The honest comparison
Fee-only advisors remove one conflict (they earn nothing from products), which is genuinely valuable. The trade-off appears when your plan needs protection: they can recommend long-term care or life coverage but cannot implement it, so you're handed to an insurance salesperson who doesn't know your plan and answers to nobody in it.
Fee-based planning keeps recommendation and implementation under one fiduciary roof. The compensation for placement is real and should be disclosed plainly (ours is), but so is the accountability: the same team that recommended the coverage answers for it, for the life of the contract.
Questions to ask anyone you interview
How are you paid, in dollars, on my situation? Are you a fiduciary for all advice or only investments? Who implements protection recommendations, and who services them in year ten? Any planner worth hiring answers all three without flinching.
Written by the team at The Retirement Life, led by Rc Arseneau, CFP®. This is education, not individualized advice. Your situation deserves a real conversation before any decision.