Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer. Clear Money Guide is an independent research site that reads primary sources — SEC filings, state statutes, court fee schedules — and publishes what they actually say, free to cite under CC BY 4.0. This page has story-ready summaries of our flagship studies, methodology links, and everything needed to cite or reuse them.
The Advisor Fee Benchmark
The number: reading the actual Form ADV Part 2A fee disclosures of 176 SEC-registered investment advisers, 42.5% cannot be priced into a dollar figure for a typical client from what they’ve filed, and 18.9% won’t take a $250,000 account at all.
Why it’s citable: every value was read from the firm’s own public SEC filing by two independent extractors, with disagreements adjudicated page by page — not a survey, not a self-report. Full methodology, the live table, and the underlying interactive tool: the advisor fee benchmark.
Cite as: Clear Money Guide Research Team, “2026 Advisor Fee Benchmark,” Clear Money Guide, 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21741167 (per-firm cost file added in v1.1: 10.5281/zenodo.21762538).
The Retirement Savings Percentile Study
The number: where a given household’s retirement savings actually falls against the Federal Reserve’s own Survey of Consumer Finances microdata, by age — not the frequently-cited “average,” which a small number of very large balances pulls upward well past what a typical household holds.
Why it’s citable: computed directly from the Fed’s own 2022 SCF microdata, not a secondary summary of someone else’s write-up. Full methodology and the interactive lookup: the retirement savings percentile calculator.
Cite as: Clear Money Guide Research Team, “Retirement Savings by Age and Percentile (2022 SCF microdata),” Clear Money Guide, 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21762536.
Statutory Probate Fee Schedules Compared
The number: of the twelve states whose probate fee schedule we read at the official state legislature source, Florida sets the largest statute-fixed bill — $30,000 on a $500,000 estate, against $26,000 in California, the state usually named as the most expensive. In eight of those twelve the statute fixes only the executor’s fee and leaves the attorney’s to be argued as “reasonable”.
Why it’s citable: every figure is computed from statutory bands transcribed from the official state source, then evaluated by two independently written programs using different arithmetic, which agree to the cent across 4,068 comparisons and 23 hand-transcribed statutory anchors. Five further states with schedules are named but deliberately left unranked because their text could not be retrieved from an official source. Full table and methodology: states where probate costs the most.
Cite as: “States Where Probate Costs the Most: statutory fee schedules compared,” Clear Money Guide, 12 August 2026.
Statutory Executor Compensation Compared
The number: of the 34 US jurisdictions whose executor-compensation statute we retrieved from its own official source, only 15 set a figure you can compute and 18 print no number at all. On an identical $500,000 personal-property estate the 15 formulas produce between $10,000 (Wisconsin) and $25,000 (Kentucky and South Carolina), a median of $14,050.
Why it’s citable: no dollar figure is typed by hand — the statutory bands are held in one dataset and evaluated by two independently written programs using different arithmetic, which agree to the cent across 30,360 comparisons, and a build gate re-reads each retrieved statute and requires a verbatim anchor before the page will compile. The counter-intuitive finding: the steepest opening percentage marks the cheapest state — Wyoming’s 10 percent, the highest executor rate in any statute we read, applies to the first $1,000 and can never be worth more than $100. Full table and methodology: states with the highest executor fees.
Cite as: “States With the Highest Executor Fees: what the statute actually pays,” Clear Money Guide, 13 August 2026.
More datasets
The studies above sit alongside a broader library of original, primary-source datasets — probate cost by state, state retirement taxes, advisor statistics by state, and more — each with its own DOI and methodology note. Full index: the research library. Developer-facing endpoint documentation (field dictionaries, versioning, no API key required): the data API docs.
Localized state kits
For six of the state-by-state studies we keep a per-jurisdiction kit — one for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, 306 in all. Each holds that state’s own row from the study’s published table, the study’s rank where it publishes one, a quote-ready line, the methodology note, and the CC BY 4.0 terms. Where a study does not cover a state, or names it and deliberately leaves it unranked, the kit says so in the study’s own words rather than supplying a number.
- Statutory probate fee schedules — 12 states ranked, 5 named and deliberately left unranked, 34 not in the table.
- Statutory executor compensation — 15 jurisdictions ranked, 18 whose statute sets no number at all, 18 named without a figure.
- Small-estate affidavit limits — all 51 jurisdictions; the study publishes no ranking.
- State retirement scorecard — all 51 jurisdictions; this study publishes no composite score and no ranking, by design.
- Medicaid estate-recovery reach — 44 jurisdictions classified, 7 held back for an unresolved source conflict.
- Senior property-tax relief — all 51 jurisdictions classified.
No figure in a kit is typed by hand: each is carried verbatim from the study’s own published table by one generator. Ask for your state at [email protected] and we will send that jurisdiction’s file.
Charts and visuals
We don’t maintain a separate downloadable-image library — the charts live on the pages above and are reusable in place under the same CC BY 4.0 terms. The fee-drag comparison chart is also available as a free, no-branding-fee embed: see the embeds repository on GitHub, or the tools page for the live version.
Boilerplate
Clear Money Guide is an independent research site publishing original, primary-source analysis of retirement, tax, and estate-planning topics — advisor fee disclosures read directly from SEC filings, state statutes read and cited directly, and household financial data computed from the Federal Reserve’s own survey microdata. Every dataset is released under CC BY 4.0. No paid placements determine our findings.
Contact
Interview requests, data questions, or a correction: [email protected].
Librarians, educators, and journalists: every dataset referenced on this page is CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution is welcome, and we answer methodology questions at contact@.