Frequently asked questions

Financial planning

A CFP® professional (CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional) is the gold standard of financial planning certifications. As fiduciaries, they are held to the highest standards by the CFP® Board to always do what is in the best interest of the whom they’re advising. While all registered investment advisors are Fiduciaries, at Facet, you will be working with CFP® professionals supported by a team of experts (specializing in tax, insurance, estate planning, equity compensation, and more) to cover all of your money needs.

A fiduciary holds a legal and ethical relationship of trust with the person whom they’re serving. Therefore, a fiduciary is legally obligated to only make recommendations in the best interest of each person they are giving advice to. Like all SEC-registered firms, all of the CFP® professionals at Facet are fiduciaries on behalf of our members.

Ensuring our members get the best possible advice is why we created Facet. Here’s how we do it:

  1. We charge a flat membership fee. We believe you can only get unbiased advice when you pay a flat fee. When a planner or advisor charges your planning fee based on your assets or earns a commission from something they’ve sold you, their advice is clouded by how they get paid. We made the decision to remove all possible conflicts of interest by charging only a flat membership fee.
  2. All of our planners are CFP professionals® and fiduciaries.. Our planners are held to the highest possible standards in financial planning and are legally and ethically bound only to do what’s in the best interest of their members.

About Facet

While Facet is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, we have planners located throughout the US that meet with our members via video call (and our members are located in all 50 states!).

We charge a flat membership fee based on the complexity of your situation. Unlike many financial planners, we do not charge based on the amount of money you invest with us (known as assets under management or AUM), nor do we charge commissions. We believe unbiased advice can’t exist when your planner or advisor is incentivized to sell you a product or keep your assets in a particular account.

Our sign-up process is simple. It’s designed to help us learn more about you and your needs, so we can show you how Facet’s unbiased financial advice benefits every facet of your life.

To get started, fill out this form, and a Facet expert will call you within 24 hours to schedule an introductory call (or you can call 1-888-339-5536 to speak with someone now). They’ll take the time to learn more about your whole financial life, understand your needs, and explain how Facet can help elevate your specific situation

Facet's member experience

We meet with you via videoconference or telephone, always at your convenience.

Every Facet membership includes unlimited access via messages to a CFP® professional. Our team of experts are here to help answer your questions and provide detailed insights on topics like investments, retirement planning, cashflow, debt, and more.

Absolutely. We are here to help with every money decision. We are there for you for each and every individual enrollment period.
Of course. Your Facet planner works with a team of experts, including an equity compensation specialist that analyzes and consults on the tax impact these plans may create. The equity compensation specialist will work with your Facet planner to determine how they affect the rest of your portfolio to set up the best plan for you. We consult on all parts of your financial life – not just the money you’ve entrusted us to manage directly.

Our goal is for you to never feel alone while navigating an important financial decision or life change. That’s why your membership includes unlimited access to a CFP® professional via our messaging feature. Additionally, in your first year with Facet, you’ll have up to four virtual meetings with a CFP® professional to discuss your goals and plan. Each year after, meeting frequency varies with your specific membership plan.

Click here to schedule a quick introductory call with Facet. Or, to speak with someone now, call 1-888-339-5536.

Investing with Facet

We believe investing works best when paired with an ever-evolving financial plan that covers your entire life (which is also why we include investment management for all members as part of their membership). Your unique situation always guides your investment strategy at Facet. Once we understand you and your personal situation, we focus on the areas we can control- minimizing fees and taxes, maintaining a well-diversified portfolio, and balancing for any given environment. For more information on our approach to investing, see our Investing with Facet page.

After confirming we have the information we need to move your money over, you’ll be guided on next steps directly within your Facet account. There, you’ll open your new investment account and kick-off the process to move money over, which typically takes about five minutes to complete. After this, we’ll take care of the heavy-lifting. From there, we’ll  notify you once we receive your money and get it invested in line with your planning strategy. If you have questions, our support team is always happy to help, just reach out to [email protected].

We’ll handle day-to-day portfolio rebalancing, make trades, update your investments based on market conditions, perform tax-loss harvesting, and more. We expect your life, and priorities, to evolve over time, sometimes unexpectedly. When it does, we’ll work with you to adjust your strategy to maintain your progress and achieve the outcomes that enable you to live a fulfilling life.

There are two main ways that investment management at Facet is different from other firms:

  1. Our investing philosophy is centered on the idea that the best investing strategy starts with you and your circumstances. Investing money without a clear purpose or intention can only take you so far–that’s why investment management is always linked to your personalized, ever-evolving financial plan that you create with your CFP® Professional at Facet; and why it’s included in your membership.
  2.  The tools and methodology we use on behalf of our members are typically reserved for ultra-wealthy investors or even big pensions, foundations and endowments. Our Investment Committee, led by our Head of Investments, Tom Graff, have over a hundred years of combined industry experience doing this for others and have brought that expertise to Facet.

There are two of the primary ways investing at Facet is different from a typical robo advisor:

  1. We start with the big picture. Robo advisors typically don’t offer meaningful financial planning advice, or if they do, it isn’t customized to all of the details and nuances in your life. Facet starts understanding how best to align your investing goals with the broader vision of the life you want to live.
  2. What you pay. Robo advisors generally charge a percent of your assets under management, or AUM. In some cases, this can make them inexpensive when your balances are low, but it means they will be charging you more and more as your money grows. Further, if they are tied to specific firms, the algorithm is often incentivized to recommend its own products. Not only does Facet charge a flat membership fee that does not increase as your money grows, but Facet has no products to sell, and is only focused on recommending the best investments for your personal situation.

Investing isn’t like hanging a photo or fixing a leak in your sink. The consequences of getting investment management wrong can be catastrophic, which is why we have a team of experts who are dedicated to managing our members’ money in alignment with their personalized, ever-evolving financial plans.

Another advantage of using Facet for investment management is our access to techniques often used by professionals serving ultra-wealthy investors, endowments, foundations, and pension funds. This is what enables our experts to analyze performance statistics, look at customized sector allocations, perform factor analysis, and stress-test our funds in ways that individuals are rarely able to.

We build our core portfolios with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which is like a basket of stocks or bonds that you can buy or sell just like a single stock, and depending on your membership plan and goals, we also offer advanced investment strategies like Direct Indexing and Alternative Income investments.

Direct Indexing allows for more sophisticated tax-loss harvesting to help reduce what you own in capital gains taxes, with the goal of keeping more investment profits. Alternative Income is a strategy that diversifies your portfolio, opening the door to private market opportunities and the potential for enhanced returns.

Yes. We believe investing works best when paired with an ever-evolving financial plan that covers your entire life (which is also why we include investment management for all clients as part of our base membership). We always incorporate accounts that aren’t directly managed by Facet into your strategy. This includes most account types, including employer sponsored accounts like 401ks & 403bs. While we can’t make trades or adjustments for accounts we do not manage, we’ll still recommend optimizations you can make to ensure these accounts are aligned with your strategy.

Yes, investment management is included as part of your membership.

Most members trust Facet to manage their money. We do have some members who still enjoy managing their investments and self-manage a portion of their money, while taking advantage of Facet’s expertise to manage other accounts. Regardless of what works best for you, you’ll always have oversight of your money and direct access to your accounts.

Yes. We always incorporate accounts that aren’t directly managed by Facet into your strategy. This includes most account types, including employer sponsored accounts like 401ks & 403bs. While we can’t make trades or adjustments for accounts we do not manage, we’ll still recommend optimizations you can make to ensure these accounts are aligned with your strategy.

Most members choose to have Facet manage their investments because it’s already included in their membership fee. Taking advantage of investment management at Facet also opens the door to automated rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, proactive portfolio adjustments based on economic conditions, and other services we can’t provide for accounts we don’t manage.

Yes, we perform Tax-Loss Harvesting (TLH) for all member accounts managed by Facet. TLH is a strategy we use to reduce capital gains taxes by strategically selling securities at a loss, and proactively rebalancing your portfolio to maintain risk levels that are most effective for your circumstances.

There’s no additional cost for investment management, it’s included as part of your membership. While investment management is included in your membership fee, our custodians may charge fees that will be deducted from your account. You can view a full list of potential custodial costs here.

Down markets happen. Our experts design our portfolios with the aim of performing reasonably well when markets are up, and minimize losses when markets are down. While this approach doesn’t allow us to sidestep down markets, it does allow us to be prepared to take advantage when markets turn around.

1 Investing involves risks and past performance is no guarantee of future performance or success.

Security

Your data will always be yours. We employ industry best practices to keep your data safe.  We will never sell your data. When it comes to protecting you and your data, we do not believe that simply checking boxes to ensure compliance is adequate.  We employ industry best practices to ensure information security is at the core of our technology and business operations, yet strive to set a new standard for bank-level security and privacy.
While never a requirement, you will be invited to enter your online financial institution credentials. We never see those credentials, nor do we store them. Your credentials are securely passed to your financial institution and we are provided with a read-only feed of balance and transaction information. We do not have access to your money nor can we make any changes to your account.  If for whatever reason you want to remove our read-only access, you will be able to de-link those accounts. You can learn more about account linking here.
We host our servers using Amazon Web Services (AWS).  All data is encrypted in-flight and at-rest to ensure only the right people view your information for the right reasons: providing you a customized plan for achieving your financial goals.  If you have any questions, let us know: [email protected].

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