Reference: Package Selection & Rate Schedule

# Package Selection & Rate Schedule — Reference

This page documents the diagnostic logic behind package selection at Find My Family Genealogy. It is the structural reference behind the package prices listed on the Services page.

This page exists because pricing in professional genealogy is not arbitrary — it reflects real differences in research complexity, record-access friction, and scope. A prospect who has navigated their way to this page deserves to see the reasoning behind the numbers, not just the numbers themselves.

If you are a prospect reading this page during your own due diligence: welcome. Most prospects do not find this page. The fact that you did is not a problem — it suggests you are the kind of client this practice serves well. Bring questions to the consultation; the reasoning below is meant to inform that conversation, not replace it.

Section 1 — Basic vs Plus Diagnostic

Most package tiers are offered in two variants: Basic and Plus. The Plus variant carries a higher hourly rate ($40/hr vs $30/hr), reflecting the inherent complexity and overhead of certain research types. The diagnostic below determines which variant applies to any given project.

A project qualifies for Plus pricing if it meets any one of the following criteria:

1. Era cutoff. US research before 1850, international research before 1800, or research in a jurisdiction before the start of civil vital registration in that jurisdiction. 

2. Foreign-language paleography. Research requiring competent reading of non-English scripts that demand paleographic skill — Swedish gothic, German Kurrent, Italian regional scripts, Cyrillic, and similar. The skill required to read these scripts accurately is itself the cost the Plus rate covers.

3. Record-loss jurisdictions. Research in burned counties, destroyed-records areas, or other catastrophic-loss jurisdictions — but only when the loss directly affects the records the project actually needs. A burned-courthouse county where the project's records are housed elsewhere does not automatically trigger Plus.

4. DNA work. Any project requiring DNA analysis as part of its methodology — unknown parentage research, ancestral identification using DNA, DNA-augmented brick-wall work, target testing strategy design. This is the most consistent Plus trigger and applies to every DNA engagement regardless of era.

5. Multi-jurisdictional research with coordination overhead. Projects requiring research across multiple distinct record-system jurisdictions — but only when the multiple jurisdictions create real coordination overhead. Different record systems, different languages, different access protocols. Multi-jurisdictional alone is not enough; the coordination cost must be real. 

6. Specialist record traditions. Research requiring expertise in non-mainstream record traditions — Indigenous tribal records, Sephardic or Jewish records pre-1900, African American research in the Freedmen's Bureau era, Catholic parish records in heavily-Catholic-immigrant communities, and similar. These are evaluated case by case rather than by blanket rule; some traditions fit at the Basic rate due to practitioner specialty depth, others require Plus.

7. Within-110-years formally-restricted records. Projects requiring substantial procurement of records less than approximately 110 years old when those records are formally restricted by privacy law or sealed-record protocols — not merely inconvenient. Routine VitalChek-orderable death certificates from the 1980s do not trigger Plus. Pre-1962 sealed adoption files, restricted military records under privacy statutes, and similar formally-restricted records do.

8. Lineage society documentation. All documentary lineage work for lineage societies (DAR, SAR, Mayflower, Colonial Dames, and similar) is Plus regardless of era. The registrar-driven double-reference standard imposes documentation overhead beyond that required by standard documentary research.

If a project meets none of these criteria, Basic pricing applies. If a project meets one or more of the following, Plus pricing applies. The diagnostic is binary by design — there is no partial Plus and no "almost Plus." Either a Plus criterion is present, and Plus pricing applies, or none is, and Basic does.

Section 2 — Per-Tier Appropriateness

Different research problems require different scopes. This section documents what each package tier is appropriate for, and — equally important — what each tier is structurally unable to support. The "totally inappropriate for" criteria exist to protect both practitioner and client from negotiate-down pressure that would push a project into a package that cannot deliver.

A useful image for thinking about scope adequacy: water depth. Mini is dipping your toes in. Bronze is wading. Silver is swimming. Gold leaves the question of water depth behind entirely — Gold is about whether one engagement covers multiple destinations.

Mini Project — $245.99

Mini is the toes-in-the-water tier. Three hours of research and a written summary. With Mini, I'd just barely be dipping my toes in before I'd have to report back to you with results. I prefer to be able to at least wade — which is why Mini is reserved for tightly-bounded engagements where three hours is genuinely the right size.

Mini is APPROPRIATE for:

- Records orientation — the prospect knows the era and region, but does not know what records exist for that area. Mini delivers the orientation and a roadmap.

- Brick-wall consultation — review of prior research on a stuck line and production of a tailored research recommendation plan for the client to execute themselves or hire out.

- Targeted single-question survey — questions like "is this specific person findable in records?" or "what records exist for this family in this place?" answered with a written summary.

- Document look-ups (conditional). Mini fits a known-document retrieval only when the document is within Tooele County or within roughly 30-45 minutes of the Research Director's residence, and the document is genuinely known to exist and locatable. If the prospect does not know where the document lives—that is, research before retrieval —and the project structurally exceeds Mini. Retrievals outside the 30-45 minute radius require two Mini orders combined to justify the trip.

Mini is TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE for:

- Any DNA project — DNA is a Plus criterion, and three hours cannot even set up the analysis framework. The DNA floor is Silver Plus per practice policy.

- Unknown parentage research — same reasoning. The match-clustering work alone exceeds Mini scope.

- Multi-jurisdictional research — orienting in a single jurisdiction often exceeds the Mini budget; multi-jurisdictional is structurally impossible.

- Lineage society documentation — the double-reference standard alone exceeds three hours.

- Heir search or estate-adjacent research — the protective protocol overhead alone exceeds three hours regardless of the underlying research.

- Open-scope projects — anything framed as "just look into my family history" is structurally wrong for Mini. The Mini diagnostic requires a tightly-scoped question; an open scope requires a minimum of twenty hours.

Bronze 10-Hour — $599.99 Basic / $774.99 Plus

Bronze is the wading tier. Now I have enough runway to wade in and make real progress, not just dip toes. Ten hours of research is meaningful documentary work — enough to advance a single line by one to two generations under good conditions, enough to attack a defined brick wall with a clear hypothesis, enough to produce real findings on a focused problem.

Bronze is APPROPRIATE for:

- Single-line documentary advancement — push one ancestral line back one to two generations under good conditions (post-1850 US starting point, good record survival).

- Targeted brick-wall attack — a specific stuck point with a clear hypothesis to test using documentary records.

- Records survey plus initial findings — thorough survey of what exists for a family or place, plus initial findings, with a roadmap for what would come next at Silver or Gold scope.

- Repeat-client incremental work — follow-on engagement, adding a generation or filling specific gaps in a family already researched.

- Prior research review with documentation — audit of a prior genealogist's work plus a written assessment.

- Lineage society preliminary survey — establishing whether the line is documentable before committing to full lineage society work at Plus pricing.

Bronze is TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE for:

- Any DNA project — Plus criterion automatically, and ten hours is structurally inadequate for DNA work. DNA floor is 20 hours; Silver minimum.

- Unknown parentage research — same reasoning as DNA above.

- Burned-county or catastrophic-record-loss reconstruction — substitute-source survey work consumes Bronze hours before conclusions can be built.

- Court-ready or notarizable deliverables — documentation overhead alone consumes a significant fraction of Bronze hours, leaving inadequate research time.

- Any heir search or estate-adjacent research — Silver floor minimum per practice policy on outcome-stakes engagements.

- Lineage society documentation (the actual work, not preliminary survey) — the double-reference standard requires Silver Plus minimum.

- Citizenship-by-descent foundational documentary work — destination-country preparatory work for foreign specialists exceeds Bronze scope.

- Multi-line projects — Bronze is single-line by design. Splitting attention across multiple lines produces "scratched the surface on several things" rather than meaningful progress on one.

- Open-scope projects — same reasoning as Mini. Open scope requires a Silver or Gold runway to do so honestly.

Silver 20-Hour — $899.99 Basic / $1,174.99 Plus

Silver is the swimming-depth tier. Silver gets us to the work; we can actually go somewhere. Twenty hours is enough to deliver real conclusions on a complex single-line problem, run a DNA analysis framework, handle court-ready documentation, or complete a lineage society engagement.

Silver is APPROPRIATE for:

- Single-line documentary advancement with real depth — push one ancestral line back three to five generations under ideal post-civil-registration conditions; two to three generations under challenging conditions.

- DNA analysis projects (Plus tier) — unknown parentage, ancestral identification, DNA-augmented brick-wall work, target testing strategy design.

- Complex single-line brick-wall work — problems requiring methodological pivot, substitute-source survey, or multiple parallel hypotheses to test.

- Pre-civil-registration international research (Plus tier) — parish records, foreign-language paleography, structured immigration research.

- Lineage society documentation (the actual work, not preliminary survey) — DAR, SAR, Mayflower documentary lineage with full double-reference per registrar standards.

- Heir search and estate-adjacent research — documentary lineage with court-ready deliverables.

- Citizenship-by-descent foundational documentary work — destination-country identity profile and origin-clue extraction.

- Two-line projects when objectives are tightly defined, and one line is clearly secondary — not full multi-line treatment, but supplementary work on a second related line.

- Burned-county or record-loss reconstruction — substitute-source survey, alternative jurisdiction research, structured catastrophic-loss workaround methodology.

- Savvy-client engagement where prior research has hit a methodological ceiling and a pivot is warranted.

Silver is TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE for:

- Open-scope multi-line work (three or more lines) — Gold runway required.

- Multi-region projects where origin-country specialist coordination is required, and the destination-country preparatory work is substantial — may exceed Silver runway and warrant Gold.

- Cases where the client expects multiple ancestral lines extended back to the 1600s or earlier — Gold territory.

- Cases where the client expects "completion" of a documentary tree across multiple lines — Silver cannot credibly close a tree, only advance specific lines.

- Court-ready legal-grade documentation across multiple ancestral lines — single-line legal-grade work fits Silver; multi-line legal-grade exceeds it.

- Cases that genuinely require subcontractor coordination on two or more specialist engagements — the coordinator overhead alone exceeds Silver runway.

Gold 40-Hour — $1,839.98 Basic / $2,339.98 Plus

Gold is the multi-line tier. The Gold framing is documented on the Services page — most commonly ordered by clients who want substantial progress on more than one ancestral line at once, with the most common use case being clients who want several family lines extended back to the 1600s in one comprehensive engagement.

Gold is APPROPRIATE for:

- Multiple ancestral lines extended back to the 1600s or earlier in a single engagement — the primary Gold use case.

- Genuinely complex single-line projects — pre-1850 US with destroyed records, DNA triangulation across multiple test-takers, foreign-records work requiring in-country specialist coordination, and multi-region single-line work.

- Citizenship-by-descent comprehensive documentary preparation — destination-country identity profile, plus origin-country specialist coordination, plus integration of findings.

- Full lineage society documentation for membership in multiple societies simultaneously.

- Major book or compiled genealogy projects requiring substantial new research.

- Research Director engagements — multi-specialist coordinated projects where the practice operates as the directing entity.

Gold is TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE for (note: the Gold inappropriate-for criteria are largely about client-fit failures rather than scope-inadequacy failures, which is the inverse of the smaller tiers):

- Clients who "just want everything researched" but have not defined what "everything" means. Gold's runway does not substitute for scope definition. These prospects need the $59.99 Premium Consultation first to define what "everything" actually means.

- Clients with a budget but no specific research question. Focusing on the budget rather than the scope is structurally wrong.

- Single tightly-scoped questions that fit Silver. Don't oversell Gold when Silver delivers.

- First-time clients without prior research, where Silver could establish the foundation before scaling. Gold should be reserved for clients with enough research clarity to use the runway well.

- Cases where the client has not provided needed materials and wants Gold to "figure it out." Gold requires the same intake disclosure as the smaller tiers and cannot be substituted for client-provided information.

- Retail heir search inquiries. Heir search is a referral category, not a service category. Clients with retail heir search needs are referred to vetted, contingency-based heir search firms.

- Cases where the prospect is shopping by tier — questions like "what's your most expensive package?" without a specific research need driving the size.

- Cases where the client expects guaranteed results because of the price point. Gold does not guarantee outcomes any more than Mini does. Every search produces a result, but the result is not always the document the client hoped to find — see the Negative Result Reframe principle on the Services page.

Section 3 — Methodology When Goals Compete: The Vein-of-Gold Principle

The package tier determines the total runway. Methodology determines how the hours actually get spent — particularly when a project has multiple goals or subgoals competing for that runway.

 The Research Director's standard methodology for multi-goal projects is sequential, not parallel: 

1. Work on the first goal with basic searches. 

2. If results are discouraging, move to the second goal. 

3. If results are encouraging — if we hit gold, or signs of likely productivity — spend the remaining time mining that vein.

This is the vein-of-gold principle: find a vein and mine it before checking other prospect spots for anything. Get the gold while you have it. Exhaust the vein first.

The reasoning is that splitting attention across multiple parallel objectives produces shallow work on each rather than meaningful progress on one. A project with five objectives and a Bronze-sized budget that attempts all five simultaneously covers only one or two and delivers nothing actionable on the others. The same budget is worked through sequentially, mining the first vein that shows promise and producing real findings on a single line.

The exception to the vein-of-gold methodology is special circumstances where the client has a genuine, specific need for parallel work. The most common example is an upcoming trip where the client is visiting multiple places and needs research done on both before they go. In that case, the client's external constraint overrides the standing methodology — but the special circumstance is the exception, not the default.

Clients commissioning Silver or Gold projects with multiple objectives should expect the vein-of-gold methodology to apply unless they specify otherwise in writing during scoping. Clients who want forced-parallel treatment despite the methodology's tradeoffs are welcome to request it, but they should understand they are trading depth for breadth in that choice.

Section 4 — Rush Rate Schedule

Most professional genealogy engagements proceed on a 90-day completion timeline as documented in the standard service agreement. When a client requires completion within 90 days of a specified deadline, rush-rate modifiers apply to the base package pricing.

 The rush rate clock is anchored to the prospect's stated deadline date, counting backward. If the prospect has a hard deadline — a citizenship application filing date, a court submission deadline, a family event date, a lineage society application deadline — the rush calculation works from that date. The clock-start basis is the deadline, not the consultation call or the return date for the paperwork. If paperwork is delayed to the point of crossing into a new classification window, we may need to consider repricing or cancellation. 

Rush rate structure:

 Time Available | Rush Modifier:

• 90+ days from deadline - Standard rate — no modifier 

• 60-89 days from deadline  +15% 

• 30-59 days from deadline  +30% 

•  Under 30 days from deadline  +50% (and accepted on a case-by-case basis; declined more often than accepted - especially for work that would require overseas on-site work) 

Worked example: a client with a 45-day deadline who wants a Silver Plus engagement pays $1,174.99 base × 1.30 rush modifier = $1,527.49 for the engagement.

Outcome-stakes engagements (legal proceedings, estate matters, citizenship applications, court submissions, regulated benefit claims) are quoted at rush rate regardless of timeline because the protective protocol overhead and the consequences of timing pressure justify the surcharge structurally — the rush is not merely about practitioner time pressure but also about the elevated risk profile of compressed timelines on outcome-stakes work.

Rush rates apply to the research portion of the engagement. Document procurement timelines from third-party repositories cannot always be accelerated by paying more—the state vital records office processes at its current pace, regardless of the client's payment to the Research Director. Rush engagements assume the practitioner accelerates within their own time allocation, while third-party processing times remain unchanged.

The under-30-day tier is structurally fragile. Engagements with less than 30 days to the deadline are declined more often than accepted. The +50% modifier is the floor, not a guarantee of acceptance.

Section 5 — How to Use This Reference

This page is reference material. It documents the diagnostic logic that determines which package and tier fit a given project. It is not a self-service ordering instrument.

The consultation remains the right next step, regardless of how thoroughly a prospect has worked through this page. Two reasons.

The first is that genealogy projects are individual. The diagnostic above is the framework; applying the framework to a specific project is consultation work. A prospect who has read this page and concluded "I need Silver Plus with a +30% rush modifier" may be right — and may also have misjudged a Plus criterion or a tier-appropriateness threshold in ways that a 30-minute consultation will surface and correct. Better to surface those before money changes hands.

The second is that the framework above describes scope correctness, not engagement readiness. A prospect can correctly identify what tier their project would need and still not be ready to engage — perhaps they have not gathered the prior research the engagement requires, perhaps the timeline does not work, perhaps a different practitioner would actually serve them better. The consultation surfaces those questions, too.

A prospect arriving at the consultation, having read this page, is welcome and prepared. The same prospect arriving without having read it is also welcome — the consultation does the work of orientation either way.

For prospects ready to proceed: order the $59.99 Premium Consultation Survey Research Report on the Services page. The consultation produces a written research proposal scoped to the specific project, with a price quoted from the diagnostic framework above applied to your actual situation.