Most advisory firms overspend somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 a year — on custodial fees, investment management, technology, and a handful of other line items nobody’s revisited in years. None of it looks like a problem on its own. It’s just how a firm grows, one decision at a time.

This isn’t an argument for pinching pennies. Plenty of what firms pay for is worth every dollar. The real issue is that most of these decisions got made once and then just kept running, with nobody circling back to check. It’s a different question from what we cover in the RIA succession planning checklist — this one’s about what a firm is spending today, not what happens to it down the road. Here’s where we’d start looking.

1. Custodial fees and account minimums

Most advisors set up their custodial relationship once, early on, and don’t think about it again — fair enough, there’s a business to run. But fee schedules and account minimums shift over time, and so does your book. A firm that’s doubled or tripled in size since it signed on can still be paying rates built for a much smaller shop. Every few years, it’s worth just asking the custodian directly: is this still the right tier for where we are now?

2. Investment management and fund expenses

Sub-advisory fees, TAMP costs, the expense ratios buried inside the funds and models you use — none of it shows up as one clean line on a statement, which is exactly why it’s easy to lose track of. We’re not saying cheaper is automatically better. A pricier option might be earning its keep. But it’s worth actually checking, model by model, instead of assuming it still does.

3. An overlapping technology stack

CRM, planning software, portfolio management, a client portal, some kind of risk tool — most firms pick these up one at a time as a need comes up, and rarely step back to look at the whole pile together. The usual result is two or three tools quietly doing the same job, plus licenses sized for a team that’s since changed. A tech stack tends to age a lot better when it’s reviewed as a system instead of renewed piece by piece on autopilot.

4. Compliance and “RIA in a box” services

Outsourced compliance support is genuinely useful, especially in the early years. But these packages tend to be priced for a hypothetical firm, not the one actually using them — and it’s common to find yourself paying for a service tier, a module, or a block of support hours you’re just not using.

5. Marketing and lead-generation retainers

A marketing retainer is easy to sign and even easier to forget about. If you haven’t looked closely in the last year at what it’s actually produced — real leads, real meetings, accounts that closed — there’s a decent chance you’re paying for activity instead of results.

6. E&O insurance coverage that no longer fits

E&O and other coverage usually gets set once, around a renewal a few years back, and then just rolls forward year after year. Chances are your firm doesn’t look like it did then — more AUM, a different client mix, maybe services you didn’t offer before. Coverage should track the firm you actually run today, not the one you ran when you signed the policy.

7. Staffing and outsourced services

Outsourcing — paraplanning, marketing support, back office — makes sense when the volume doesn’t justify a full hire. The trouble is firms tend to stick with an arrangement well past its shelf life: still outsourcing something that’s grown enough to bring in-house, or the reverse, still paying a salary for something a vendor could now do just as well for less.

None of this is a knock on custodians, tech vendors, or compliance consultants — a firm needs all of it. The point is just that most of these decisions get made once and then never looked at again. Revisiting them doesn’t cost anything but a little time, and it’s one of the quieter benefits built into Ritz Stevens membership: having someone else whose job is to keep asking the question.