Financial planners help individuals plan their financial futures. For example, how are you going to cover your retirement needs? What do you have to do today to put your children through college in future? Have you insured yourself and your loved ones? What have you done to ensure that you can achieve financial freedom? Do you know how you can avoid paying high taxes and reduce your mortgage loan or other liabilities? This work can be personally and financially rewarding and requires excellent interpersonal skills. A good financial planner understands investments, taxes, estate planning issues and knows how to listen. This work can be done within a registered financial advisory company. The work pays well and is rewarding if you like to help people. Increasingly, it pays to obtain the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation.
The financial planning sector is booming and offers a variety of career options. This field deals with the largest markets of any kind in the world and call on the following skills:
Key Skill Area Requirement
People skills: High
Sales skills: Medium
Communication skills: High
Analytical skills: Medium
Ability to synthesize: High
Creative ability: Medium
Initiative: Medium
Work hours: 25-65/week
Commentary
Can Invest Directly or Indirectly
Money managers either directly make investments or help others by providing investment advice. If they are in the first business they are usually called portfolio managers. If they are in the second, they are generally called financial planners.
A Variety of Compensation Approaches Available for Planners
Financial planners can be compensated on a flat per-hour fee basis, a commission basis or both. The way you are paid in this business clearly affects the incentives you have with your customers.
It's Important to Have a Broad Understanding of Business
One of the exciting things about investing is that you get rewarded for knowing how business works. People who understand and enjoy business are among the most likely to succeed in this arena.
The median salary for financial planners job rankings issue was $55,100 in a recent survey. The salary distribution in this business is highly skewed. The 90th percentile salary in financial planning was in excess of $150,000.
Financial Planning is Hot
U. S. News and World Report listed the position of financial planner as one of the twenty hottest professions for the future. They note that the entry of baby-boomers into middle age with a bewildering array of investment choices will make financially planning a really hot profession in the future. This said, financial planners interviewed recently point out that getting a solo practice going as a financial planner today can be difficult and highly competitive.
Pay Attention to the Details
To make it in financial planning you need to know the details of various investments, tax law, estate planning strategies and you need to be good at marketing yourself and listening to your customers.
High Growth Expected in Financial Planning
The field of financial planning is expected to experience substantial future growth, but it's a hard field to start in because most financial planners work in entrepreneurial one or two person shops and have difficulty affording new hires. Getting that crucial starting experience is the hardest part.
Quite a Few Financial Planners Already
According to the Consumer Federation of America there are over 250,000 financial planners. In Singapore there is an estimated 10,000 certified financial planners in Singapore.
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I have just passed my two licensing exams required under the Monetary
Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulations and am now a Certified Financial
Planner... Yey!!!
