Will the two camps of financial advisors ever get along?

My blind date's name was Paula. Mutual friends knew that she and I were both recently divorced. And they knew that we were both somehow in the world of finance. So they figured we'd hit it off.

What the heck. After my last date with the gym teacher-90 minutes on the finer points of field hockey and the virtues of stomach crunches-I looked forward to meeting a woman with whom I might be able to discuss more interesting things like, um, beta and standard deviation.

Tuesday afternoon my date and I met for lunch at the Greek diner up by the mall. We chose a booth in the back, opposite the video poker machine. Paula asked me about my kids. I asked about hers. "Where do you know Jean and John from?" "How long have you lived in Allentown?" Then on to careers.

Paula called herself a "financial architect," and she explained that her job was "to help people build a solid foundation for a safe and secure financial future." That sounded impressive, but when the alliterations and euphemisms gave way, just about the time our food arrived, it turned out that Paula sold life insurance and full-load mutual funds.

Me, as I told this gal, I'm a strictly fee-only kind of guy. "Oh," said Paula, lifting a forkful of Greek salad to her mouth. "I could never charge a fee. I want my clients to keep all their hard-earned money for themselves."

I looked for a glint of humor in her over-mascaraed eyes, but there was none. Could she be for real? I fantasized how Paula would look with iceberg lettuce and feta cheese ... oh, never mind.

I kept my thoughts to myself-or at least I didn't share them verbally-and took another nibble of my chicken gyro.

According to the Financial Planning Association, about a quarter of all planners, or at least of FPA members, are "fee only." They do not take commissions. That's me. I'm new to the field, having just recently opened shop. The other three-quarters of FPA members do take commissions, as do, of course, all stockbrokers, insurance salesmen, and annuity marketers. That's my date.

The two camps-us and them, Paula and I, the commissioned and the uncommissioned-well, we tend not to like each other very much. In fact, sometimes the feelings run deep. All this was new to me when I decided to get into the business. The degree of mutual animosity, the contempt and the sanctimony can all be rather astonishing.

One fee-only planner I know, Frank, has been in the biz for many years. Says Frank of commissioned planners: "They are lowlife scum. I absolutely hate them."

Atop his desk Frank keeps a little porcelain statuette of a pig rolling in the mud. "I keep it there to remind me of what I never want to be," he says. Another seasoned fee-only planner I know, Chris, says, "How can they possibly sleep at night? I could never sell my soul like that."

In Paula's world, there's no less loathing. Fee-only planners are seen, at best, as elitists, unsympathetic to the unwashed masses who can't afford out-of-pocket fees. At worst, they are seen as losers, without the spine to compete in the commissioned world, perhaps not even smart enough to pass the Series 7.

One guy I know, Charles, is president of a financial planning group that sells stocks, bonds, options, youname-it, all on commission. He sees fee-only planning as an impractical niche. "You fee-only guys have this holier-than-thou attitude, and it is, quite frankly, ludicrous," Charles says to me. "The majority of financial products in America are sold on commission. Are you going to tell me that by restricting my product options to only no-commission products that I'm benefiting my clients? C'mon, Russ."

C'mon, Charles. Wake up and smell the coffee futures, I'm inclined to say, but, as with Paula, I bite my lip. It doesn't matter how many products you have to offer, Chucky, you're always going to be inclined to offer the ones that pay you the big, fat commission. After all, little Johnny needs braces, and teenage Jennifer is hankering for her own car.

Oh, there I go. In truth, I may have been swayed by guys like Chris and Frank to assume the worst. But maybe there are commissioned planners out there who can be objective. Maybe Charles is one. I'd like to give them all the benefit of the doubt. I'd like them to give me the benefit of the doubt. Give peace a chance. Let's all be friends.

But lovers? Hmmm. As it turned out, Paula didn't have much to say about beta or standard deviation. But she had lots to say about her commissions. In between bites, she explained to me that she gets to keep a third of the first year's premiums on any life insurance policies she sells. "Business was good after 9/11," she cooed. "Everybody, you know, was kind of obsessed with death."

I started to sorely miss that gym teacher.

"But now business is pretty slow," Paula continued, ejecting an olive pit from between her lips, and letting out a long sigh.

That, I supposed, was my cue to pick up the check. So I took a final bite of gyro, wiped the grease from my lips, and flagged down the waitress. Then I told Paula that I'd had a good time, and I'd be calling her.

We both knew that wasn't true.

Russell Wild is a sometimes sanctimonious fee-only financial planner in Allentown, Pa.