The Most and Least Expensive Cities for Financial Advice

New York and Denver are the cheapest cities for financial advice. Charlotte, Tampa, and Minneapolis are the most expensive. At the median, a $500K portfolio costs about $4,000 a year in New York but $7,500 in Charlotte—nearly double for the same service. We looked at fee schedules for individual advisors across the 20 largest U.S. metro areas to find out where your dollar goes furthest.

The full city ranking

Median annual fee for a $500,000 portfolio, sorted from cheapest to most expensive:

Why some cities cost more

Each advisor counts once, based on where they personally work—not where their firm is headquartered. A few factors drive the gap between cities:

• Competition matters: New York has 4,613 advisors in our data—more than any other metro. That competition pushes the median down to $4,000. Denver (1,817 advisors) has a similar dynamic with a wide range of independent firms keeping prices low.
• Wealth-management hubs: Minneapolis, Tampa, and Charlotte each land at $7,500—cities where large wealth-management firms serving high-net-worth clients make up a bigger share of the advisor population.
• The mid-tier cluster: Most cities fall in a tight $5,000–$6,250 band. The difference between Los Angeles ($5,250) and San Diego ($6,250) is just $1,000—smaller than the variation you'd find between two firms in the same zip code.

New York is the cheapest big city

New York ties Denver at $4,000 with by far the largest advisor pool (4,613). Despite being the country's financial capital, the sheer density of advisors—from solo practitioners to large wealth managers—creates enough competition to keep the median well below the national average.

Compare that to Charlotte ($7,500 with 656 advisors), where a smaller market is dominated by a few large firms with premium pricing. Fewer options means less price pressure.

Small firms tell a different story

The ranking above includes advisors at firms of all sizes. But large firms employ most advisors, so they dominate the medians. What if we filter to small firms only—those with fewer than 5 advisors? The picture changes dramatically:

Among small firms, nine cities cluster at exactly $5,000—including Minneapolis and Charlotte, which were the most expensive in the overall ranking. Meanwhile New York and Denver, the cheapest overall, jump to $6,000 for small firms. The takeaway: the overall city ranking is mostly driven by which large firms happen to have offices there, not by how independent advisors price their services. Small-firm fees are remarkably similar across the country, ranging from just $5,000 to $6,875.

Does location really matter?

Less than it used to. The pandemic pushed most advisory firms online, and many haven't gone back. You can hire a $4,000/year New York advisor from your living room in Tampa. These numbers also show that the firm you choose matters more than the city—within any metro, individual advisors vary widely in what they charge.

That said, some people still want to sit across the table from their advisor. If that's you, location matters—but it's worth knowing that the advisor two states away might charge thousands less per year for the same work. On a $500K portfolio, that's money that compounds in your favor over decades.