How to Compare Retirement Planning Firms in Prairie Village and Overland Park

No public dataset ranks retirement planning firms by how their clients actually fared, so a useful comparison is assembled from three things: regulatory records you can read yourself, the firm's own written disclosures, and the answers you get when you ask every firm the same questions.

Start by accepting what cannot be measured

People searching for reviews of retirement planning firms are usually looking for something that does not exist: a ranked list showing which local firm produced the best results for retirees. No regulator publishes that. No rating site collects it. Investment results depend on what each household started with, when they retired, what they spent, and what markets did in the years that followed, none of which is comparable across firms.

What does exist is substantial. Registration records, disciplinary history, written disclosure documents, and a firm's own description of its process are all public or available on request. Read together, they tell you what a firm is registered to do, how it is paid, what conflicts it has disclosed, and whether anyone has filed a complaint. That is a real basis for comparison. A star rating is not.

The practical approach is to build a short list from your own criteria, verify each firm against the public record, then meet with the ones that survive and ask all of them the same questions. The consistency is what makes the answers comparable.

The public records worth reading

Four sources cover almost everything you can verify before a first meeting. All four are free.

Registration with any regulator is not an endorsement, a recommendation, or a statement that a firm is suitable for you. It confirms that the required filings exist and shows what has been disclosed.

Read the Form ADV Part 2A brochure even if it looks dense. The fee section and the conflicts section are usually the two most informative pages you will read about any firm, and they are written under a legal obligation to be accurate. If a firm's website and its brochure describe the relationship differently, the brochure is the document that governs.

Compensation and capacity, described plainly

Firms in this market are compensated in different ways, and the labels get used loosely. Understanding the structure matters more than the label.

• Advisory fees. An ongoing fee for advice, often calculated as a percentage of the accounts a firm manages, sometimes a flat or hourly fee. The advisory relationship carries a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.
• Brokerage compensation. Transaction-based compensation paid through a broker-dealer. Recommendations made in a brokerage capacity are governed by Regulation Best Interest.
• Insurance commissions. Paid by the issuing insurance company when a fixed insurance product is placed. Insurance is a separate line of business from securities and advisory work.
• Combinations of the above. Many representatives are registered to act in more than one capacity, which is why the useful question is not which label applies to the firm, but which capacity applies to the specific recommendation in front of you.

CFG Wealth Management is fee-based. Securities and advisory services are offered through Madison Avenue Securities, LLC, which is both a broker-dealer and a registered investment adviser, and fixed insurance products are offered through licensed carriers. Different services are delivered in different capacities, and we tell you which one applies before anything is recommended. Our page on fee-only versus comprehensive retirement planning covers this distinction in more detail.

Reading online reviews without over-reading them

Reviews of financial firms are a weak signal in isolation and a useful one in aggregate. A handful of things make them easier to interpret.

• Volume matters more than average. A rating built on a few reviews tells you very little either way.
• Look for repeated themes rather than individual outcomes. Several people describing slow responses is information. One person describing a bad market year is not.
• Reviews rarely describe the thing you most want to know, which is whether the planning work was any good. They usually describe communication, responsiveness and clarity, which are worth knowing but are not the same thing.
• Regulatory rules limit how firms may use client statements in their own marketing, which is part of why you will see fewer testimonials on advisory firm websites than in other industries. Absence of testimonials is not a signal about quality.

Weight a disciplinary disclosure on BrokerCheck far more heavily than a review on any platform. One is a regulatory record. The other is an opinion.

Questions worth asking every firm on your list

Ask all of them the same questions, in the same order, and take notes. The comparison lives in the differences between the answers.

• In which capacity will you be acting when you make a recommendation to me, and how are you compensated for it
• What does your planning process produce, and can I see a sample of the written output
• How do you model Social Security claiming, including spousal and survivor consequences
• How do you sequence withdrawals across taxable, tax-deferred and tax-free accounts, and how often is that revisited
• How do you approach Roth conversions in the years between retirement and required minimum distributions
• How do you account for Medicare premium surcharges when planning income
• Will you review accounts and contracts I already own, including ones purchased elsewhere
• Do you coordinate with my CPA and my attorney, and how does that work in practice
• Who will I actually meet with at annual reviews
• What happens to my relationship with the firm if you are unavailable

Bring your most recent tax return, your Social Security statement and current account statements to those meetings. Specific documents produce specific answers. Without them you will get general ones, and general answers are hard to tell apart.

Comparing firms across the state line

The Kansas City metro spans two states that treat retirement income differently, so where a firm is located is less important than whether it works routinely on both sides of the line. Prairie Village and Overland Park sit next to each other in Johnson County, and many households here hold accounts, property or employment history in Missouri as well.

Our office is on West 94th Terrace in Prairie Village, a short drive from Overland Park, Leawood, Mission, Fairway, Roeland Park and Mission Hills. We also work with clients in Shawnee, Lenexa, Merriam and Olathe, and across the line in Kansas City, Missouri. See the communities we serve across the Kansas City area.

LaMont Chandler holds FINRA Series 7, 24 and NASAA Series 63, 65 registrations, CRD 2794744, and has been registered in the securities industry since 1996, and is registered in Kansas, Missouri, Texas and Idaho. Securities and advisory services are offered through Madison Avenue Securities, LLC, member FINRA and SIPC, and a registered investment advisor. CFG Wealth Management Inc. and Madison Avenue Securities are not affiliated companies. His record is available on FINRA BrokerCheck.

Common questions

Where this connects

• The Purpose Conversation is what a first meeting with us looks like
• Fee-only vs comprehensive retirement planning covers compensation and scope
• Evaluating a firm's Social Security and tax strategy goes deeper on the technical questions
• More retirement planning insights