TruePoint Financial is a fee-only planning firm in west Houston. Each recommendation is written as two columns: what it is expected to gain and what it costs in fees, tax, liquidity, and flexibility. Both columns, on the same page, before you decide.
A recommendation arrives with a projected return, a chart that curves upward, and a sentence about long-term growth. What it rarely shows on the same page is the cost side: the fee drag over twenty years, the tax consequence of getting there, the money you cannot reach for six years, the option you have just closed.
All of those are real and quantifiable. Leaving them on a different page, or in a disclosure paragraph nobody reads, makes a reasonable recommendation look better than it is.
So every recommendation we write has both columns side by side. Roughly one in six of our own recommendations looks materially less attractive once the cost column is filled in, and several have been withdrawn before we presented them.
An illustrative example. Figures are hypothetical and not a projection for any individual.
Six advisers in west Houston. Fee-only. No commissions, no product revenue.
A full written plan with a cost column against every recommendation.
Withdrawal sequencing and tax placement, with the flexibility you give up stated.
Low-cost, index-oriented portfolios with total cost of ownership disclosed annually.
Coordinated with your CPA, including the years where the recommendation is to do nothing.
Entity, succession, and the personal-balance-sheet risk of a concentrated business.
A fixed-fee review of a plan you already have. We frequently tell people to keep it.
We are compensated only by clients. No commissions, no revenue sharing, no product placement. That is verifiable in our Form ADV and it is the precondition for the cost column meaning anything.
Total cost of ownership on one line, annually. Our fee plus fund expenses plus trading costs, sent whether or not anyone asks.
Sometimes the recommendation is to do nothing. Roughly one review in three of an existing plan ends with us saying it is fine.
Balance sheet, cash flow, and what you are actually trying to protect.
Options built out with both columns filled in before anything is presented.
A written plan, cost column beside every item, presented in person.
Annually, with total cost of ownership restated in one line.
Professionals, retirees, and owner-operators across west Houston, Katy, Sugar Land, and Energy Corridor.
Planning fees from $4,200 flat, or asset-based fees starting at 0.85%, with the total cost figure disclosed annually.
We turn away households we cannot help. If a low-cost target-date fund and a written budget covers your situation, we will say so on the first call at no charge.
Founded the firm in 2012. Reviews the cost column on every plan before presentation.
Sixteen years. Names the flexibility a strategy removes.
Twelve years. Sends the total cost line annually.
Eight years. Builds both columns before anything is shown.
Their recommendation sheet had a negative column. They talked me out of something I had already decided to do.
They reviewed the plan I already had and told me to keep it. Charged the fixed fee and nothing else.
One line a year showing everything I pay, all in. My previous adviser never produced that.
If not, ask your current adviser for it in writing.