Reading the terrain.
A retirement deserves more than a balance; it deserves a map. Benchmark is a Petoskey advisory firm built on one working premise: measure a family's actual ground first, and let the plan follow from the measurements.
Fee-only · 100% fiduciary · (231) 555-0162
Sheet 02 · The ground we walk
About Benchmark
Known by name, not by account number.
Our conviction is plain: a family that spent decades earning and saving is owed advice that serves them and no one else. A tidy portfolio or a bound plan document isn't the standard here — advice that holds up under your own reading is.
“We walked this ground before you got here. Twice a year, we walk it again.”
Benchmark is a fee-only advisory firm in Petoskey, Michigan, run on a surveyor's habit of mind: measure before you mark, write down what you find, and come back next season to check it. For nearly two decades we've drawn retirement plans for more than a hundred families nationwide — in plain language, at a posted fee — and the work has lasted for the simplest of reasons: we keep our word, we keep the measurements current, and we keep the firm small enough to know every name on the sheet.
Fig. 01 — Ground, surveyedScale 1 : 24,000
Sheet 03 · Why the terrain feels steep
And here's why
Planning that takes the grade out of the climb.
From the trailhead, retirement reads like steep country. The title you carried, the paycheck that arrived without fail, the long habit of saving instead of spending — all of it ends at roughly the same contour line, and withdrawals begin. Those grades are real, and we don't pretend otherwise.
Measured properly, though, the slope flattens. These should be the years you spend what you built and try what you kept postponing — and a plan that has been surveyed, written down, and re-checked on schedule is what makes that possible. After 19 years of this work, we put four questions on the sheet before anything else:
Is there enough here to retire on — and stay retired?
Is the IRS taking more than its share?
Is the portfolio actually built to fund the plan?
What could still knock the plan off course?
Sheet 04 · The surveyor
From the founder
Why Benchmark exists.
“Most of the worry I meet in this office isn't really about money — it's about unmeasured ground. Leaving a career without knowing what the next thirty years will cost would unsettle anyone. The remedy isn't reassurance; it's measurement. Write the numbers down, re-check them twice a year, and the fear loses its footing.
I also spent enough years in this industry to watch plans drawn to fit a product line instead of a family. Benchmark is built so that can't happen here: one posted fee, a fiduciary duty on every recommendation, and a plan you can read and verify yourself.”
Ellen Marsh, CFP® · Managing Partner
Sheet 05 · Legend
What we stand on
How to read this firm.
Every symbol on a survey sheet means one thing, exactly. So does every word below.
- Fee-only
- Fee-only fiduciary advice · A single posted fee · Accounts titled to you at Fidelity. You pay one posted fee for advice — no products on offer, no commissions, no revenue you can't see on the page.
- Fiduciary
- We are legally obligated to act in your best interest — all the time, on every recommendation, not just when it's convenient. 100% fiduciary.
- Custody
- Your assets are held in your own name at Fidelity. We advise on the accounts; we never hold the money.
- The plan
- Built and tracked in RightCapital, reviewed with you twice a year, every year — spring and fall, like clockwork.
- Scale
- 110+ families, not 1,100. Deliberately small, so the person who surveyed your plan is the person who answers your call.
- Experience
- 19 years of walking this ground with families near and in retirement.
Sheet 06 · Final benchmark
The first traverse is a conversation
Now you've read the terrain. Walk it with us.
Start with a conversation. No pitch, no obligation — bring nothing but your questions.
When you call, a person answers — most often Ellen · No obligation
Benchmark placedYou are the fixed point
Petoskey, MI 49770