Doshguide is a new financial advice platform that charges a monthly fee to help you navigate major financial decisions.

The first time I engaged with my financial planner I spent my time searching for elusive pieces of paper and trawling my inbox for financial statements. It was a partly frustrating, partly liberating experience, as the aim was to get all our family’s financial paperwork together so that the financial planner could provide us with a full financial assessment.

It was a sobering exercise realising how disorganised we had become. We had moved to Cape Town a few years earlier and much of our paperwork was still in boxes. We were certainly not as organised as we thought we were.

It was also an interesting exercise because our financial planner asked a lot of questions about the future. When were we planning to replace our cars? What are our retirement goals? For how much longer would we be supporting our children?

This financial planning experience of ours is in sharp contrast to the experience that a colleague recently had when he contacted his financial adviser.

He asked a few questions about the tax efficiency of his current contributions. The financial adviser’s response was: “How much do you earn and how much do you contribute to your company pension fund?”

How on earth could this person claim to be my colleague’s adviser yet not even know this basic information about his client? How could he possibly give any decent advice without this information? Yet each month he earns commission off the product he sold years ago.

This is the problem with the way financial advice works. It is linked to a product – whether that is an investment or a policy we have bought.

But finances are so much more than that. Money is behind everything we do. Whether we should change jobs, what house to buy, and the impact of car finance on our children’s education.

It is about how much debt is healthy and planning for future dreams.  It is about finding a balance between all those needs and wants – making the best use of a scarce resource. And it is, ultimately, about understanding our value system.

This is partly why personal finance has become so popular on social media. I receive endless questions about a myriad of financial decisions people need to make from buying a car to settling their mortgages. They don’t have anyone they can trust to ask about those practical, day-to-day financial issues.

We all want someone in our corner who we can trust and who is knowledgeable about finances, but how do you pay for this valuable information?

The current investment-linked or policy-linked fee models struggle to cater for this. Even the most well-meaning financial planners still need some product linked to the service.

A monthly fee for ongoing advice

Clients are also stuck in the mindset that the role of financial advice is to select the best-performing investment, yet they openly acknowledge that what they really need is someone to help guide them on their everyday money.

One of the ways to turn the model on its head is to offer a “fee for service”. Some financial planners are charging fees for a financial plan, but there are a few such as DoshGuide that have a monthly fee structure that gives you a financial planner on call.

In the same way that one pays for a gym subscription or to have a personal trainer, you pay a subscription for ongoing, unconflicted financial information that you need to help you navigate life.

DoshGuide.co is a platform that connects clients with financial planners who charge on a monthly-fee basis.

The founder of the platform, Rory Brachner, says that this model is gaining traction with young professionals who are actively involved in their finances, but who want the support and advice of a qualified financial planner.

The fee structure caters for a range of financial requirements from a basic, entry-level monthly fee of R850 up to R3 000 a month for more complex needs that may include estate and retirement planning. As there is no set contract period, Brachner says clients use the service for as long as they have a need.

This article is part of an educational series in partnership with Doshguide.