Diliberto cites another reason why, survey or no survey, he feels out clients' secret aspirations. One of the first things he does with new clients is to ask three key questions, which he feels gives him a good starting point in understanding their feelings about money and their aspirations. The first is, "How would you live your life if you had all the money you needed?" The second, "Your doctor informs you you have five to seven years to live, but you won't have any warning as to when you die. How will you live those five to seven years?" The final question: "Your doctor tells you you have 24 hours to live. What are your regrets?"

"That tends to get people thinking about what's important to them," Diliberto says. "Interestingly enough, no one says that I regretted I didn't beat the S&P 500."

An Evolution

Diliberto's initial years in the financial service industry were, oddly enough, in the sales-driven insurance business. In fact, Diliberto spent 21 years with John Hancock, working his way up to a regional vice president responsible for 16 agencies in the North Atlantic region. It was, however, a job that he never felt fully comfortable in. "I'm not the type who can survive well in a corporate environment," he says. "I need my independence."

That freedom eventually came in the form of a chance to form his own financial planning practice as a general agent in 1983-something he had been eager to do since attending a workshop two years earlier at one of the agencies in his territory. "It was a time when financial planning was clearly in its infancy, but I became enamored with that," he says. "It was the idea of looking at a person's entire financial picture and then coming out with the solution that dealt specifically with their situation, as opposed to selling you this or that."

As to how he ended up where he is now, Diliberto calls it an evolution. After starting his financial planning business in Cherry Hill, N.J., he moved a few miles west to Philadelphia two years later, in 1985. Five years later, the business started incorporating asset-based fees into its business and then, in 1996, became a fee-only operation.

That changed again last year, when Diliberto and his partners decided to emphasize the planning side of their business further by moving to a flat-retainer structure. Still not implemented with all clients, the fee structure is based on an annual retainer of $6,000 and up, an amount that is renegotiated every three years.

"When you charge for assets, you are emphasizing the most important thing you do is assets," he says. "I want to make clients understand that the other things we do for them are more important than the management of assets."

It was a transition that changed the very process of how Diliberto's firm deals with clients. Unlike a typical planning firm, where relationships are usually forged by a couple of meetings followed by annual reviews, Diliberto undertakes a lengthy dialogue with clients before even talking about dollars and cents. The typical client relationship starts with four meetings, lasting an average of two hours each, stretched out over about a three-month period. It isn't until the third and fourth meetings, he says, that he starts to structure portfolios and put life goals.

Diliberto says this thinking came about gradually, through a series of changes that were influenced heavily by Diliberto's study of the works of George Kinder, founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning and regarded by some as the "father of life planning," and others. Along the way, Diliberto himself become a national spokesman for financial life planning, at about the same time as he served as the first president of the Financial Planning Association.

He's also brought on partners along the way. The most recent person to become a shareholder in RTD Financial is Diliberto's son, A.J. Diliberto, who is director of the firm's financial planning operations. Diliberto's two other partners were hired shortly after the firm was created. Richard J. Busillo, the firm's president, gave up a high-paying job as a regional vice president for a pension services company to join the company in 1986. He started as an independent contractor, working on a commission-only basis.