FP+Careers - Part 26

#FASuccess Ep 106: Empowering Widows Financially By Helping Them Navigate The 3 Stages of Widowhood, with Kathleen Rehl

January 8, 2019 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 106th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kathleen Rehl. Kathleen is a researcher on the money issues that widows face, the author of "Moving Forward on Your Own," a financial guidebook for widows, and a speaker and trainer for financial advisors on how to work better with widowed clients.

What's unique about Kathleen, though, is that she's also a former financial advisor herself, having spent 17 years operating as an independent RIA before sadly becoming widowed, at which point she decided to sell her advisory firm and shift her focus to empowering widows financially as an encore career.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the challenges in working with recent widows. The words to use and what to say, as well as what not to say when working with a recent widow, how widows typically progress from a grief stage, where it's so difficult to make good decisions, that Kathleen simply advocates for a decision-free zone for 6 to 12 months, to a growth phase where the transition work really gets underway to begin rebuilding the widow's financial life, and then a grace stage that not all widows reach, where the foundation is set for a new life in a new direction. Which is important to understand because financial advisors that push the wrong financial issues based on a widow's current phase will likely become part of that now infamous statistic that 70% of widows end out changing financial advisors... precisely because so few have a real understanding of and empathy for the issues that recent widows face.

We also talk about Kathleen's own practice. Why and how she formed a niche in working with members of the clergy, how she ultimately wound out and sold the practice after becoming a widow, and the transition she made to becoming a speaker, researcher, and ultimately self-publishing her own book to help widows that has now sold tens of thousands of copies, including from financial advisors who often buy the book for their own recently widowed clients.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kathleen talks about some of the recent research she's done on widows and money, including a study that showed how widows who worked with a financial advisor had significantly more financial confidence in their future, and how the most effective advisors who're working with the widows instilled even more financial confidence for their clients than the average financial advisor, a powerful testament to the value of a financial advisor in a uniquely challenging stage of life.

So whether you're interested in learning what drives about 70% of new widows to fire their advisor, how advisors can better engage both partners in a marriage to establish relationships early on, and the best way that advisors can serve widows in their time of need, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

2018 Highlights – The Top 20 Nerd’s Eye View Blog Posts You Might Have Missed

December 24, 2018 07:12 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

As we enter the holiday season and 2018 winds to a close, I am once again so thankful to all of you, the ever-growing number of readers who continue to regularly visit this Nerd’s Eye View blog (and share the content with your friends and colleagues, which we greatly appreciate!). Over the past year, our readership has grown yet another 16%, with more than 220,000 unique readers visiting Kitces.com in the past month. But the journey for us is never done… as this year, we’ve added a number of new team members both writing for the blog and supporting us behind the scenes, as we gear up for an even bigger and better 2019 with back-end enhancements to the platform, new industry research studies, and new types of content that we hope you will continue to find valuable.

Yet we realize that the sheer volume of content that’s released from the Nerd’s Eye View can be overwhelming at times, and that, even though so many of you have made this blog a weekly habit, it’s not always possible to keep up with it all. Which means an article, once missed, is often never seen again, “overwritten” by the next day’s, week’s, and month’s worth of content that comes along.

Accordingly, just as I did last year and in 2016, 2015, and 2014, I've compiled for you this Highlights list of our top 20 articles of 2018 that you might have missed, including some of our most popular episodes of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. So whether you're new to the blog and #FASuccess podcast and haven't searched through the Archives yet, or simply haven't had the time to keep up with everything, I hope that some of these will (still) be useful for you! And as always, I hope you'll take a moment to share podcast episodes and articles of interest with your friends and colleagues as well!

In the meantime, I hope you're having a safe and happy holiday season. Thanks again for another successful year in 2018, and I hope you enjoy all the new features and content we'll be rolling out in 2019, too!

#FASuccess Ep 103: Finding Success As A Great Financial Planner Without The Need For Business Development Or Partnership, With Kathleen Kenealy

December 18, 2018 07:14 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 103rd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast.

This week's guest is Kathleen Kenealy. Kathleen is the managing director and senior wealth advisor for Boston Private Wealth, a private bank and trust company in the Boston area that oversees nearly $8 billion of assets under management, of which Kathleen manages more than $300 million for 75 client households.

What's unique about Kathleen and her role at Boston Private, though, is that she wasn't responsible for doing the business development to get those 75 client households over the past 3 years, which was handled by the business development officers for the private bank instead, allowing her to spend all of her time simply focused on really doing financial planning for her affluent clients, and also improving the financial planning processes of the entire firm, for which she was recently recognized as an InvestmentNews 40 Under 40 Honoree.

In this episode, we talk in depth about what it's like to work within a larger advisory firm that has separated out the prospecting and business development from the financial planning work that its wealth managers are responsible for. How the firm does still involve its wealth advisors towards the end of the business development process to ensure that prospective clients are connected with the right advisor, what it's like to come into existing planning relationships with existing clients who may not actually be happy about being transitioned to a new advisor in the first place, and why it's never bothered Kathleen nor hindered her career as an advisor to not have her own clients, and instead be focused solely on working with clients of the firm instead.

We also talk about what it's like to be a financial planner in a large firm whose roots are in the standalone investment management business, the steps that Kathleen has taken to expand adoption of financial planning by all advisors in the firm, why the company decided to switch from eMoney Advisor to MoneyGuidePro for their financial planning work with clients, and how the firm looks at the capacity of a wealth advisor to service a certain number of clients, and why that number must vary between investment-only and financial planning clients.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kathleen shares her path on building a career of working with advisory firms and their clients rather than going out on her own. The upside career aspiration she sees for herself, even if partnership happens to not be an opportunity at her currently publicly traded firm, how she's been able to find job opportunities with firms that won't require her to do business development but will reward her for being a great financial planner to clients, and her interview tips on how to show well as a financial advisor trying to get one of those job opportunities in the first place.

So whether you want to learn how Kathleen has been able to consistently find unique career opportunities as a financial planner, how the bank she works for separates out the responsibility of finding new clients from the actual financial planning process, and ways in which she's working towards standardizing the financial planning process at her bank, then we hope you enjoy this episode of Financial Advisor Success.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Dec 8-9)

December 7, 2018 02:57 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the latest edition of Financial Planning magazine's annual Advisor Technology survey, showing the most widely adopted advisor software tools in various categories... and highlighting that, with the proliferation of advisor technology, the problem now is not the threat of robo-advisors but simply the burden of choosing which of the ever-growing number of solutions human advisors want to use to deliver their own tech-enabled services!

Also in the news this week was the stunning news that wirehouse Wells Fargo will be rolling out a pilot program for "independent" RIA offices (albeit still operating under the Wells Fargo brand) in an effort to stem the tide of brokers breaking away to the RIA channel, and the news that the SEC is going to take a hard look at its own custody rule in 2019 and whether it's time to update the requirements for the modern technology-driven world (where custody is far more complex than just having physical possession of a client's printed stock certificate!).

From there, we have several articles on industry trends, including a look at the initial success of recent Financial Planning Re-Entry Initiative from the CFP Board's Center for Financial Planning to increase the number of women in financial services, an updated discussion from Bob Veres on the recent OneFPA Network proposal (and the FPA National Board's response to his earlier criticisms), and the news that the FPA NexGen community is transitioning itself away from being an independent community for younger advisors and instead will adopt the vision and mission of FPA National and serve as its community for any advisors who are new to the profession (whether entering as young students or more experienced career-changers instead).

We also have several practice management articles this week, including a reminder of the importance of focusing not just on reducing employee turnover but "regrettable" turnover, the impact of culture and how it is naturally set from the top by a firm's founder/leader (but can be consciously changed/improved), and tips for advisors who want to negotiate a better deal for themselves when changing broker-dealers (and understanding what can potentially be negotiated in the first place).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of finding our own purpose and success in life: the first looks at how, despite the popularity of the saying "do what you love and the money will follow," a better approach is probably the Japanese concept of "ikigai" which considers both whether what you're doing is something you love, something you're good at, something the world needs, and something you can actually get paid for (and that it takes the intersection of all 4 to really succeed financially at what you love); the second takes a fascinating look at how luck may play a far greater role in success than we realize (but talent does matter, and you can choose to put yourself in positions where good luck can happen to you); and the last explores how the key to getting what you desire (and aspire to) is being willing to change when necessary in order to achieve it.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

3 Reasons Why The Financial Advisor Market Size Isn’t Actually Shrinking

November 15, 2018 02:10 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

With Cerulli Associates estimating that nearly 50% of all financial advisors are over the age of 55, the headcount of financial advisors is projected to shrink, potentially quite substantially, in the coming decade. Which can trigger more industry consolidation (mergers and acquisitions) and succession planning (as existing clients of advisors leaving the industry will need go somewhere else for advice), but also risks further slowing the amount of technology development and new businesses entering the marketplace to serve financial advisors (as many investors don’t want to fund businesses in a shrinking marketplace! Yet as it turns out, looking at the total number of “financial advisors” may actually be the wrong way to measure the trajectory of the financial advisor marketplace to begin with… and when viewed properly, the opportunities for serving (real) financial advisors is actually on the rise!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1 PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss why it’s so difficult to estimate the number of existing financial advisors in the first place, why many of the predictions regarding the trajectory of the financial advisor headcount aren’t taking into account some key drivers, and why, ultimately, looking to the number of CFP certificants may offer the best perspective on the opportunities within the industry… and whether the number of people offering (real) financial advice is decreasing or actually increasing.

Cerulli Associates, who delivers some of the best industry research out there, estimates that there are just over 300,000 financial advisors - a surprisingly difficult number to estimate given the overlap of advisors across RIA, broker-dealer, and insurance channels. The caveat, though, is that fewer than half of them even state that they actually give financial planning advice… suggesting that the majority are “financial advisors” in name only but are still predominantly focused on the sale of insurance and investment products. This isn’t entirely surprising, though, given that there are only about 82,000 CFP certificants (and not all of those are practicing or, if they are, offering “real” financial planning)!

Nonetheless, the industry projection is that the advisor headcount “must” inevitably decline, given how many of the 300,000 financial advisors are over age 55. Yet the reality is that financial planning isn’t a career that you retire from simply because you’re eligible for Social Security and Medicare. Retirement as a concept was introduced during the industrial age when most people worked with their hands, and after a certain age, people weren’t able to meet the physical demands of their jobs anymore. However, providing financial advice is an intellectual, not manual, endeavor. And when you consider the fact that highly experienced financial planners on average make over $400k after 30 years of experience and that, by the time they reach 65, they’re not really working at the same pace that they did in their 30s, it just doesn’t make sense that a lot of folks would simply walk away from that sort of job until they had no other choice!

The other reason that the declining headcount may be overstated is that it’s based on the assumption that the industry won’t be able to attract enough new financial advisors. On the one hand, it’s easy to understand why Millennials are reluctant to join an industry that’s still seen as primarily sales-driven, but the projections don’t take into account the number of industry entrants who are career-changers. Because, the financial industry isn’t alone in dealing with the effects of automation, and the earnings potential as an advisor makes it an appealing option for those who are mid-career and looking for new opportunities… especially for attorneys and accountants, who are already in roles that oftentimes overlap with financial services, and are facing even more pressure from technology (e.g., TurboTax and LegalZoom) against their more-transactionally-oriented services.

Of course, some have suggested that it doesn’t matter how many financial advisors are coming into the industry or not because they just won’t be needed in the age of “robos” and automation. Yet the rise of technology and automation doesn’t always play out as expected. The introduction of ATMs in the 1970s resulted in an unexpected increase in the number of human bank tellers, rather than the decline that was predicted at the time, because the technology made banking so much more efficient it expanded the reach of advisors and increased human job opportunities (on top of all the ATMs!). Similarly, automation in the financial services industry has the potential not to make human advisors obsolete, but rather could spur potentially exponential growth in financial planning by allowing advisors to efficiently serve larger segments of the population… recognizing that the true number of households being served with real financial planning is at best only about 15% of all the households in the US. Simply put, there’s a huge opportunity out there to leverage technology and hire more human financial advisors serve the other 85% of the households that aren’t being served today. Not to mention that as technology puts more pressure on advisors to justify their fees in the first place, more and more advisors are starting to offer comprehensive financial planning, which is why (despite the lack of growth overall in the financial advisor headcount) a record number of people have been sitting for the CFP exam for the first time in recent years.

Ultimately, the key point is to recognize that overall industry trends about the “shrinking” headcount of financial advisors may be misunderstood. Despite projections that the industry will shrink in the coming years, there are plenty of good reasons to be optimistic about opportunities for financial advisors. The retirement wave will take much longer to materialize than first thought, and instead of being a threat to financial advisor jobs, technological efficiencies will help the industry expand into underserved markets and will end up increasing the demand for financial advice in the long run. Which helps to explain why the number of financial advisors is up over the past 5 years, despite the anticipated wave of retirees and the rise of the robo-advisor movement!

In the meantime, for those who really want to get a handle on the opportunities in the financial advice industry and the advisor marketplace, perhaps it’s time to stop looking at the number of people called “financial advisors” who are simply registered to legally sell insurance and investment products, and look to the number actually being trained to give and get paid for financial planning advice (through programs like CFP certification)… which shows that the market for financial advisors has never been bigger and stronger than it is today!

#FASuccess Ep 097: Transitioning From Financial Coach to Financial Planner Serving Underserved Communities With Phuong Luong

November 6, 2018 07:05 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 97th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week's guest is Phuong Luong. Phuong is the founder of Just Wealth, an independent RIA specifically focused on working with younger clients in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are still in the wealth building phase of their careers, and with whom Phuong meets entirely virtually using video conferencing tools, even though most of her clients are actually in the Boston area where she's located as well.

What's unique about Phuong, though, is not just her virtual practice, but that she comes from a background of doing financial coaching and counseling, and as a result, more than half her practice is working with clients who are below the median household income in Massachusetts, about $75,000 a year, for whom she charges an ongoing monthly retainer fee of 1.5% of their monthly income.

In this episode, we talk in depth about what it's like doing financial planning for lower and middle-income families. Why they really are willing to pay for financial planning advice despite being of limited means, how the focus typically is not actually on budgeting and household cash flow planning, but on building up their balance sheet instead, and why until those clients build up their personal balance sheet, it's necessary to understand the community balance sheet of local programs and resources to help.

We also talk about the progression from financial education to financial coaching to financial counseling to financial planning. The differences in each of those terms, not just in regards to the income or affluence of the clients being served, but the mindset of the educator or coach or counselor or advisor working with the client, and the appeal for someone with a financial coaching background like Phuong to come into the financial planning world in the first place.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Phuong talks about the challenging ways that stereotypes about race and low-income individuals can become blocking points to giving them effective advice. How many of the financial challenges of working with people of color in her community can be traced back to institutional and government policies from decades ago that still have lasting effects in the compounding of income and wealth inequality, which in turn may be both limiting the reach of financial planning to minority communities, and our ability as a profession to attract people of color to become financial planners in the first place.

So whether you're interested in learning about actions you can take to help improve diversity in the financial planning profession, Phuong’s unique career journey that brought her to financial planning or how she's built a successful business helping underserved communities, then we how you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

#FASuccess Ep 094: Crafting Your Optimal Solo Practice By Simply Charging What You’re Worth With James Osborne

October 16, 2018 07:03 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 94th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week's guest is James Osborne. James is the founder of Bason Asset Management, a solo advisory firm based in the Denver suburbs that oversees more than $225 million of assets under management.

What's unique about James, though, is the unusual way that he structured his advisory business, with a simple flat fee of $4,800 per client regardless of their assets, which has allowed him to build a high-margin solo practice with just 80 clients generating nearly $400,000 of revenue for the firm at the age of just 35 years old.

In this episode, we talk in depth about why James decided to structure his firm using this flat fee approach in lieu of the AUM model. How the design of his business model makes it possible for him to generate a target of his exact income potential as he reaches client capacity, the way he handles situations where his flat fee would be substantially lower than what another advisor's AUM fee might be for prospective clients with a lot of assets and net worth, and the reason that he chose to deliberately build a business model that fits his personal lifestyle and family goals.

We also talk about what it really means to reach personal capacity as a financial advisor. The challenging trade-offs that start to emerge as advisory firms try to grow beyond the individual capacity of the founder, why it is that beyond a certain point, doubling the number of clients and revenue at the practice has almost no impact on the take-home compensation of an advisor, and the reason that so many solo advisory firms will actually generate far more value for their founders by staying small even if the practice is never sold.

And be certain to listen to the end, where James talks about how he's adjusting the way he meets with and takes on prospective clients as he approaches his personal capacity, and what he plans to do to maintain his high-income lifestyle practice once he reaches that threshold.

So, whether you're interested in learning about some of the benefits of a flat-fee structure, how James approaches investment management, or why most advisors are scaling their practices all wrong, then we hope you enjoy this episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast.

The 16 Best Conferences For Financial Advisors To Choose From In 2019

October 15, 2018 07:05 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Conferences

Best Conferences for Financial Advisors 2019

The need to engage in continuous learning is a simple reality for anyone in professional services. As a profession’s body of knowledge grows and evolves with ongoing research and discoveries, new products and solutions, and emerging best practices, even the best practitioners have to update their knowledge and skills from time to time. You want your surgeon to be up to speed on the latest surgical techniques that speed recovery time and reduce scarring. You want your lawyer to know the latest laws and regulations that might adversely impact your business to reduce the risk of regulatory or legal hassles. And consumers want their professional financial advisors to be up to date as well.

And the reality is that while you can get a lot of this continuing professional education directly from the comfort of your own office, in a technology-driven world with an ever-growing number of webinars and reading opportunities – including in the Members Section of this blog! – it’s still important at least once a year to take a break from the office and get away from it all. Both to give yourself the opportunity to really immerse in your education without the inevitable drumbeat of distractions in the office. And because mentally, you really can better focus on your education and thinking about steps to improve your business when you get away from it for a few days.

The caveat, however, is that these days, there is an overwhelming number of financial advisor conferences to choose from. Because while the good news is that for most successful advisory firms, it just takes one good takeaway from a conference that can be implemented in the business to make the whole trip worthwhile… the bad news is if you don’t find a conference that’s the right fit for your needs and business, you aren’t likely to find even that one good takeaway. Which makes both the expense of the conference, and the lost time out of the office, very costly indeed.

As someone that has been speaking at nearly 70 conferences a year for almost a decade myself, I’ve seen the good and bad of our various industry events, which are spread across membership associations, broker-dealers and insurance companies and RIA custodians, product manufacturers, trade publications, private events, and more. And as a result, am often asked for my own suggestions of what, really, are the industry’s “Best” conferences to attend.

Yet the reality is that what conference is “best” really depends on what you, personally, are looking for. Some advisors are focused more on broad-based technical educational content, while others want to go deep into a niche. Some advisors want practice management advice as business owners, while others need help with their personal career development as employee advisors instead. Some want to talk about innovating technology, while others want to innovate new business models.

Accordingly, back in 2012 I started to craft my own annual list of “best-in-class” top conferences for financial advisors in various categories (to allow advisors to match the available conference specialties to their own needs), and have updated it every year since in what has become one of our most popular annual articles.

And so now, I’m excited to present my newest list of “Top Financial Advisor Conferences” for the upcoming 2019 year, from practice management to technology to career development and deep-dive educational content, and a special focus on the rise of “niche” financial advisor conferences aiming to serve the growing number of financial advisors who themselves are focusing more and more into niches to differentiate themselves in today’s competitive environment.

So, I hope you find this year’s 2019 conferences list to be helpful as a guide in planning your own conference budget and schedule for next year, and be certain to take advantage of the special discount codes that several conferences have offered to all of you as Nerd’s Eye View readers!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Oct 13-14)

October 12, 2018 02:52 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that New Jersey is about to launch its own version of a fiduciary rule for advisors, driven not by New Jersey legislators but directly from the New Jersey state regulators, as a state-level fiduciary movement appears poised to surge again in the face of federal regulators failing to address the fiduciary gap.

From there, we have a number of additional articles of notable industry news, including: the SEC's ongoing hiring freeze is threatening to reverse its recent increase in the examination rate, as by 2019 it's projected there will only be 1 SEC staff member for every 20 RIAs the regulator oversees; state securities regulators continue to step up on regulation and enforcement, with actions against unregistered individuals reaching a new record in past year (likely as a result of the surge of fraudulent cryptocurrency offerings); the College for Financial Planning has partnered with US SIF to launch a new sustainable, responsible, and impact investing designation (the Chartered SRI Counselor, or CSRIC); and the CFP Board's Center for Financial Planning is partnering with Wharton on a new course in Client Psychology.

We also have several practice management articles this week, from a look at how hybrid robo-advisors and their salaried employee advisor jobs are providing a new career track alternative for financial advisors, to the importance of getting good at retention of existing advisor employees (given the incredibly high cost of turnover for experienced employees), a deep-dive look at what it really means to "manage" a client relationship, and an exploration of whether financial advisors should be learning more "conflict resolution" skills to help clients (especially couples and families) navigate their money conflicts.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of recognizing that we must sometimes embrace imperfection: the first is a powerful reminder that going beyond about 80% of the way on "surface shine" is rarely about actually improving the outcome and more about just satisfying ourselves; the second discusses how we often look to experts and their habits to figure out an optimal approach to something new when the truth is that we really need to just get started (because the "optimal" is rarely necessary to start!); and the last explores how the key to improving over time is to recognize that failures will happen, and those who improve the most are the ones who are willing to actually talk about them, and avoid the natural tendency to just sweep the embarrassment under the rug and move on before we have a chance to actually learn from the experience.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Transitioning Part-Time Into Financial Planning As A Career Changer

October 4, 2018 02:30 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

Notwithstanding all the the talk in recent years about the challenges facing the financial planning industry, from including rising competition to “robo” fee compression, the financial advisor career path remains quite appealing. Not only can advisors make meaningful, life-changing impacts on their clients’ lives, but with experienced advisors making 2-3X or more than the median household income in the US, it’s also a potentially lucrative career choice as well. And, with a possible shortage of new talent to replace the wave of ageing advisors who are expected to start retiring in droves in the next decade or so, it’s little wonder why the profession holds so much appeal, particularly for those who are mid-career and looking for a more rewarding opportunity. The caveat, however, is that it still takes a lot of time to succeed and grow your income as a financial advisor, which presents a major roadblock for those who want to career-change into the industry and just don’t have a lot of “income flexibility” to take a pay cut in order to get their proverbial foot in the door. Which leads many to wonder if it’s possible to transition into a career as a financial advisor on a part-time basis.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at the challenges facing the part-time transition for career changers, discuss why many consider simply opening their own RIA given the lack of part-time job opportunities, and offer some practical ideas for transitioning into the industry as a career-changer without going the (not-actually-recommended) part-time route.

Notably, the challenge of finding good part-time work to grow and develop as a financial advisor is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, there wasn’t much need for new “advisors” to have much professional knowledge or experience because, in reality, they weren’t providing actual advice, but were rather being paid to sell insurance or investment products (which simply requires some product and sales training). For career changers, it was often quite feasible to make the transition into such a sales role on a part-time basis, soliciting their existing friends and family and former co-workers for product sales for a few hours a week. However, for those who want to provide comprehensive advice, and get paid for it on an ongoing basis, the reality is that it’s really hard to gain the requisite experience in anything but a full-time setting.

Which is why there just aren’t many part-time job opportunities with real financial planning firms in the first place. As an alternative, some career-changers explore the option of simply launching their own RIA, which on the surface makes sense, because the raw startup costs to create your own advisory firm are very low, and it’s very possible to be up and running in a few months’ time on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, the problem remains that giving people advice about how to handle their life savings is a sacred duty, so just because you can hang your shingle and open your own financial planning practice doesn’t mean that it’s the responsible thing to do! Not to mention the fact that it’s really hard to gain credibility as a professional, to be paid for your advice services, if you’re part-time anyway.

Accordingly, for career-changers who are looking for a practical (and responsible) path to a career as a financial advisor, the best thing to do on a part-time basis is start your education to become a CFP certificant. Because, by taking and passing the CFP exam, you’ll be in a much better position to get a better paying full-time job at a real financial planning firm. The next best thing to do is to take the Series 65, because while most states offer a waiver for the Series 65 exam for CFP certificants, the reality is that you’ll still need to meet the experience requirement before you can earn your marks. Also, start building your professional network by joining your local FPA chapter or NAPFA study group, because at some point, you’ll be looking for a full-time opportunity, and it’s a good idea to get in front of the folks who might someday hire you. Finally, simply recognize the fact that you are changing careers and that it’s just not realistic to think that you can do that without taking a step down in salary in order to (literally) pay your dues. So make yourself your first financial planning client, and figure out how to build up the savings necessary to take one step back in the short-term, so you can take two big steps forward in your new financial advisor career in the long run.

The bottom line, though, is simply that there are some very real challenges when transitioning into a career as a financial advisor on a part-time basis. However, those who are willing to do hard work of studying for (and passing!) the CFP exam, getting the Series 65 license, and building a professional network will have the best options. But rather than trying to be a financial advisor on a part-time basis, do those things on a part-time basis instead… which also allows you to stay in your current job a little longer in order to save up enough so that, when the time is right, you can make the transition to a full-time role as a financial advisor in a way that makes sense financially and professionally!