Grumpus the Prognosticator

Considering that I’m publishing this article during the COVID-19 Pandemic, I want to take a few paragraphs to acknowledge that these are troubled times without turning this into an article exclusively about the pandemic. As COVID-19 causes mass lock-downs and lay-offs all over the world, it’s forcing people to examine what their jobs and careers mean, especially if they no longer have one. Looking past the immediate onset of events, many are also questioning what employment will look like in a post-pandemic world with no vaccine close at hand. On the surface, then, it seems like an awkward time to publish an academic study of pension lump-sum buyout offers, which many people associate with the retirement end of a pensionable career.

However, if the economic impact of the pandemic continues to suppress interest rates and cause significant amounts of market volatility, or a prolonged bear market, it will weaken many pension funds, similar to 2008 and 2009. Some will even enter the dreaded death spiral that I covered in Part 20 of the Pension Series. Under these circumstances, I’d expect lump-sum buyout offers to proliferate as pension funds de-risk to shore-up their finances. The two main methods for de-risking are lump-sum buyout offers and the same sort of Pension Risk Transfers (PRTs) I examined in Part 14 of the Pension Series. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that with more lump sums on offer more employees will take them, especially if they believe their pension funds are in the type of trouble I outline in Part 1 of the Pension Series.

Executive Summary (For the TLDR Crowd)

As you’re about to find out from my research below, if nothing else, a pension annuity provides financial peace of mind that a lump-sum buyout cannot. According to some sources, annuitants are generally happier and less stressed than their peers who accept a pension lump-sum buyout offer. As someone currently receiving a pension annuity but also watching their investment nest egg crater just like everyone else, I attest it’s true. I’m not stressed. Your pension could do the same for you if you can depend on it to be there when you retire.

On the other hand, according to the results of several academic studies that I cite in this report, accepting a lump-sum buyout offer isn’t the death-knell for retirement security that many think it is. Yes, according to some sources, lump-sum recipients are more stressed. But, as far as academics can determine, retirement outcomes for annuitants and lump-sum recipients in the same retirement cohort aren’t statistically different, as of yet. I admit that I was surprised by this finding.

Unfortunately, these mixed findings won’t make your lump-sum buyout decision easier. But, they add to a growing body of work on this website that can assist you in making a well-informed lump-sum buyout decision. So, for those of you who are pension eligible, and still paying attention, this article in combination with parts 1, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 19, and 20 of the Pension Series will serve you well when offered a pension lump-sum buyout — be it caused by the COVID-19 pandemic or just as a matter of course.

Mr. Opportunistic

Before we get to the meat of the article, let me explain how and why I wrote it. In January 2020, my family and I moved to New Zealand after I retired from the US military. Our chosen visa pathway into the country was a student visa for yours truly. Unfortunately, I couldn’t study anything I wanted. I needed a masters course to obtain certain visa privileges for my family.

Furthermore, my wife and I chose to move the family to Nelson, which is a small but awesome city on the northern tip of the South Island. The local polytechnic in Nelson only offers one masters program. As a result, I enrolled in their Masters of Applied Management program.

While I’m not enamoured with the master’s course, we love Nelson, so there’s no use in complaining. Fortunately, the GI Bill is paying for the master’s degree, but both the GI Bill and Immigration New Zealand (INZ) require that I show up for classes (which are temporarily online due to COVID-19) and earn passing grades. As a result, I’m learning a lot, even if I don’t think much of it will be relevant to my future endeavours. Of course, relevance is in the eye of the beholder, and I’m not one to let a chance for blog articles go to waste. Call it synergy, or old-fashioned opportunism, but in either case, I’m taking advantage of any choice I get to write about pensions or other topics suitable for this blog.

Academic Rigour…mortis

Those circumstances bring us to this post. My Critical Issues in Management instructor allowed the students to choose their topic for the final essay. Since retirement benefits are part of Human Resource Management (HRM), I successfully argued that pension lump sums qualify as a critical issue. I’ll admit, I had to play a small amount of six degrees to Kevin Bacon. Yet, once through my justification for writing the paper and before the end where I tie in mandatory leadership lessons, you will find a concise amount of lump-sum buyout research presented objectively with academic rigour and within +/- 10% of 3000 words.

Speaking of academic rigour, this article is more bland than usual since I wrote it in an educational setting. As one of the learning assistants at my polytech told me when reviewing my first paper for the course, “you’re a great writer, but you must write more boring.” I cringed when she said that, but I also followed her advice. I went through this post and spiced it up where I could with pictures, section headers, and my dry humour. In general, though, this is a cut and paste with all of the Kiwi spelling and formatting intact. It also includes the APA referencing, so you can research further if interested.

Caveats and Door Prizes!

One qualifier, since I was working with a 3000-word limit, I restricted my research to lump sums offered in US corporate settings. Many of the findings apply to international and US public pensions, with one major exception. Currently, US public pensions cannot de-risk through the type of PRT I addressed in Part 14 of the Pension series. They can only offer lump sums, but it’s not a requirement.

Finally, I embedded a separate word doc in this article. It’s a cheat sheet for managers with employees who receive pension lump-sum offers. I designed it as an appendix for part of my assignment. I also linked to a Microsoft Sway presentation I built for the same purpose. Feel free to use them at your office, in discussions with friends, or with family members facing a lump-sum decision. If nothing else, download it and use it if/when you get a lump-sum offer. It distills all the information in this article into five easy to remember and actionable bullet points. Enjoy the report-now-article!

Introduction

Retirement benefits are traditionally the realm of Human Resource (HR) departments under the Organising requirement of the Four Management Functions (Samson et al., 2015). However, companies involved in multi-decade efforts to transition from their expensive legacy Defined Benefit (DB) retirement plans to portable Defined Contribution (DC) retirement plans, experience issues that touch critical areas under all four management functions. This includes company strategy, talent management, worker morale, legal compliance, and potentially the financial viability of the corporation itself (PwC, 2018).

Conversely, 80% of workers with access to a Defined Benefit Pension (DBP) believe it is either an “important or very important” factor in their overall job satisfaction (SHRM, 2016). As a result, frontline managers across all departments in a company transitioning from a DB to a DC retirement plan may find themselves acting as an interlocutor between the company’s HR and Finance departments, and their employees. This paper intends to provide those frontline managers with data-driven talking points for one such foreseeable moment, that of a pension lump-sum buyout offer.

Frontline Roles

A frontline manager’s interlocutor role regarding their company’s retirement plan is implied at the theoretical level and specified at a practical level. Strategic human resource management requires that benefits tie into company strategy to maintain a productive workforce (Samson et al., 2015). In 2019, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reported that numerous multinational corporations use retirement benefits in precisely this manner. Furthermore, 69% of companies told the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) that they leverage retirement benefits when recruiting, and 57% said they leverage benefits for retaining workers. Use of retirement benefits in such a manner requires feedback, the type that frontline managers must provide.

Social contract change theory implies that frontline managers play an essential role in managing employees’ expectations as a company transitions away from traditional compensation methods like a DBP (Samson et al., 2015). The data bears this out. A recent study determined that 25% of candidates who chose to annuitize their pension, rather than take it as a lump-sum, consulted their employer before doing so (Met Life, 2017). Given the previously cited popularity of the DBP and the role it plays in job satisfaction, managers at companies with a DB plan must prepare for the moment when employees come seeking advice or clarification regarding their pension lump-sum buyout offer.

The Anatomy of Lump-Sum Buyout Offers

Lump-sum buyout offers are one of the two primary de-risking tools that US companies use to shed their DBP obligations (Secunda & Maher, 2016). The other tool is a wholesale transfer of some or all a company’s pension assets and liabilities to an insurance company (AAOA, 2016). Wide-scale lump-sum buyout offers to plan participants often precede a wholesale transfer to an insurance company (Moran, 2013). While both activities shift the risk of running out of money in retirement from a company’s pension fund to an external entity, only lump-sum buyouts shift the risk directly to the retiree or worker. As Secunda and Maher (2016) note:

…lump-sum de-risking refers to when the plan offers beneficiaries the right to receive, in lieu of their promised pension annuity, a lump-sum that is equivalent to the net present value of their defined benefit. Lump-sum de-risking is thus commonly described as a “lump-sum buyout.” (p.735-736)

Pension annuities are guaranteed income, often referred to as fixed income, which payout monthly or yearly. As the term buyout implies, an employee or retiree who accepts a lump-sum payment for the full Net Present Value (NPV) of their annuitized pension, is no longer part of a pension plan. At that point, the individual has assumed the risk of running out of money in retirement (AAOA, 2016).

Uncle Sam Gets a Vote

Although regulated by the US government, the method used to calculate NPV for a lump-sum buyout is controversial. Worker and pension advocates believe the mandated inputs for the formula favour pension funds because proposed lump-sum buyout amounts are almost always lower than the projected sum of a retiree’s annuity payments (Pratt, 2018). There is merit to this argument. Commercial annuities for the same monthly dollar amount as a pension plan’s annuity are typically more expensive than lump-sum buyout totals offered in a buyout (Pratt, 2018). Not only that, but lump-sum buyout offers also exclude the value of other earned benefits like pension subsidised healthcare or investment advice (Pratt, 2018; Secunda & Maher, 2014; AAOA, 2016).

Except for pensions with a value of less than $5000, the decision to accept a lump-sum buyout is voluntary (Hurd & Panis, 2006). If an ex-employee is vested in the pension fund with a sizeable annuity, they too can elect the annuity. A retiree can always choose the annuity per the pension plan’s formula and rules.  Conversely, if a retiree is married and wants to accept a lump-sum buyout offer, US law requires that both the spouse and the retiree sign the agreement (Secunda & Maher, 2014).

De-Risking: The Why

Companies buyout pension plan participants for numerous reasons. In 2017, the US government’s insurance company for corporate pensions known as the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), stated that (Pratt, 2018):

…the list of factors influencing plan sponsors’ propensity towards risk transfer activity are: Accounting and earnings volatility; Balance sheet liability management; Funding volatility; PBGC premiums. (p.33)

That said, the two most compelling arguments for de-risking are the cost and risk of running a DB pension plan (Geddes et al., 2014; Munnel et al., 2006; PwC, 2018; AAOA, 2016). Of the two factors, the cost is more straightforward. Sammer (2016) summed up the situation perfectly when she stated:

…contributions that companies will be required to make to traditional defined benefit pension plans are notoriously difficult to foretell. And if there is one thing CFOs don’t like, it is unpredictable expenses. Larger-than-anticipated plan costs strain a company’s cash flow.

Beyond cost, companies with DB pension plans also court multi-faceted risk. In 2006, the Center for Retirement Research (CRR) counted four significant types (Munnel et al., 2006):

1) Economical – typically interpreted as stock market and interest rate volatility

2) Demographic – retirees living longer leads to more retirees drawing upon, rather than workers contributing, to a pension fund

3) Legislative – congressional rule changes happen

4) Accounting standards – methods used for calculating liabilities are complicated and change when congressional rules change

De-Risking: The When

Lump-sum buyout offers are often attached to time-sensitive windows, primarily when aimed at current and former employees in a frozen pension fund (Geddes et al., 2014). Frozen pension funds do not allow new employees to join, and in some cases, also stop accumulating value for current members. In 2017, the US Department of Labor reported that out of the 46,698-active corporate DBP plans, 19.5% were frozen and no longer accumulating value, which impacted over 1.3 million workers (EBSA, 2019).

Wholesale de-risk and transfer of part, or all, of a frozen pension fund’s assets and liabilities to an insurance company, often follows large-scale lump-sum buyout windows (Geddes et al., 2014). Insurance companies are uniquely suited to assume the risk that annuities require (AAOA, 2016). In these instances, time-sensitive windows serve as forcing function for lump-sum decisions among vested employees and pensioners in frozen pension funds, since afterwards the pension fund purchases annuities with an insurance company for the remaining plan participants (Geddes et al., 2014).

De-Risking: Who Is Offered a Lump-Sum?

Finding reliable data on pension lump-sum buyout offers is not easy. The numbers with academic rigour come from extensive longitudinal studies of the wealth and health of the US workforce not designed to study pension lump-sums. Despite this, in 2006, Hurd and Panis calculated that 45% of retiring pensionable workers from a 2002 longitudinal study received lump-sum buyout offers (2006). More recently, Armour, Hurd and Rohwedder reported that the number had risen to 47% (2015). Later researchers calculated that 61% of the 2002 workers took the lump-sum (Benartzi et al., 2011).

In 2015, the category of corporate workers with the highest percentage of access to DBPs in the U.S. was 50 to 59 years old cohort (CRR, 2015). They will most likely retire over the next decade as they reach 65, the customary retirement age in the U.S. (Benartzi et al., 2011). Accepting the above estimates regarding lump-sum offers means there is a roughly 50/50 chance those retiring workers will be offered a lump sum buy out as they retire.

Interestingly, several economic theories predict that most employees should opt for the annuity, as opposed to the lump-sum (Benartzi et al., 2011). Researchers found that in the absence of motives like a desire to leave a legacy for heirs, the practical outcome matches the predictive economic models; meaning the retirees chose the annuity (Benartzi et al., 2011). However, add any number of small but real motivations into the mix, and the rational economic theories break down (Munnell et al., 2019). Not only that, but research shows that even simple issues, like one option requiring more paperwork than the other, can impact the lump-sum buyout choice to a statistically significant degree (Benartzi et al., 2011). The older the employee, the more heavily their choice skewed towards the annuity, which has implications for workers in their prime working years who are offered lump sums from a frozen pension fund. 

De-Risking: Who Takes the Lump Sum and Why?

The longitudinal studies show that younger participants are more likely to take a pension buyout (Hurd & Panis, 2006; Armour et al., 2015). The older the employee, the more heavily their choice skewed towards the annuity. In the specific instance of younger members in frozen pension funds, the researchers concluded that taking lump-sum buyouts is rational behaviour. The reason for this is the negative effect of inflation on an annuity that will not start for decades to come (Hurd & Panis, 2006).

Unsurprisingly, life shocks like lay-offs, loss of healthcare insurance, and deterioration of health also correlate heavily with accepting a buyout. So, too, does being African American and living in a high poverty area. Whereas, “being wealthier or more educated or having a longer planning horizon, better health (self-reported), health insurance … was associated with lower pension cash-out probability” (Armour et al., 2015, p.26). The data reveals other traits as well. For instance, 64% of annuitants in a Met Life survey self-identified as risk-averse (2017).

Be that as it may, the most oft-cited reason for taking a lump-sum buyout is a concern for a pension fund’s fiscal health, which is not surprising. In 2019, the average funding level for US corporate pensions sat at 87% of projected liabilities (Comtois, 2020). When the US’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) studied the issue, they found that (Pratt, 2018):

…most participants accepting the lump-sum were motivated by fear that retaining the annuity would hurt their prospects for a secure retirement, either because the plan would default on its promise or because the plan sponsor would not manage the pension benefits responsibly. (p.36)

Aside from fear, numerous wants and desires can also drive someone to accept a lump-sum buyout offer. For instance, the desire to control one’s own money, and the belief that investing the lump-sum can provide higher rates of return than an annuity, scored high on the Met Life survey (2017). Not surprisingly, the need to pay off debt spiked in the studies after the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis (Armour et al., 2015). Paying off debt was the top spending category for spending a lump-sum in Met Life’s 2017 study.

Lump-Sum Outcomes

Outcomes for those who choose a pension lump-sum buyout are mixed. The longitudinal studies show that most lump-sum money is re-deployed into other saving mechanisms like personal retirement accounts, investments, property, or debt reduction (Armour et al., 2015; Hurd & Panis, 2006). This is especially true for those within 10-years of retirement (Hurd & Panis, 2006).

Researchers found only small amounts of leakage into discretional spending categories like large ticket purchases (Armour et al., 2015; Hurd & Panis, 2006). As a result, the studies found no statistical difference in financial outcomes between lump-sum buyout recipients and annuitants in the most senior cohorts. There was one exception. Those who accepted lump-sum buyouts in 1992 were significantly worse off than their annuitant counterparts by 2012. However, as the researchers point out, that cohort was worse off before taking the lump-sum, meaning the lump-sum did nothing to change their fortunes (Armour et al., 2015).

The financial outcome aside, when measuring anxiety, the Met Life study finds that lump-sum buyout recipients worry a lot more than annuitants about outliving their retirement savings. Lump-sum recipients also worry about retirement income unpredictability more than annuitants. In general, the Met Life study paints a picture of buyer’s remorse among lump-sum recipients, while highlighting a 96% satisfaction rate for annuitants (Met Life, 2017).

Caveats

That said, one must remember that Met Life is an insurance company that sells retirement annuities. Even though they commissioned a third party to conduct their study, there is no hiding their editorial belief that annuitizing a pension is the best option. Nevertheless, the American Academy of Actuaries (AAOA) agrees that longevity and investment return risk are valid worries for anyone taking a lump-sum (2016).

Advocates for DB retirement systems cite the same issues when comparing strengths and weaknesses to DC systems (Pratt, 2018; Secunda & Maher, 2014). Even the PwC study acknowledges that the worldwide shift to DC retirement systems has not prepared the average worker for retirement nearly as well as DB systems did in the past (PwC, 2018). Yet, as already stated, the lump-sum buyout data from the longitudinal studies do not necessarily reflect these concerns as realities. Whether that story changes as the studied cohorts get deeper into retirement is conjecture at this point.

Let’s Talk About … Ethics and Conflicts of Interest

Given that 25% of eventual annuitants choose to speak to an employer before deciding (Met Life, 2017), it is reasonable to assume that most managers approached will not possess some sort of financial qualification allowing them to dispense financial advice professionally. However, the Authentic Leadership style with its emphasis on practising solid values and leading with heart and head, requires a manager do more than simply send their employees to HR (Samson et al., 2015).

If nothing else, managers should note for their employees that conflicts of interest exist with almost every party involved in a lump-sum buyout decision (Maher & Secunda, 2014). The most obvious is between the employer and the employee. As already discussed, lump-sum buyouts transfer longevity risk to the employee and are calculated using formulas that favour of the pension fund. Since companies fund their pension funds, it is in the financial interest of the company to push the lump-sum option.

The employee’s family and financial advisor may also have conflicts of interest. Since annuities stop upon the death of the beneficiary, or their spouse if survivorship insurance is elected, potential heirs might encourage an employee to take the lump-sum buyout instead. So too might unscrupulous financial advisors using the Assets Under Management (AUM) compensation model. AUM means advisors receive compensation based on the total value of the assets they manage for a client. Therefore, investing a lump-sum for the client means the advisor will earn more money (Peartree, 2018).

Alternatively, insurance brokers selling financial instruments such as annuities might push for a client to take a lump-sum buyout only to turn around and sell them a more expensive commercial annuity. Luckily, the employee can avoid most of these conflicts of interest by using a fee-only certified financial professional required to act in the fiduciary interests of their customer (Wohlner, 2019; Peartree, 2018). In this case, a certified public accountant (CPA) would be particularly useful in calculating future annuity values as a means of comparing the NPV lump-sum buyout calculated by the pension fund. A CPA would also be able to advise clients on the most tax-efficient manner to deposit a lump-sum.

Other Recommendations

Aside from a discussion about conflicts of interest, an authentic leader can also ask probing questions and provide factual statements designed to make an employee think more holistically about their dilemma. Appendix One distils the information in this paper into five talking points for managers for just that purpose:

The author also created a Microsoft Sway presentation and placed it at this link: Five Points Bulletin: Pension Lump-Sum Buyout Offers.

Please note that the appendices only make sense after reading this issue paper. However, once read, the appendices should be intuitive.

Conclusion

In 2019, PwC wrote that:

Employers are willing to spend a significant amount of time and money … on retirement provision in the belief that it is a key part of overall remuneration…What employers want to avoid are the financial risks and legacy liabilities that are often created with retirement provision. Pension costs and the risk of unaffordable liabilities are still seen as major challenges. (p.4)

A pension lump-sum buyout is one of two methods companies use to de-risk from those “unaffordable liabilities.” It is the only method that transfers retirement longevity risk directly to the individual.

Ultimately, to accept or reject a lump-sum buyout offer is the individual employee’s decision to make. However, frontline managers in companies with legacy DB plans need to prepare for their employees approaching them with lump-sum questions. Research shows it is a distinct possibility, which means managers should understand the company and HR’s strategy with regards to retirement benefits, while at the same time, living up to authentic leadership principles for the employee. This paper, in conjunction with its appendices, equips managers to do just that.

References

American Academy of Actuaries (AAOA). (2016, October). Pension risk transfer. https://www.actuary.org/content/pension-risk-transfer-0

Armour, P., Hurd, M. D., & Rohwedder, S. (2015, September). Task 3: trends in pension cash-out at job separation and effects on long-term outcomes. EBSA. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/EBSA/researchers/analysis/retirement/trends-in-pension-cash-out-at-job-separation-and-the-effects-on-long-term-outcomes.pdf

Benartzi, S., Previtero, A., & Thaler, R. H. (2011). Annuitization puzzles. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(4), 143–164. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.25.4.143

Center For Retirement Research (CRR). (2015). Pension participation of all workers, retirement by type. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Pension-coverage.pdf

Comtois, J. (2020, January 2). Funded status of U.S. corporate plans edged up in 2019 – report. PI Online. https://www.pionline.com/pension-funds/funded-status-us-corporate-plans-edged-2019-report

Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA). (2019, September). Private pension plan bulletin abstract of 2017 form 5500. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/EBSA/researchers/statistics/retirement-bulletins/private-pension-plan-bulletins-abstract-2017.pdf

Geddes, T. J., Howard, B. B., Conforti, A. G., & Steinmetz, A. R. (2014). Pension risk transfer. https://www.soa.org/resources/research-reports/2014/pension-risk-transfer/

Hurd, M., & Panis, C. (2006). The choice to cash out pension rights at job change or retirement. Journal of Public Economics, 90(12), 2213–2227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2006.06.007

Met Life. (2017, April). Paycheck or pot of gold study. https://www.metlife.com/content/dam/metlifecom/us/homepage/institutionalRetirement/lifetime-income/MetLife-Paycheck-or-Pot-of-Gold-Study-Final-exp4-2020.pdf

Moran, A. E. (2013). “De-risking”-more employers use lump-sum payouts options to decrease their defined benefit plan liabilities. Employee Relations Law Journal, 39(1), 78-82. https://search-proquest-com.nmit.idm.oclc.org/docview/1366391692?accountid=40261

Munnell, A. H., Golub-Sass, F. N., Vitagliano, F. M., & Soto, M. (2006, March). Why are healthy employers freezing their pensions? Center for Retirement Research (CRR). https://crr.bc.edu/briefs/why-are-healthy-employers-freezing-their-pensions/

Munnell, A. H., Wettstein, G., & Hou, W. (2019, October). How best to annuitize defined contribution assets? CRR. https://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/how-best-to-annuitize-defined-contribution-assets/

Peartree, D. (2018). Conflicts of interest affecting investors not easy to detect. Rochester Business Journal, 34(8), 10. https://link-gale-com.nmit.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A540986370/ITOF?u=per_nmit&sid=ITOF&xid=d1657053

Pratt, D. A. (2018). Focus on… lump-sum distributions from defined benefit plans. Journal of Pension Benefits, 26(1), 31-38. https://search-proquest-com.nmit.idm.oclc.org/docview/2119883915?accountid=40261

PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2019). Tackling the global retirement benefits challenge. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/people-organisation/pdf/pwc-tackling-the-global-retirement-benefits-challenge-2019.pdf

Samson, D., Catley, B., Cathro, V., & Daft, R. (2015). Management in new zealand (2^nd ed.). Cengage Learning Australia.

Sammer, J. (2018, April 11). Companies eye pension de-risking. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0216-pension-de-risking.aspx

Secunda, P. M., & Maher, B. S. (2016). Pension de-risking. Washington University Law Review, 93(3), 733-765. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol93/iss3/7

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). (2016, March). Retirement savings and planning benefits. http://shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Retirement Savings and Planning Benefits.pdf

Wohlner, R. (2020, January 29). What you need to know about fee-only financial advisors. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/102014/feeonly-financial-advisers-what-you-need-know.asp