Occupation / job
Personal Financial Advisors
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
At $105,070 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Personal Financial Advisors pays 110% more than the typical American job — $55,050 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
This is a large occupation: 266,800 people work as Personal Financial Advisors. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
Financial specialist work suits people who are precise about other people’s money and unbothered that the calendar, not the workload, decides when the pressure arrives.
We carry no verified training length for Personal Financial Advisors — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half of Personal Financial Advisors spans $72,440 to $176,790, which is 2.4x and $8,695 a month. Ask what puts someone at the top of a range like this before assuming time served does it, because usually it does not.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $72,440 — $34.82 an hour, $22,420 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Personal Financial Advisors is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if repetitive detail work drains you; the quarter-end and year-end cycles are non-negotiable and immovable.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 266,800 people employed as Personal Financial Advisors; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
A 2.4x ratio between $72,440 and $176,790 means this label covers several distinct jobs. Treat $105,070 as arithmetic about a mixed population rather than as a description of any of them.
In cash terms the middle half of Personal Financial Advisors runs $72,440 to $176,790 — $104,350 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $105,070.
Getting to $176,790, the 75th percentile, is worth $71,720 a year more than the $105,070 midpoint and $104,350 more than the $72,440 a quarter of Personal Financial Advisors settle for.
The upper half of the middle range — $105,070 to $176,790, or $71,720 — is far longer than the lower half at $32,630. In a shape like this an average would flatter Personal Financial Advisors considerably, and would describe nobody.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $50.51 at the midpoint for Personal Financial Advisors, $34.82 at the 25th percentile and $84.99 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Personal Financial Advisors for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $105,070 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $105,070 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Personal Financial Advisors, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else