MichaelKitces @MichaelKitces

Historically, most Senior Advisors got their start in financial services by immediately 'hanging out the shingle' and prospecting for their new client base (first graphic). However, it's becoming increasingly common for advisors to follow more established career tracks - starting off in operations or junior advisor roles first before making the jump to Senior Advisor. This experience in prior roles really seems to set new Senior Advisors up for success (second graphic). Among Senior Advisors with fewer than 15 years of experience in their current role, those with experience in prior roles are on or lead teams that generate nearly double the revenue per advisor of those who started out from scratch pursuing clients ($400,000 versus $225,833). This gap narrows over time (as Senior Advisors that entered the industry in their current role gain experience/expertise), though notably doesn't completely narrow! We dive deeper the relationship between different career paths and advisor productivity in our last advisor productivity study, available here: kitc.es/4gpB6Ef

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Understanding a firm's individual risk: How advisory firm risk manifests across seven different dimensions, and how advisors can evaluate and integrate risk into their advisory firm in a thoughtful, strategic way as their firms grow. kitc.es/4pC7cD6

The headline multiple is where most RIA deal conversations begin, but it is rarely where the economics are actually determined. The "Terms Traps" That Underlie Headline Valuations In Advisor M&A: kitc.es/4wcGO56 In this guest post, Rich Chen, founder of Brightstar Law Group, explores how real-world M&A deals are negotiated for advisory firms, and what, exactly, can lead to material divergences between the valuation multiple externally reported in a deal, and what the seller actually gets for the business, with the aim of helping sellers better prepare how to negotiate with buyers. #advicers

"If the client could just tell me the precise date they will die, I'd make them the perfect retirement plan." Yet the reality is that no one knows when they are going to pass away. Most advisors simply plug in a "reasonably conservative" assumption to their retirement planning software, and plan from there. kitc.es/4wsBoD3 In this guest post, Dr. K. Jeremy Ko of ShoreUp Retirement Solutions explores the dynamics of how advisors typically estimate a retiring client's lifespan, and the potential impact of developing more customized estimates of life expectancy, to better estimate how much clients need to save for retirement, can safely spend in retirement, or time the onset of their Social Security benefits. #advicers #retirementplanning

Are Financial Plans Getting TOO Comprehensive? How The “Sledgehammer Of Value” Isn’t Actually Paying Off: kitc.es/42B5p6E Unsurprisingly, service teams producing plans covering the widest breadth of topics tend to spend more time preparing them, according to the Kitces Research data, and this appears to come at a financial cost for these advisors, as those producing Extensive plans had lower median revenue per advisor and take-home income compared to those producing less-comprehensive plans.

FAS EPISODE 500! For today's milestone podcast, we flip the mic as I'm being interviewed by Kitces Financial Planning Nerd Adam Van Deusen: kitc.es/4wbO6p3 Yeah, we still get a lot of the questions like, "Does Michael sleep?" I do. In this episode, we talk in-depth about how I manage my time, starting with the exercises I undertook to better understand where my time was going (and how it might be used better), how I started delegating certain tasks to others so that I could focus on higher-value opportunities, and how I balance my responsibilities across the Kitces platform and other businesses I'm involved in with raising a family and still having time to get enough sleep each night. #advicers #financialadvisorpodcast #FASuccess #advisorpodcast

We're approaching 500 #FASuccess episodes! In this special guest post,  Jeremy Eppley of Silverstone Financial (who has listened to ALL 500 EPISODES) shares 20 lessons he learned from the podcast while building his RIA from scratch in his 20s: kitc.es/4fF4GXX As told through key milestones of his growth journey, he shares the lessons he gleaned and highlights 20 episodes as a starting point for those who want to binge on the most salient practice management lessons (and another 30 'bonus' episodes for those who want to go deeper). #advisorpodcast #financialadvisorpodcast #FAS

To plan, in advance, for retirement spending strategies to be more dynamic… at minimum, to have a ratcheting plan in place to lift a low initial spending rate higher if the sequence is favorable (or at least, is not unfavorable), and for those who are willing to be more flexible in their retirement spending, to set guardrails in advance to know both when to cut spending in a bad sequence, and when to lift it higher in a more favorable one. kitc.es/4ppOePX

Discussing Portfolio Diversification With Different Types Of Clients: While portfolio diversification is a core tenet of many advisors' investment strategies, clients might have a different understanding of what it actually means for their investments. (Samantha Lamas | Morningstar) kitc.es/44NJTMR #WeekendReading

Hiring a fractional admin assistant offers an elegant solution for advisors who need help but aren't ready – or willing – to commit to a full-time employee. Fractional professionals can fill half-time or even quarter-time roles, bridging the gap between solo practice and a fully staffed firm. kitc.es/4vB5mU9

Estimating The Future Lifetime Cost Of Long-Term Care: How advisors and their clients can balance the relative unlikelihood of experiencing an extended long-term care event with the potential costs if one does occur when it comes to saving for and/or insuring against this contingency. (Giese, Gunnlaugsson, Pollock, and Brown | Milliman) More curated articles on Retirement Planning this #WeekendReading: kitc.es/44NJTMR

Love our Wednesday Nerd’s Eye View blog content on the technical side of financial planning? Now you can listen, too. We've launched a new podcast!  Each Wednesday CE article on our blog is now paired with a Financial Advisor Technician podcast (hosted by Adam Van Deusen) episode where you can hear more from the author of the article and come away with practical takeaways for your advisory practice. Also available to subscribe to and listen on your fav podcasting platforms 🎧 kitc.es/3Rx57LP #financialadvisorpodcast #podcast

Treasury Department officials this week expressed concern about various "tax alpha" investment strategies, including Section 351 exchanges, "box-spread" ETFs, funds designed to generate ordinary losses, and ETFs that trade in and out of other ETFs to avoid dividend distributions, and more this #WeekendReading: kitc.es/44NJTMR (Justina Lee, Denitsa Tsekova, and Zachary Mider | Bloomberg News)

The difference between a full step-up in basis and a partial one (or none at all) can end out being a significant increase in the after-tax value of assets for some clients. Advisors can help deliver this value to their clients by planning and aiding with the retitling of assets (when appropriate) to take full advantage of the basis step-up. kitc.es/4vGhfrP

Woot, for all the #AdvisorTech nerds out there (and #Advicers looking for tech improvements), Joel Bruckenstein has opened up registrations for the T3 conference in 2027 (in Las Vegas at the The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas)! Event theme is "the AI-augmented advisor"... now that we're past the "AI vs humans" and into the "so, how exactly DOES the AI augment the advisor..." stage. 🤣 T3 comes a little later in the season this year - running March 22nd to 25th. (I believe the first day is a repeat of their AI University, and then the remaining days are the main conference itself. More detailed Agenda usually doesn't get posted until we're a little closer to the event.) Registration and initial details up on the T3 website at: kitc.es/4fsJRij

From birthday cards to phone calls to email newsletters... this may be met with a lukewarm-at-best reception from clients, leaving advisors to wonder… what sort of communication touchpoints (if any) actually make a difference to clients? kitc.es/4fvoIUJ In this 195th episode of Kitces & Carl, we discuss how to choose the method and frequency of client touchpoints. There is a balance to be struck: if an advisor under-communicates, then clients may not know if or how to contact an advisor between meetings. On the other hand, overcommunication can quickly drown an advisory team’s capacity as a client base grows. #advicers #advisorpodcast

Although Trump Accounts may be similar to standard IRAs in many aspects (and effectively become IRAs after the pre-age-18 "growth period" ends), the process of opening and funding TAs is very different (like the fact that TAs can only be opened in a single location via Robinhood!) kitc.es/45g8Two Kitces Nerd Ben Henry-Moreland takes us through the process and mechanics of opening and funding a Trump Account so that clients who may want to open one for their child can appreciate an advisor walking them through it! [NEW 🎧️ ] Want to dig into this topic in audio format? We have launched the first episode of our Financial Advisor Technician Podcast hosted by Adam Van Deusen! Every Wednesday, accompanying our blog article will drop an F-A-T episode featuring a discussion with the author on the topic. Listen to it here: kitc.es/45g8Two

Having a mortgage is often framed as a way for an inflation hedge. As the conventional wisdom goes, with a mortgage your monthly payment is locked in (assuming it’s not an Adjustable-Rate Mortgage [ARM]), even if inflation goes up and interest rates rise. In fact, rising inflation would just devalue the mortgage in nominal (future) dollars. kitc.es/45fBeCV

4Xing To $200M AUM In 4 Years While Staying Lean By Leveraging AI, Technology, And Outsourcing All You Can Let Go Of: #FASuccess Ep 499 With Ryan Townsley: kitc.es/4fKYnmP My guest on today's #FASuccess podcast is Ryan Townsley, owner of Town Capital, an RIA based in Bel Air, Maryland, that oversees approximately $200 million in assets under management for 155 client households. What's unique about Ryan, though, is how he has grown his firm to $2 million of revenue largely as a solo (only recently making a new hire to provide planning support), in part by leveraging an AI-integrated tech stack and outsourcing tasks that he doesn't necessarily need to do himself. #podcast #advisorpodcast

The first half of 2026 has seen significant headline-driven market uncertainty, from geopolitical events to inflation risk. James Liu, CEO of Clearnomics, shares 10 data charts and explores how advisors can put news headlines into context for clients in a data-driven way, helping them maintain perspective and recognize that periods of uncertainty don't necessarily lead to weaker equity market returns. kitc.es/3SJGgF3