Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: the median advice firm that publishes an account minimum wants $750,000, and most American households are below it. That is a fact about how firms price their time, not a verdict on whether you need advice. There are four routes below the minimum, and three of them cost less than the percentage fee you were being kept out of.
Why the minimum exists at all
A firm charging roughly 1% of assets earns about $2,500 a year on a $250,000 account. That does not cover an ongoing planning relationship at most firms’ cost structures, so they set a floor. The floor is about their economics, not your competence or your need. It also means the fix is usually to change how you pay, not to wait until you have more.
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The four routes
1. Pay for hours, not assets. An hourly financial advisor charges for the work rather than the balance, which removes the minimum entirely. Useful when you have specific questions and do not need anyone managing anything. See how to find one.
2. Pay a flat fee. The flat-fee model prices the plan, not the portfolio — the same logic and the reason it is usually cheaper below roughly $1m. Our break-even calculator shows where the two models cross for your numbers, and worked comparisons at $250k, $750k and $2m show it concretely. Advice-only planners go further and never touch the money at all.
3. Automate the management, buy the advice separately. Robo-advisors versus humans on fees sets out what you give up and what you keep. Pairing a low-cost automated portfolio with an hourly planner once a year is the most common way people below the minimum get both halves.
4. Wait — deliberately, with a trigger. Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need ongoing advice yet. The size-fit pages set out what actually changes at each level: $100k · $250k · $500k · $1m.
When an advisor genuinely is the answer
Balance is a poor trigger; complexity is a good one. The moments that reliably justify paying someone are a concentrated stock position, a business sale, an inheritance, a divorce, a pension election with an irreversible choice, or a retirement date inside five years with no written plan. If one of those is in front of you, the account size matters far less than getting the decision right the first time.
If that is where you are, a matching service will introduce you to fiduciary advisors, including firms that take smaller accounts than the published minimums suggest.
What not to do
Do not treat the minimum as a scoreboard. It measures a firm’s cost of service. Do not buy a product to get in the door — if a minimum disappears when you agree to an insurance purchase, the advice is being paid for by the commission, and the fee-only versus fee-based distinction is the thing to check first. And do not pay an asset-based fee below roughly $500,000 without running the comparison; that is what the break-even calculator is for.
Where these numbers come from
The $750,000 median and the household shares are from The Advice Gap, which publishes its full method and its limitations. The minimums themselves are from the advisor minimums benchmark. See methodology and corrections.