Kitces.com - Advancing Knowledge in Financial Planning

Nerd's Eye View Reader Survey – Your Input Is Requested!

April 2, 2013 11:06 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

As subscribers of my newsletter The Kitces Report know, I like to survey my readers once a year to get their input on what they find least/most useful about the content and how it's delivered to them. As this blog has exploded in traffic and readership over the past year, I've decided it's now time to institute the same process here.

Accordingly, I'm hoping you'll take just a couple minutes to answer the relatively brief reader survey below, and share with me your thoughts about this blog, the content, and some services that I am considering adding to it... if the survey says I should, of course!

The survey is only 10 questions, and should take no more than a minute or two. Thanks in advance for your time, feedback, and ongoing readership!

Strategies For CFP Board To Improve The Quality Of CFP Continuing Education (CE) Credit

April 1, 2013 11:03 am 18 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

It's no secret that the current state of CFP Continuing Education (CE) credit is a pretty sorry affair. Financial planners attend sessions just hoping for 1-2 takeaways that they haven't heard a dozen times before - an embarrassingly low bar for "satisfaction" - and conferences struggle to draw attendees. It often seems that planners choose a myriad of free vendor-provided CE options not because the content is good - often, it's still little more than a veiled sales pitch for the company's products or services - but because the paid CE alternatives from conferences aren't much better; if you go into your CE experience assuming you won't hear anything new anyway, there's little reason not to take the free option. And this situation is not new; while the CFP Board has become more aggressive about cracking down on the worst of the CE-as-product-pitch options, there's been little done to elevate the average CE experience.

Yet that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless, as many steps can be taken to improve the quality of CFP continuing education; in fact, the CFP Board, as the keeper of the CFP marks and the continuing education for them, wields a great deal of power to change the system for the better. For instance, the CFP Board could create a ratings clearinghouse so conference organizers can more easily see who's a good speaker and who's not, allowing events to better screen their speakers before putting them on the podium. In addition, the CFP Board could also provide a better database for finding CFP CE providers in the first place, so the majority of events don't have to rely upon random Google searches and scanning the agendas of other conferences! But perhaps the best path to getting better CE credit is simply to lift the number of required CE credits, creating more of a potential CE market that could attract quality providers in the first place!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Mar 30-31)

March 29, 2013 05:02 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's issue starts off with an interesting discussion noting that the trend from regulators now appears to be allowing for and even encouraging the use of social media in financial services (albeit while still expecting firms to maintain proper procedures to oversee the activity), and a harsh look at whether our real problem in the financial services industry is not just the general lack of trust but the fact that the entire financial sector has bloated to the size that it has... and that even though the bloat stems largely from Wall Street, it's those very firms that have such an integral role in rewriting the new rules for the future.

From there, we have a few industry and practice management articles, including a discussion of how marketing is shifting from just trying to convert a percentage of prospects into meetings and clients and instead towards engaging all prospects on an ongoing basis until they become clients, a look at Wealthfront and the rise of online investment providers, and a discussion of how you can break out of the rut of boring review meetings (which long-standing clients often resist) by structuring your reviews to have themes around broad financial planning topic areas that can be systematically revisited over time (yet provide more variety than just reviewing investments or asking if anything has changed).

In addition, there are a couple of technical articles this week, including a warning that health insurance premiums may be set to rise significantly with the new coverage laws taking effect in 2014 (especially for individuals getting coverage directly and some small businesses), a discussion of the unique planning challenges for families with special needs dependents (and the potential for advisors to create niche practices to serve them), a look at the so-called "dividend illusion" and that investors may be misunderstanding how dividends work if they think it's a strategy to only spend income and not principal, and the latest Mauldin article dissecting the ongoing debacle in Cyprus.

We wrap up with three somewhat more offbeat articles: the first is looks at how color - the your clothing to the markers you use to illustrate key points - may influence your clients; the second is an excerpt of the latest Heath brothers book "Decisive" about how we can make better decisions; and the last is a somewhat controversial discussion from J.D. Roth, founder of the popular Get Rich Slowly blog, who observes that financial literacy alone just isn't enough, primarily because most financial problems aren't just about needing more information, but also about (fixing) our (dysfunctional) behaviors. Enjoy the reading!

MailBag: How To Get Started On Twitter As A Busy Financial Planner

March 28, 2013 11:03 am 8 Comments CATEGORY: MailBag

Many readers of this blog contact me directly with questions and comments. While often the responses are very specific to a particular circumstance, occasionally the subject matter is general enough that it might be of interest to others as well. Accordingly, I will occasionally post a new "MailBag" article, presenting the question or comment (on a strictly anonymous basis!) and my response, in the hopes that the discussion may be useful food for thought.

In this week's MailBag, we look at a question about how to get started using Twitter (and other social media) as a busy financial planner. What are the tools for efficiency, and what are the tips and tricks to get started easily?

The Taxation Of Social Security Benefits As A Marginal Tax Rate Increase?

March 27, 2013 11:07 am 45 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Social Security benefits first became partially taxable in 1983, and the rule was expanded in 1993 to its current form. As the rules stand now, rising income can subject 50% or even 85% of Social Security benefits to taxation, until a maximum of 85% of all Social Security benefits are included in income for tax purposes.

The reason the taxability of Social Security matters is not just that it raises a client's tax burden in the aggregate, but that it can boost a client's marginal tax rate far above the tax bracket alone; those in the 15% tax bracket may actually face marginal rates of 22.5% to 27.75%, and those in the 25% tax bracket can see marginal tax rates spike as high as 46.25%!

Fortunately, this rate eventually reaches a cap - when the maximum amount of Social Security benefits are being taxed - and the client's tax rate returns to normal. Nonetheless, while clients are going through the income levels where Social Security phases in - which can begin with as little as $25,000 of income for individuals - tax rates rise high enough that more proactive tax planning, from Roth conversions to the use of annuities and asset location strategies, becomes crucial to manage a client's overall tax exposure!

Is Buying A Financial Planning Practice A Good Way To Start As A Financial Planner?

March 25, 2013 11:02 am 14 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

Social Image Buying A Financial Planning Firm

As the financial planning profession matures, there is a growing interest in the opportunities to buy and sell financial planning practices, both for investors, for existing firms looking to grow, and for new planners looking to enter the business. However, industry statistics suggest that relatively few deals are happening (and are generally only for larger firms), although it's not clear whether the lack of small firm activity is because the transactions are simply underreported, because financial planning firm owners aren't actually exiting as quickly as the demographics would suggest, or perhaps because most firms just really aren't valuable enough to sell in the first place.

Nonetheless, for many newer financial planners, who may find the thought of building a client base to be daunting, there is growing interest in acquiring an entry path to a financial planning firm, rather than building one from scratch. Unfortunately, though, the reality is that the opportunity may not quite be all it appears, given the poor economics for many financial planning firms means the new planner is likely buying a job but not a business, the limited capital that many new planners have to acquire a firm, and the outright challenges of diving full steam into both the management of a financial planning business and clients with little experience. While this may not entirely dissuade prospective new planners from buying their way into a firm, the fact remains that the approach merits a great deal of caution as well.