We answer to one party
No broker-dealer, no insurance carrier, no parent bank setting a product shelf. Nothing sits between your goals and the recommendation you receive.
Modern Wealth
Independent. Fee-only. Fiduciary.
Three words the industry uses loosely. Each one has a test behind it, and an advisor either passes or does not. Run the test yourself, then ask the next firm you meet with to do the same.
The three box test
Modern WealthIndependent
No broker-dealer, no carrier
No broker-dealer, no carrier
Fee-only
Paid by you, never by products
Paid by you, never by products
Signs a fiduciary oath
In writing, every engagement
In writing, every engagement
Our commitment
Three pillars. One purpose.
Every structural choice we made was designed around your interest, not ours. Structure is the part of an advisory relationship you can verify before you trust it.
You are the only one paying us
We earn nothing from commissions, trails, or referral payments. What you pay is what we make, and it is written down before you hire us.
We put it in writing
We are bound to act in your best interest at all times, and we sign a fiduciary oath saying so. An advisor who will not sign one is telling you something.
Independence
Advice cannot serve two masters
When an advisor works for a broker-dealer or an insurance company, that firm sets the product shelf, writes the compliance rules, and decides which recommendations are easy to make and which ones create friction. The advisor may be a good person. The structure still pulls in two directions.
Modern Wealth removed the second master. We hold no affiliation with any bank, broker-dealer, or insurance carrier. Nobody upstream benefits from what we put in your portfolio, and nobody upstream is watching a quota.
- No proprietary products and no house shelf to sell from
- No revenue sharing with the firms whose funds we use
- Registered as an investment adviser, and only as an investment adviser
One master, not two
Fee-only
Follow the money, not the title
Almost any advisor can call the relationship a partnership. Far fewer can show you a compensation structure where you are the only source of revenue. There are three models, and the difference is not cosmetic.
Schedule an Exploration CallIllustrative comparison
Two ways to be paid, one way to stay clean
A commission arrives from the company whose product gets placed. A fee arrives from you. Those two facts shape every recommendation that follows, because the person paying is the person the advice is designed to satisfy.
Fee-based sounds like fee-only and is not. It means both, which means the advisor is a fiduciary on part of your relationship and a salesperson on the rest, and you are rarely told which hat is on. We do not accept commissions, trails, or referral fees from anyone, on anything.
Every compensation model carries some incentive. Ours is disclosed in plain language, applies to the whole relationship, and does not change based on which product you buy.
Schedule an Exploration CallNo commissions, ever
The oath
Ask them to sign it
A fiduciary oath is a short document. It says the advisor will act in your best interest at all times, disclose conflicts, and never accept compensation that a reasonable client would find surprising.
Ask any advisor you are considering to sign one. If the answer is no, the reason is usually a compliance department that will not permit it, because the firm is dually registered and the duty only applies part of the time. That answer tells you everything the brochure will not.
Alan Rhode signs the oath for every Modern Wealth engagement. It is posted publicly, alongside our Form ADV, so you can read both before the first meeting instead of after the paperwork.
Schedule an Exploration CallSigned for every engagement
Do not take our word
Verify any advisor in ten minutes
These five checks work on us and on every firm you are comparing us against. Run them in order. The answers are public.
STEP 01
Search the adviser, not the ad
Look up the firm on the SEC's adviser search and on FINRA BrokerCheck. If a broker-dealer registration appears next to the advisory registration, they are dually registered and the fiduciary duty is part-time.
STEP 02
Read Item 5 of the Form ADV Part 2A
Item 5 discloses every way the firm gets paid. Commissions, trails, and revenue sharing have to appear there. If you see them, you have your answer regardless of what the website says.
STEP 03
Ask who else pays them
Phrase it exactly that way. Not whether they charge commissions, but whether any dollar of their revenue arrives from a source other than you. The pause before the answer is informative.
STEP 04
Request the fiduciary oath in writing
A firm that operates as a fiduciary at all times can sign one today. A firm that cannot will explain why compliance forbids it. Both responses are useful.
STEP 05
Check the credentials that require a duty
CFP certification carries a fiduciary standard for all financial advice. Verify the mark directly with the CFP Board rather than trusting a logo on a business card.
Next step
Let's chat.
Thirty minutes, no cost, no pitch. We talk about your business, what you want your money to make possible, and whether we are the right fit. If we are not, we will tell you who is.
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