Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

My CFP Certification Journey

June 18th, 2010 Vijaianand

This week I am so happy and mentally relaxed, feeling a big sigh of relief.  I finally completed the CFP course and I am so excited about it.  Yes, I did it after all!!

Many of you know or might have saw it listed as one of my goals is to get CFP Certified by 2010. Completing 6 course series is one of the education eligiblity requirement to sit for CFP Certification.  While I am thrilled about finishing the course, I know my journey is not over yet. I just crossed half of the ocean. I need to cross another half and hope to make to the other side soon!!

Like my friends you might ask, what is CFP actually? What is the big deal in getting CFP certified? Let me explain a bit if you didn’t google about it.

What is CFP?

Many say CFP certification has reputation similar to ceritifications like CPA and tough to pass close to bar exams. It is recognized as standard among those who seek the knowledge and skills necessary to objectively assess their clients’ current financial status, identify problem areas, and recommend appropriate actions–in short, to provide comprehensive, client-based financial planning. With trouble economy, consumers are looking for trusted and authority advisors. CFP is a symbol of authority for planners to show their expertise in financial planning to help guide clients in the right path of financial well being. 



What is CFP certified means?

CFP ceritification is administered by CFP board which enforces strict rules and ethics to be followed by the planners. This gives great level of comfort to consumers who wants to talk about their personal financial matters and their future growth. It is difference as simple as asking advice from nobody or certified plumber to fix your faucet.

The Certified Financial Planner® or CFP® Professional Education Program has defined the financial planning profession since 1972 and has been the basis on which many other financial planning education programs have been developed.  


To become a CFP certificant, you must get thru (5 E’s):

  1. Eligibility – To start with, certification will require an undergraduate bachelor’s degree from an accredited college.
  2. Education – Satisfy an educational requirement taking CFP board-registered program if you don’t have finance background.
  3. Exam – Pass the CFPCertification exam: a 10-hour test that takes 1.5 days (four hours on Friday and six hours on Saturday), conducted three times during the year (typically on the third Friday and Saturday of March, July and November).
  4. Experience – Acquire three years of qualifying full-time work experience (or equivalent). Qualifying work experience is defined by the CFP board as “the supervision, direct support, teaching or personal delivery of all or part of the personal financial planning process to a client.
  5. Ethics – Agree and adhere to the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility

As of now, I just got through 2 E’s and need to get pass another 3 E’s.

Motivation and Experience

I even asked myself, Why am I doing CFP? Being a software guy by education and profession, what is the need and motivation to take on this leap effort?  The answer in short, I am passionate about money management. At the same time, I want to share my wealth of every day successful experience about money and help guide others. In the blog flocked internet era, anybody who has small experience are also posting and sharing their experience. How can I differentiate myself and show authoritative. A person is only considered as an authoritative source only when he has formal education and experience.

Today, I share my knowlege and experience through this money matters website and other avenues as ordinary individual. But I want to be an authoritative source. I have motivator that’s Mr. Ray Lucia, CFP who can talk and answer almost any type of financial questions. I want to be like him, may be work for him some day. Whether I make money or not, I want to help middle class individual with their money and financial issues. 

One more thing, I like to challenge myself now and then. I get bored if I don’t do that. I took the challenge to run a marathon in 2002 just after starting to run in 2001. I completed in 3 hrs 41 mins. So this is another challenge which can help others too. I feel this is even bigger than Marathon. I have done many Microsoft certifications in the past and I thought it would be a breese.  I was proven wrong. I signed up for Self study course with Boston University CFP program. The program was well explained and also got good support from tutors. I paid only 60% of fees compared to other insitutions charge because I signed up the right time to get a very good offer.

 
I started at Dec 17,  2008 and took me till Jun 15, 2010. There were hundreds of topics discussed in detail manner. I thought of completing well in advance but once I started it took me 4 months to finish my first course and another 3 months to do the next one. I realized, I won’t be able to complete all of the course in 18 months time period given by BU. I have heard many people took 3-5 years via self study path and I don’t want to take that long. So I decided to speed it up and start to put more time and completed one by one in every 2 months by skipping the reading assignment.

I am so glad it is over and my long study hours are done for now.  It took around one and half year while working full time and having another baby along the way. It is well worth an experience to learn and connect every aspect to the real life scenorio. But it wasn’t an easy task. I am happy to have accomplished part of my 2010 goal.

For all these, I owe a Big Thank you to my lovely wife. She stood behind me, pushed me by reminding and encouraging me all the time to get this course completed.

Next Step

I am taking a break for couple of months. I am so close in getting my 2nd rental property and need to  work on it to put up for rental. After that, I plan to sign up for review classes in August to prepare for the Nov exams. I have confident and hope to clear the exams in the first attempt and plan to write about it. 
 

Image source from bionicturtle.com

Posted in Education Tags: , No Comments »
Read More »

Do’s and Don’ts when attending free seminars and Intro to Webinars!!

May 14th, 2010 Vijaianand

In last blog post, we talked about the real reason and importance to attend free seminars and workshops coming to your city. I hope most of your atleast convinced a bit and thinking about checking out few seminars which matches your interest. In this post, I am sharing some Do’s and Don’ts while attending these seminars which keep you out of spending money.

Here are few do’s and don’t which I would recommend.


Do’s

1. Go with an open mind to learn something new and ready to participate&share with others.
2. Take down notes of techniques, loop holes, hints, tips and useful ideas
3. Write down list of good websites which might be used during presentation.
4. Ask questions and get your doubts clarified for free.
5. Talk to the host after the meeting if you have further questions and pick their brain.
6. Try to talk to other attendees. Share, learn and create network which might help in future to create a power team of your own.
7. Note down the mileage and keep reciepts of any expenses like parking fee, lunch so you can account and claim.
8. Do take your friends or spouse only if they are interested in sitting with you and willing to learn. Otherwise you might have to leave in middle if they get bored and avoid feeling guilty.


Don’ts


1.  Don’t take your credit card or cheque book.
2. Stay away from signup and on’t get tempted by their special and attractive offers.
3.  You do not have to sit through the whole seminar. You will know when to call it quits if it doesn’t seems to add any value to you.

These tips are some of many coming out of my experience and surely will help you prepared when you plan on attending seminars. If you have few others from your experience, please don’t hesitate to share for the benefit of others.



Webinars


Alright!! We are surely in a internet age. Internet is name of the game. It makes our life easier every day in lot of different ways and getting educated is no exception. There are online universities which teaches classes and online seminars called webinars. SO if you don’t have time to attend seminars physically, don’t worry. Many financial institutions, brokerages firms and even rating agencies provide free webinars.

This is the new trend in the market these days. Webinars and webcast have become so easy for the organizers and also for attendees who don’t have to get out of their house.

List of Free Events/Webinars

1. Rich Dad Education – Realestate seminars
2. Ray Lucia Retirement seminars
3. Free Stock investing seminar from TDAmeritrade, Scottrade, Charles Schwab, Moody’s and more..


I strongly urge you try attending atleast one free seminar or workshop coming up in your city this summer and venture out. You will surely learn a trick or two. Don’t forget to let me know how it went.

Posted in Education, General Tags: , No Comments »
Read More »

Tax Planning Vs Tax Preparation

April 1st, 2010 Vijaianand

As soon as March rolls around, many of us get ready to welcome the Spring season but many worry about the Tax season. I am sure you are among millions of people trying to get your tax return filled and filed away by Apr 15. Many of you might use your good Internet skills and take advantage of online tools like Tourbo Tax or TaxAct to file taxes. Others still don’t believe the online tools does good job in getting you big tax refund and still depend on CPA’s and tax preparers for tax help.

Either way, you will only get what you can get  and you cannot change anything now at this point to get more tax refunds than eligible.  Some don’t understand, it is too late to think about getting more tax deductions unless you planned in advance. You can only reduce taxes so much by either by taking deductions or using credits. That’s where Tax planning comes into play a key role.

Tax planning is many times confused with tax preparation, with only thought given to planning when preparing their annual tax return. However, little can be done to actually reduce your tax bill at that point. If your aim is to reduce taxes, you need to be aware of tax planning opportunities throughout the year.


Take time in the early part of year, may be during tax preparation process, to assess your tax situation, and look for ways to lower your tax bill. Consider a list of items, such as what kinds of debt you owe, which investments you own and need to dispose,  how you are saving for retirement and kids education expenses and what tax-deductible expenses you incur. Also deciding whether you want to file separately or jointly, timing the sale of your capital assets, deciding on period of withdrawal of retirement funds, the timing and amounts of giving gifts  and when to pay expenses are some examples of tax planning.

By thinking about tax consequences during the year on every big financial moves will prevent you from finding out later that there was a better way to handle every transaction.

Here are few examples  of tax planning which might help you either to get better refunds or avoid shelling out on taxes during the filing time.


1. If you are an employee, you can avoid paying at the end of the year by increasing your tax withholding. It actually changes the mind set from “how much need to pay” to “how much I will get back as refund”. But the problem is, more money will be taken out of your paycheck throughout the year and you need adjust your budget accordingly. That may sound like a good strategy but at the same time you don’t want to give away Uncle Sam interest free money by withholding too much. A nice realm check is to use this year’s return and keep the all deductions constant and see whether you withholding is right level. If you got too much refund reduce the withholding proportionately, on the other hand if you paid tax, increase your withholding accordingly.

2.  If you have a stock which you been waiting for years to bounce back up but never seen any signs, don’t lose heart. That loser stock can still bring you money by reducing your tax burden. Just wait till the end of year and sell it if you don’t see the sunlight for the stock. Buy selling the loser stock for loss, it helps to wipe out the realized capital gains for the year, plus take another $3,000(married filed jointly) in regular income. But there is a caveat to it. You cannot just sell the loser stock and buy the same stock with before or after 30 days of the sale. Then the losses you realized previously gets disallowed because it’s considered a wash sale.

3. If you are expecting big medical expenses for that calendar year, you should be able to itemize the deduction by keeping track of the transactions and even medical miles driven. In order to do that, you need to plan and remember to save all the reciepts of the expenses like hospital charges, copays, medicines&prescription cost and much more. Track the medical miles driven and also add them in the deduction. Add these medical deductions on top of the health insurance paid from your pocket.

These are just few samples and there are lot more too tax planning. Will cover some more in the next article.

Useful tax planning sources:
Small Business – http://www.answers.com/topic/tax-planning-in-accounting
Personal Planning – http://www.raymondjames.com/taxplan.htm

Posted in Education, Tax Planning, Taxes Tags: , No Comments »
Read More »
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »