Several things set us apart. First, Ron and Chris are not only seasoned Certified Financial Planners® with over 40 years of combined experience — they are also university finance professors who teach the very principles they apply to your financial plan. This academic depth, combined with real-world practice, gives clients access to a level of rigor that is extremely rare in the advisory world.
Second, our structure: we are a Fee-Only, fiduciary firm. That means we are legally and ethically required to act in your best interest at all times. We never earn commissions, and we have no financial incentive to recommend one product over another. You pay us directly — and that’s the only way we get paid.
Third, our approach: we invest based on evidence, not emotion or market speculation. Our strategies are rooted in decades of peer-reviewed academic research and are designed specifically for tax efficiency and long-term growth – both especially critical as you approach and move through retirement.
Finally, you benefit from working directly with Ron and Chris – not a junior associate – throughout the entire relationship.
Yes. Being a “fiduciary” is critical for us. However, the reality is that the “fiduciary standard” has not been interpreted by the regulators correctly, and this has led many “fiduciary” financial advisors to operate with significant, and avoidable, conflicts of interest that impair the quality of the advice they provide. Consumers should look for fiduciary advisors who are also “fee-only.” (For more on these conflicts, read our blog post on what “Fiduciary” means here.)
Every investment adviser should readily provide you with their Form ADV, Part 2A (the firm brochure), Form ADV, Part 2B (information about individual advisors), and Form U-4 (employment history and disciplinary records).
You can access our Form ADV, Part 2A online here and can request Part 2B and Form U-4 during our preliminary discussions (due to the nature of personal information contained within them, we do not post them online).
Fee-only advisors don’t sell products, significantly reducing the conflicts of interest which could exist in financial services. You can find fee-only advisors through organizations like the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, XY Planning Network, Garrett Planning Network, and the Alliance of Comprehensive Planners.
Ron and Chris are members of The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and the XY Planning Network (Ron | Chris).
For more discussion on the differences, see our blog post on “Why You Should Choose a Fee-Only Advisor”
Our services are based on whether you choose to do a Comprehensive Retirement Plan (a flat rate service over six months) or ongoing Investment Management (charged quarterly based on assets under management).
We provide full details on our services and rates on our Services page.
We are both Certified Financial Planners® (CFP®), as well as university professors. We have decades of combined teaching experience in finance, investments, and financial planning courses. At the AACSB-accredited Gordon Ford College of Business at Western Kentucky University, we teach or have taught courses in Personal Finance, Retirement Planning, Applied Investments, Principles of Finance, Markets & Institutions, Estate Planning, Legal and Regulatory Aspects of Personal Financial Planning, and Financial Plan Development.
You can learn more about Ron and Chris in their About Me pages here.
Yes, we work with clients nationwide. Our meetings are conducted in-person or via webconference (Zoom) or telephone, depending on your location and preferences.
To stay more engaged with most of our clients, we travel throughout the eastern half of the United States, typically once each year. We can meet with you at your home or office during these trips.
For clients in other parts of the country, we arrange typically arrange web conferences of telephone calls. We may arrange to see you in-person when we attend professional conferences or travel in your region, often on a bi-annual or less frequent basis, for both cost and time efficiency.
Our typical client is someone in their 50’s or 60’s who has worked hard, accumulated significant assets, and is now focused on making smart decisions about the transition into retirement. They are often navigating complex questions – when to claim Social Security, how to manage Roth conversions, how to draw down their portfolio in a tax-efficient way, how to protect what they’ve built. They want a trusted advisor who will give them a straight answer, not sell them a product.
Most of our clients come to us having dealt with commission-based advisors before and are specifically seeking a Fee-Only, fiduciary relationship where they know their advisor’s interests are fully aligned with their own.
Our minimum annual fee is $7,500, which we understand isn’t the right fit for everyone.
If you are close but not quite there, we’d still encourage you to reach out — we evaluate each situation individually and our minimums are sometimes negotiable depending on the complexity of the work involved. We’d rather have an honest conversation than have you rule yourself out prematurely.
And if we’re not the right fit, we’re happy to point you toward resources that can help.
We offer both. Those seeking one-time planning should look at our Comprehensive Retirement Planning service, while those preferring an ongoing relationship should review the Investment Management service. Both are detailed on our Services page.
Each client’s situation is different. However, to each client’s situation we apply evidence-based investment portfolio design and management. We typically recommend low-cost multi-factor exchange-traded funds, but we also employ when appropriate C.D.s, U.S. Treasury securities, municipal bonds, and on occasion diverse individual stock portfolios when tax-loss harvesting is an imperative to offset gains from concentrated positions.
We primarily utilize Charles Schwab, for its financial strength, strong technology platform, and access to a wide range of investments.
For full details, see “Your Guide to Working with Scholar Financial,” which details the entire journey from your first phone call to our ongoing relationship.
270-904-2728
AdvisorInfo@ScholarFinancial.com
