Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: there is no single threshold, and any article giving you one is describing a firm’s minimum rather than your need. What exists is a ladder of service tiers, each with a different entry point and a different price: automated management from essentially any balance, hourly and flat-fee planning from any balance, percentage-of-assets management from roughly $250,000, and wealth-management scope from roughly $1 million upward. The better question is not how much you have but how many moving parts you have — complexity beats net worth as a trigger, every time.
The ladder
Automated management — effectively any balance. Buys allocation and rebalancing, nothing else. Costs a fraction of a percent. Robo versus human fees. Hourly and flat-fee planning — any balance. Buys decisions rather than management; the only tier with no meaningful entry point, which is why it is the right answer far more often than it is chosen. Hourly rates, flat-fee advisers, how many hours you need. Percentage-of-assets management — roughly $250,000 up. The most common model and the most commonly published minimum. Wealth management — roughly $1 million up. Should mean wider scope (estate, tax, insurance, charitable, business), though the title itself guarantees none of that — what the two titles actually mean. Private banking and family-office style service — multiples of that. Lending, trust administration and coordination, at prices that only make sense against genuinely complex balance sheets.
What each rung costs, measured
From our own benchmark of published adviser fee schedules, computed from Form ADV disclosures and published on the fee comparison chart — weighted medians of published adviser fee schedules, in annual dollars: $250,000: $2,000 to $2,500 (0.80–1.00%). $500,000: $3,750 to $5,000. $1 million: $8,750 to $10,000 (0.88–1.00%). $2 million: $16,000 to $19,375. $3 million: $24,000 to $26,000 (0.75–0.87%). Note what happens: the rate falls as the balance rises, and the dollars more than double every time the balance does. The dollar column is the one that decides things.
The threshold that is not about money
Almost everyone who benefits from advice does so because of an event, not a balance: a retirement date inside five years, equity compensation, a business sale, an inheritance, a divorce, a concentrated position, a move between states, or a year with an unusually high or low income. Any one of those justifies paid advice at $150,000, and none of them is present in a straightforward $900,000 401(k) invested in a target-date fund. The dollar-free version of this test is the site’s complexity checklist: do I need a financial advisor. Where firms actually set their minimums, and how to verify one: advisor minimum assets.
Find your rung
$100k · $250k · $500k · $1M · $2M. Retiring on the money rather than accumulating it changes the answer: retiring with $500k and with $1 million. Which pricing model fits once you have picked a rung: the decision aid.
Pick the rung, then pick the firm.
Most people shop firms before they have chosen a service tier, which is why the quotes never compare. The service below matches you with 2 to 3 advisors once you know which rung you are on.
If your portfolio is $250,000 or more, this connects you — free, with no obligation to hire anyone — with 2 to 3 vetted advisors.
Before you start, what actually happens. The matching service is run by WiserAdvisor, an independent advisor-matching company. It opens on their site, asks for your ZIP code and a few questions, and matches you with 2 to 3 vetted advisors. It is free to you.
WiserAdvisor states the service is built for portfolios of $250,000 and above. By submitting, you consent to emails, phone calls and text messages from WiserAdvisor and up to three advisors, so expect to be contacted. Clear Money Guide is paid when you complete the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone.
Compare fees, scope, conflicts, credentials and fiduciary duty before you hire anyone. This is not the only way to find an adviser.
Opens on WiserAdvisor’s site in a new tab.
Once you have picked a rung. Check the firm before you sign anything — the twenty-minute vet. Pressure-test whether the fee earns its keep at your balance — the break-even math. And if you already have an adviser and are moving, the new firm does almost all the paperwork.
The questions people actually ask
These come from what people actually search and ask in public threads on this topic. Each answer is a short summary of a page on this site that works the question through properly, with its sources; follow the link when the detail matters, which on most of these it does.
Do I need an advisor with $250,000?
$250k clears the published minimum at most firms — but not all, and our benchmark measures exactly how many will not price a household at that balance. The number is larger than most people expect. What $250k actually opens.
What about at $500,000?
By $500k eligibility stops being the question and what you are buying starts being the question — portfolio management, planning, or tax work are different products at different prices. Deciding what you are paying for.
At $1 million, does percentage pricing still make sense?
This is where percentage-of-assets pricing starts losing to flat and hourly arrangements, because the work does not scale with the balance the way the fee does. The crossover, in dollars.
Is a wealth manager different from a financial advisor?
Neither title is regulated, so neither tells you anything on its own. Compare the published scope of service and the fee schedule instead of the label. What to compare instead.
I am retiring with $500,000 — is that enough to need one?
At the retirement date the value shifts from growing the balance to sequencing withdrawals from it, which is a genuinely different job and the one worth paying for. Sequencing at $500k.
I am retiring with $1 million — what changes?
The useful ratio at that point is not the fee against the portfolio but the fee against your annual withdrawal, because that is the money you actually live on. A one-percent fee on the balance can be a much larger share of the income it funds, and seeing it that way changes the decision. The ratio that matters.
Do I need a wealth manager at $2 million?
“Wealth manager” is a title with no regulatory meaning, so at $2m the question is which additional services you are actually buying — tax coordination, estate work, concentrated-position planning — and whether the firm publishes them. Compare the service list, not the label. What changes at $2m.