anyway (i.e., drop in price right after you pile in). This means there’s less of a difference for a financial advisor to make for you.

3. You actually enjoy managing your finances and follow through consistently

This was me, in spades, for decades. I enjoyed knowing where every dollar we spend goes; projecting our revenues, business expenses, personal expenses, taxes, and investment results; optimizing our strategy; and continuously reading, learning, and writing about personal finance.

Plus, I consistently followed through on our plan. That consistency compounded into long-term results that got us to where we are. If that describes you, too, then managing your finances isn’t a burden. It’s fun (crazy, right?)!

All this means that you’re less likely to miss anything important or simply neglect it until it’s too late, without needing a financial pro to look over your shoulder and keep cluing you in.

4. You’re comfortable making decisions without constant validation

If you can make important decisions regularly, without stressing and second-guessing, and if you can make these decisions thoughtfully, accepting that there’s rarely a “perfect answer,” you can move forward without losing sleep and without getting paralyzed.

If that’s you, a financial advisor’s value for you is far less than for most mere mortals.

5. The math just doesn’t justify the fees

Financial advisors aren’t set up as a charity. They’re professionals who need to be compensated for their knowledge, expertise, experience, and time.

And different advisors use different fee structures. For example:

• Assets Under Management (AUM) fees, e.g., 1% a year to manage a $1 million portfolio. The AUM rate usually drops as your assets increase.
• Flat annual fees.
• Project-based or hourly fees.
• Commissions.
• A combination of two or more of the above.

If you’re looking at paying 1% of $1 million, that’s $10k a year. The table below shows how this may evolve over a 20-year period. 

• The table assumes a median tiered AUM fee schedule, where you’re charged 1.0% for the first $1 million, 0.8% for the portion from $1 million to $2.5 million, 0.65% for the portion from $2.5 million to $5 million, and 0.5% above that. 
• It also assumes 7.5% annual portfolio growth. 
• Projected fees are adjusted for a presumed 3.5% annual inflation. 
• The benefit/(loss) columns assume The benefit/(loss) columns assume that without advice, your annual return would be lower by 0.5% or 1%. With the former, fees exceed the pure financial return. With the latter, they don’t.

You have to ask yourself if the value you’d likely get from hiring an advisor would be much greater than the cost. In the table, we assume your annual DIY returns would be lower than your advised returns by 1%, which results in a win for hiring an advisor.

If we assume just a 0.5% performance penalty, the picture flips (but note that we’re only looking at investment returns, ignoring all other possible benefits). If your situation is so simple and well-organized that the value simply isn’t there, an advisor is likely not a good fit for you. 

At least not yet. It may still be worth considering a flat fee, one-time, full financial plan, but you may not even need that yet.

Where Does All This Leave You, and Why Is It a Harder Decision Now?

Some of the first 9 signals probably resonated, at least somewhat.

Some of the last 5 may also feel right.

That’s to be expected.

This isn’t a binary decision. And at this stage of your financial life, the right answer is about what will give you the best outcome, with the least stress, over time. Unfortunately, that decision tends to get harder, not easier, once you’re in “seven-figure land.”

You’d think you’ve already done the hard part, right? You saved, invested, stayed disciplined, and crossed into seven-figure territory. Can’t you just “rinse and repeat?”

In some ways, yes.

Building wealth from nothing was relatively simple, if not easy.

• Spend less than you earn.
• Build an emergency fund so you don’t get easily derailed.
• Consistently invest the difference between your income and your spending in a low-cost, diversified portfolio.

Even if you aren’t perfect, time and discipline do the heavy lifting. But as your net worth grew, things quietly became more complicated, and the margin for error shrank.

Now, at seven figures, you can’t continue just investing. You need to manage your taxes strategically, use different account types appropriately, and avoid excessive risk.

Unlike before, in case of massive losses, you’d have a longer road and less time to recover.

• At higher income levels, being a bit less efficient in your tax strategy could eat up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a year.
• Too-aggressive an allocation could set you back years.
• Too conservative a one will compound your returns far more slowly than they could.
• The wrong withdrawals can lead to large penalties.

Individually, none of these feels critical. But repeated over time, they can quietly reduce what your portfolio can ultimately support.

Not overnight. Not in an obvious way. But slowly, quietly compounding in a way that only becomes visible years later, when your options are more limited.

And whether you want it or not, over time, as assets grow and as you use debt strategically, your financial life gets more complicated.

• More accounts.
• More tax implications.
• More people who count on you to get things right.

Which makes coordination more important than ever.

So, what should you do next?

At this stage, the better question to ask isn’t, “Can I keep doing this myself?”

It’s, “Now that I’ve made it this far, what gives me the highest likelihood of achieving the best outcomes with the least stress?”

For some, continuing the DIY route is the better answer. For others, it’s engaging the right professional help.

What Does a Good Advisor Actually Do?

At this point, if you’re seriously considering hiring a financial advisor, it’s important to be clear on what you’d be paying for. Here are some of the main things.

1. Investment management (or advice if you prefer to keep your own finger on the trigger), but that’s the least differentiated part of an advisor’s job, the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
2. Help navigate complicated, interconnected, emotionally driven decisions. E.g., when to retire; how much you can safely spend; if, when, and how much to convert into Roth accounts; when to claim Social Security benefits; how to handle major, unexpected expenses, or large windfalls. These aren’t always one-off questions. You often need to revisit them as the years go by.
3. Tax strategy around investments, charitable giving, etc. When to draw, from what account, how much to give, and when, etc. You can’t (legally) avoid taxes, but the right setup and the right choices can help you minimize your tax liability over a lifetime.
4. Coordinate your entire financial situation, including different account types with different tax treatments, different asset classes that bring in returns that get taxed differently, competing goals, and interconnected insurance decisions (e.g., how big an umbrella policy makes sense, what type and how large a life insurance policy you should buy, and which carriers’ policies are your best fits). A good advisor can even help you find the best offer and negotiate the best deal on a car purchase from a dealer.
5. Provide emotional ballast when markets crash and/or your spending spikes. This is crucial to prevent short-term thinking and emotional reactions from derailing your long-term plan. The value of this behavioral support can’t be quantified ahead of time, but over a lifetime, it can be one of the biggest drivers of optimal outcomes.
6. Reduce complexity and mental and emotional load. Yes, you can probably do it all yourself. But a good advisor can take many tasks off your plate so you don’t have to. Things like tracking market conditions, insurance assessment, finding the best providers for, e.g., concierge services, etc. This not only improves financial outcomes but also reduces stress and improves your quality of life.
7. As mentioned above, if you’re a single financial point of failure for your family, a good advisor can provide a critical backup system.

It Isn’t All or Nothing!

It’s a common misconception. Hiring a financial advisor isn’t all or nothing. It isn’t a choice between doing everything yourself or handing everything over. Certainly not from Day One.

You could hire a full-service advisor, especially if your situation is especially complicated and you prefer to delegate everything to a pro.

Or, you could pay a flat fee for a financial plan or advice around a specific decision, then implement it yourself. This is best if you’re capable, engaged, like doing things yourself, and just want a second opinion or a better-structured overall plan.

Another option is as-needed advice, paid by the hour. This is best when you don’t need ongoing support, but want to have someone you can call on for advice whenever you need it.

Or, finally, you can go for a hybrid approach. This could be getting an initial plan including asset allocation, followed by occasional check-ins when needed, or using a robo-advisor for portfolio management, and paying for as-needed human advice when you need more.

What the Pros Say

I asked several financial advisors some questions regarding both sides of the “do they/don’t they” divide regarding millionaires needing professional support. 

Here’s what they have to say.

Q. In your experience, what’s the clearest sign that someone who has built a significant portfolio on their own would benefit from working with a financial advisor? 

A. Ben Simerly, CFP®, Financial Advisor and Founder of Lakehouse Family Wealth, kicks things off for us, “The clearest sign that someone who has built a significant portfolio on their own would benefit from working with a financial advisor is if they think they don’t need an advisor. 

“For this one, talk to any business owner or leader in human history. The best will tell you that the #1 thing they look for in finding a ‘smart’ person is the combination of mental state and passion for learning more about what they don’t know, and an understanding that they actually know so little that they will always need help. 

“One of the best compliments to any hungry mind is _”that guy/gal really knows what they don’t know…’And if I manage to die knowing even a hint of what I do not know, it will be a life well learned.’ The smartest people in the room always ask for help, across all of history, in every profession, in every scenario. The only real question is how much help, in what ways, and who will be in charge of the team. And this dictum bears out. 

“Often, the prospective clients who believe they need an advisor the most have done a far better job than those who are convinced they don’t need an advisor, but want some free ideas.”

Steven Crane, Founder of Financial Legacy Builders, adds, “The clearest sign someone with a million-dollar portfolio needs an advisor is when the decisions start getting more complex than the investments themselves. Building wealth is one skill. Turning that wealth into sustainable income, managing taxes, and making smart decisions under pressure is a completely different skill set. I’ve seen plenty of people do a great job accumulating assets, but then struggle when it’s time to actually use the money.”

Jeffrey J. Smith, Founder and Managing Partner of OWL Private Wealth Advisors, offers a nuanced view, “In my experience, having a $1 million portfolio doesn’t automatically mean you should have a financial advisor. Some people are delegators and like the idea of partnering with a professional in order to keep them on the right path when it comes to their asset allocation, asset location, tax planning, estate and charitable planning goals, along with their income planning needs. For others, they are just fine as a DIY investor with $1 million or even more. There needs to be a fit between the two parties, and in many cases, that partnership can be better than going at it alone.”

Scot Johnson, CFA, Principal & Chief Investment Officer at Adell, Harriman & Carpenter, Inc., offers some observations: “There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to how the portfolio was constructed. Advisors build portfolios to target client goals and aspirations, not to accommodate a collection of stock-of-the-week picks. We will also often find that portfolios are concentrated in the market sector where the prospective client works and feels knowledgeable. Advisors build portfolios that are diversified across sectors. Each of those sectors will at some point have its proverbial day in the sun, and advisors will want to make sure clients have exposure when that day comes, even if we don’t know when it will arrive.”

Don Rudolph, Fixed Fee Fiduciary at FlatFeeCIO, shares how financial advice, these days, can be far less expensive, and thus far more approachable for many. He says, “Experienced advice is far more accessible today than even 5 or 10 years ago. We are in a new era of efficient wealth management where far lower fixed annual fees are transforming financial outcomes for affluent investors by unlocking the potential for tens of thousands of dollars in savings each year versus legacy level percentage on asset fees. 

“Today, the full-service wealth suite that includes ongoing wealth management and tax and estate planning is available for a far lower single fixed annual fee based on complexity and curated for the exact services needed, versus a one-size-fits-all decades-old percentage on asset fee. The current AI disruption is rapidly accelerating this efficient wealth services wave toward fixed-fee fiduciaries as a preferred engagement alternative for affluent families.”

Q. How can a good financial advisor add value for a millionaire in ways that most people don’t fully appreciate? 

A. Simerly points out the difference a financial advisor’s team can make, “For many clients aged 55 with $1 million in investable assets, we can often add 2-4% to returns, and cut taxes in retirement by 75% to 95%. That often translates to a retirement income that is 1.5 to 3 times what it would have been before they came to us. 

“The key here is that plenty of our clients are more than smart enough to do my job. The difference is time. It’s the experience and knowledge that we have because of time in the seat that home investors cannot possibly accumulate on their own without changing careers or forgoing an actual retirement. 

“The other is the team approach. A team always beats the performance of a single individual. Every single time. When you add an advisor, you add their team. You add tax-planning-focused accountants, you add financial and generationally focused estate attorneys, you add any specialists needed, etc. Better teams always win. And I quite simply do not believe in losing, so, I believe in better teams.”

Crane expands beyond investment advice, “Where a good advisor adds value isn’t usually in picking better investments. It’s in helping someone avoid costly mistakes. Things like pulling money out at the wrong time, making poor tax decisions, or not having a clear withdrawal strategy in retirement. Those decisions can quietly cost far more than any advisory fee.”

Johnson points out how an advisor can tell you what you need to know, even if you’d prefer not to hear it, “A good financial advisor adds value for a millionaire in ways that most people don’t fully appreciate, by speaking candidly. Valued advisors tell clients what they need to hear, even if it’s not what they want to hear. Advisors can provide a sounding board to help assess risk vs. reward across many aspects of a client’s financial life. An experienced advisor has likely encountered many different life experiences with other clients that can add value to conversations and guidance. A particular client may not have encountered a specific circumstance before, but there’s a good chance that an experienced advisor has helped someone work through that very challenge before.”

Q. What are the key characteristics of someone likely to do just as well, or better, managing their finances without a financial advisor? 

A. Simerly says, “The best traits for a potential self-advisor are:

• “A thirst for knowing more of what they do not know – how do you have a chance for success without a mindset that you do not know? 
• “Having more income than needed, giving them room for error
• “Being single, because, realistically, with a spouse, who will take the blame when something goes wrong? Who will spend the time with the spouse if one person or both are always stressing over self-managing money and learning what they do not know?”

Crane expands, “There are absolutely people who don’t need a financial advisor, even with a million dollars or more. Typically, they’re disciplined, they keep things simple, and they don’t overreact to markets. They understand their plan, and they stick to it. In a lot of cases, they’re already doing the handful of things that actually matter, saving consistently, investing in low-cost funds, and avoiding emotional decisions. 

Q. At what point does the cost of a financial advisor start to outweigh the benefits? For example, does someone with a $10 million portfolio under management take that much more effort for an advisor, or get that much more benefit, than someone with a $1 million or $2 million portfolio, such that the higher AUM fees make sense? 

A. Simerly points out, “Advisor needs relative to investable assets are often about asset brackets. The needs for managing accounts of $200,000 and $500,000 are not very different; nor are the needs for managing $3 million or $10 million. But different asset brackets do have different costs. So, to me, the real question is about fit. The right advisor isn’t the best at their craft, but the best at the specific craft that you need. The advisor who is the right fit will also have pricing that is a fit for your situation.”

Crane has the same issue with AUM charges that many clients express: “Where I get more skeptical is when fees start to scale without a clear increase in value. A portfolio doesn’t suddenly become ten times more complex just because it’s ten times larger. Charging a percentage of assets can create a situation where the cost grows faster than the actual work or benefit being provided. At a certain point, especially as portfolios grow into the multi-million range, people should be asking whether they’re paying for advice or just paying more because they have more.”

The Bottom Line

If you think you may need a financial advisor because you’ve reached $1 million, set your mind at ease. You don’t.

It isn’t about a single number, including net worth.

Here’s what does matter:

• Has your financial situation become too complex for comfort, or do you feel confident and disciplined enough to continue the DIY path?
• How much time and energy do you feel like investing in managing everything yourself?
• How likely do you think it is, given your situation, that a good advisor will offer far more value than their fees?

You made it to seven figures on your own, so clearly, you’ve been doing a lot right, and most likely you’ll be fine staying the DIY course.

But is “fine” what you want, or do you prefer “optimal”?

For most people, the best question to ponder isn’t “Do I need a financial advisor?” but rather “Would a good advisor help me achieve better outcomes with less stress, providing more than enough value to justify the cost?”

If your answer to that second question is yes, or even mostly yes, start looking for good advisors who could be a good fit for your needs, interview several, and see if any of them is a good enough fit to try hiring them.

And needless to say, you want a good advisor. Not a mediocre or poor one. You also want to make sure they’re a fiduciary, so they have to put your interests ahead of theirs.

If your answer is no, that’s perfectly fine too.

There isn’t a uniform answer that’s true for everyone, no rule of thumb.

Make the decision that works best for you now, and revisit it when you feel your situation may have changed enough to change your answer.

In practical terms:

• If you’re unsure → consider paying for a one-time plan.
• If you got multiple “yes” signals → interview advisors and hire the one that seems to be the best fit.
• If you got mostly “no” signals → stay the DIY course and reassess in 2–3 years.

Are You Ready to Hire a Financial Advisor?

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Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only, and should not be considered financial advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.