Just a quick note to those nervous readers who sat for this July’s CFP® Certification Examination.
I received a note on anxiety over the test results from Ken Zahn and his staff. Here’s the important part!
As we approach the end of your wait, you may be concerned about the release of the exam results. Fortunately, your anxiety will end shortly. According to CFP Board …
I finally managed to read the recent interview of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Portfolio.com that I blogged about a few weeks ago. I mentioned that Mr. Taleb is scheduled to deliver one of the three keynote sessions during the FPA Boston 2008 annual conference.
Now there are a few things that Mr. Taleb said during his conversation with Lloyd Grove that I think might rub a number of FPA members the wrong way. Here are a few of the things that stood out.
Taleb On Ties
Grove: And this “hating ties” business, and I know you’re being funny, but you distrust people who wear ties?
Taleb: It correlates rather well with incompetence.
One of the FPA NexGen members posted a message to the general email list about a new initiative called OneVoiceRIA. The primary goal of OneVoiceRIA is to raise public awareness of Registered Investment Advisers.
Visit OneVoiceRIA at their website, www.onevoiceria.com.
The organizers of OneVoiceRIA include:
Another update as of 8/14/08, see below and also read comments from Carol Lee Roberts, CFP®, Managing Director of Examinations and Education for the CFP Board.
Initially I wasn’t going to say anything about my recent experience with the CFP Board and some of the technical issues I have encountered over the last few months. But today the third issue came up, and I’m beginning to get concerned that operations inside the CFP Board aren’t going as smoothly as possible.
Back in June (after the exam registration deadline), I received an email message from the CFP Board that indicated either my payment or my registration was incomplete. Calls flooded the Board from concerned exam applicants. It turned out the email was sent in error to most (all?) applicants and we were told not to worry; our registration for the exam was not in jeopardy. Nevertheless, be still my beating heart!
Earlier this summer I traveled to Los Angeles to attend Ken Zahn’s Live Review course to prepare for the July 2008 CFP® Certification Exam. As luck would have it, Ken Zahn himself was the instructor for my four-day review course.
Ken Zahn’s “territory” mainly consists of southeastern United States locations, but each exam cycle Ken flies out to Los Angeles to instruct those of us on the west coast. In other words, he’s well known east of the Mississippi as one of the best exam review course providers, but he’s still competing with Kaplan, Dalton, Keir, and the College for Financial Planning on the west coast. Zahn’s review course fee is $925 plus $8 for miscellaneous fees, which I believe is close to what most of the other live review programs charge. Internet-based classes are cheaper, but they’re not in-person classes.
So how good was the review course?
Back in April, NAPFA announced that its membership passed 2,000 for the first time. Click the links for coverage from Investment News and Financial Advisor Magazine.
However, the figure of 2,000 isn’t made up by just financial advisers.
One piece of new information I picked up at the NexGen 2008 Conference is the presence of new financial planning channels on YouTube.
First on the YouTube bandwagon was NAPFA as they launched a channel, NAPFAVideos, in April. A few months later in June, FPA launched their channel, FPATelevision.
In addition to the launch of the new channel, FPA has announced a video submission contest. Video entries should address the contest theme How NOT to do Financial Planning.
I’m going to be out of the office for the remainder of July. First, I’ll be out the remainder of this week preparing for the CFP® Certification Examination held on Friday and Saturday. I feel well prepared after the Ken Zahn Live Review course I took at the end of June. I hope to post additional details about the review course and associated materials in August.
Following the exam, I’ll be away will be attending the upcoming FPA NexGen 2008 conference in St. Cloud, MN July 25-27. If you’ll be at the conference too, make sure to find me and say hi. I’ll be one of the few with a red goatee in the audience (check out my LinkedIn profile for a picture).
I have Angie Herbers’ blog, The Fast Track, linked over in my blog roll in the left sidebar (it’s also in my Google Reader subscription). I know Angie and appreciate her insight on the myriad of practice management issues that most maturing firms encounter during various stages of growth.
Today she posted an update to her blog about the state of events affecting the CFP Board that resonates with me. As most know through my post about attending Ken Zahn’s Live Review course, I am preparing for this July’s CFP® Certification Exam, so it is very important that the integrity and awareness of the certification be held in a positive light (I shouldn’t even be blogging, I should be studying! But I digress).
Updates to my blog are going to be a bit more sporadic over the next few weeks. Tomorrow I’m headed to Los Angeles to attend Ken Zahn’s live review course for the CFP® Certification Exam.
I’ll be there through Monday the 30th and then spend a short week managing the end of the second quarter quarterly reports. Hopefully the quarterly reports will go as smoothly as they did last quarter.
I imagine lots of my time will be spent studying leading up to the exam on July 18th and 19th. Until then, I imagine I’ll find time to post quick updates on Twitter.
See you on the other side.
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