Media Mention: White Coat Investor Featured Article

Altruist Wealth Management founder Carson McLean, CFP®, was featured as a guest writer on The White Coat Investor with a new article focused on a question physicians rarely ask out loud: what is a fair price for quality financial advice? In “Flat-Fee Planning for Physicians, and Why the AUM Model Deserves a Second Opinion,” Carson breaks down why the standard Assets Under Management (AUM) fee model can get more expensive as your portfolio grows, even when your underlying complexity does not.

Key themes from the piece include:

• Why AUM fees can quietly scale up over time simply because markets rise and savings accumulate

• How fee drag compounds, and why a predictable flat fee can change the long-term math (the article illustrates a more than $580,000 gap in one example)

• How incentives can shape advice, especially around big decisions like paying off loans, buying real estate, building cash reserves, or funding a practice opportunity

• Why flat-fee planning is still uncommon (the article notes only 8% of advisors operate without any AUM-based fees)

• A “second opinion” checklist of practical questions physicians can use to evaluate whether their current pricing model still makes sense

Read the full article here: Flat-Fee Planning for Physicians, and Why the AUM Model Deserves a Second Opinion