Entrepreneurship in Finance (without being a mutual fund salesman)

IMHO - after going through the CFA program, I would NOT advise anybody who wants to be in retail to get the CFA. For one–most professionals don’t know what it is, and almost no potential clients know what it is. It goes over waaay too much stuff that isn’t applicable to the retail financial advisor, and it gives scant (if any) treatment to income tax, estate tax, retirement accounts, life insurance/annuities, etc.
If I wanted to be a retail financial advisor, I would get the CFP. At least that way, you get some exposure to other areas of personal finance (whether that makes you qualified to give advice is another story), and you get enough exposure to investments to at least be able to make semi-informed decisions about it.
 
Greenman72 wrote:
IMHO - after going through the CFA program, I would NOT advise anybody who wants to be in retail to get the CFA. For one–most professionals don’t know what it is, and almost no potential clients know what it is. It goes over waaay too much stuff that isn’t applicable to the retail financial advisor, and it gives scant (if any) treatment to income tax, estate tax, retirement accounts, life insurance/annuities, etc.
If I wanted to be a retail financial advisor, I would get the CFP. At least that way, you get some exposure to other areas of personal finance (whether that makes you qualified to give advice is another story), and you get enough exposure to investments to at least be able to make semi-informed decisions about it.
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I struggled through this, and ended up going CFA because I want to have more information than I need. If at any point I do end up doing any programming I want to be able to incorporate quant techniques that I’m sure aren’t included in the CFP. At this point, my education is finance is more about keeping doors open than picking one, and I figured that with the broader range of study and more strenuous material, CFA would keep more doors open than the CFP.
I am curious about the CFP though, particularly it’s relevance to tax planning. Do you know anyone who’s taken it along with the CFA?
 
To be honest, (and not trying to be a jerk–I apologise in advance), I’m not sure that the CFA will do you any good. (If I remember correctly, you said that you’re a teacher.) CFA is really only good for those who are already in the industry. It’s not useful as a “break-in” tool. The only reason why I really have any use for it is because I am a CPA. If I didn’t have my CPA license, I seriously doubt that I’d be finding any PM or asset management jobs simply because I had my CFA charter.
CFP, on the other hand, will help you break in (albeit into retail–not into HNW or security analysis). There are a lot of retail financial places that would love to have a CFP on board. Sure, it’s less “prestigious”, at least on AF. It’s less challenging. And (IMHO) it’s more of a “marketing” designation than an “academic” one. But that’s what retail investments are all about–marketing.
I think that if you go through the CFA program, you’ll find that it’s akin to a person going back to school to take multivariate calculus and partial differential equations and spatial geometry. Sure, you’ll learn a lot, but in the end, all you needed was some basic algebra.
And I don’t personally know any CFA+CFP’s, but Palacios Hill (on AF) has studied both. He is a CFA Charterholder, and apparently, he’s one step shy of having his CFP. He might be able to chime in.
 
SpareTime wrote:
Greenman72 wrote:
IMHO - after going through the CFA program, I would NOT advise anybody who wants to be in retail to get the CFA. For one–most professionals don’t know what it is, and almost no potential clients know what it is. It goes over waaay too much stuff that isn’t applicable to the retail financial advisor, and it gives scant (if any) treatment to income tax, estate tax, retirement accounts, life insurance/annuities, etc.
If I wanted to be a retail financial advisor, I would get the CFP. At least that way, you get some exposure to other areas of personal finance (whether that makes you qualified to give advice is another story), and you get enough exposure to investments to at least be able to make semi-informed decisions about it.
Click to expand...
I struggled through this, and ended up going CFA because I want to have more information than I need. If at any point I do end up doing any programming I want to be able to incorporate quant techniques that I’m sure aren’t included in the CFP. At this point, my education is finance is more about keeping doors open than picking one, and I figured that with the broader range of study and more strenuous material, CFA would keep more doors open than the CFP.
I am curious about the CFP though, particularly it’s relevance to tax planning. Do you know anyone who’s taken it along with the CFA?
Click to expand...
That’s one way to look at it, if you want to sell securities or insurance or whatever later, you can always just get the certificate(s) and it will likely be sponsored by the company you work for (and it’s not difficult anyway).
 
Greenman72 wrote:
CFP, on the other hand, will help you break in (albeit into retail–not into HNW or security analysis). There are a lot of retail financial places that would love to have a CFP on board. Sure, it’s less “prestigious”, at least on AF. It’s less challenging. And (IMHO) it’s more of a “marketing” designation than an “academic” one. But that’s what retail investments are all about–marketing.
Click to expand...
This is one of the reasons I chose CFA. I’m quite a bit less interested in the marketing side of things, and more and more it seems like retail financial planning is heavy on the marketing.
Even if I had no intention of pursuing a CFA related career, I’d keep going simply because it interests me and keeps me thinking. My entire family has a bit of an obsession with education, and using our massive amounts of education to make not very much money. We have a very high PhD to dollars ratio.
Although I would like to make money someday…but my thinking is that whatever I miss in the CFP won’t be as difficult to pick up as it would be if it were the other way around. Same reason I took AP Calculus in high school even though at that time I wanted to be a lawyer.
 
SpareTime wrote:
I’m quite a bit less interested in the marketing side of things, and more and more it seems like retail financial planning is heavy on the marketing.
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If you don’t like marketing, then retail is not for you. It doesn’t matter if you have the genius of Warren Buffett and Bill Gross. If you can’t market, you will not make it in retail.
If you have other reasons to pursue CFA, that’s fine. I had other reasons, too. And I don’t want to discourage you from doing it. Just know that it’s worthless in a retail setting.
 
SpareTime wrote:
Greenman72 wrote:
CFP, on the other hand, will help you break in (albeit into retail–not into HNW or security analysis). There are a lot of retail financial places that would love to have a CFP on board. Sure, it’s less “prestigious”, at least on AF. It’s less challenging. And (IMHO) it’s more of a “marketing” designation than an “academic” one. But that’s what retail investments are all about–marketing.
Click to expand...
This is one of the reasons I chose CFA. I’m quite a bit less interested in the marketing side of things, and more and more it seems like retail financial planning is heavy on the marketing.
Even if I had no intention of pursuing a CFA related career, I’d keep going simply because it interests me and keeps me thinking. My entire family has a bit of an obsession with education, and using our massive amounts of education to make not very much money. We have a very high PhD to dollars ratio.
Although I would like to make money someday…but my thinking is that whatever I miss in the CFP won’t be as difficult to pick up as it would be if it were the other way around. Same reason I took AP Calculus in high school even though at that time I wanted to be a lawyer.
Click to expand...
it’s nice that you admitted to education v income level. stick with that expectation. I don’t think anyone wants you to find out years down the line that CFA with no industry experience is a dead end. The issue here is you dont’ have experience and you don’t seem committed to getting it in the traditional routes, so it’s sort of like talking to a undergrad who has no focus on what they want to do but spout the PE/VC/PM/etc dream. I commend your dedication to learning but I don’t see an viable endgame here unfortunately. I hope you prove me wrong.
 
mk17 wrote:
SpareTime wrote:
Greenman72 wrote:
CFP, on the other hand, will help you break in (albeit into retail–not into HNW or security analysis). There are a lot of retail financial places that would love to have a CFP on board. Sure, it’s less “prestigious”, at least on AF. It’s less challenging. And (IMHO) it’s more of a “marketing” designation than an “academic” one. But that’s what retail investments are all about–marketing.
Click to expand...
This is one of the reasons I chose CFA. I’m quite a bit less interested in the marketing side of things, and more and more it seems like retail financial planning is heavy on the marketing.
Even if I had no intention of pursuing a CFA related career, I’d keep going simply because it interests me and keeps me thinking. My entire family has a bit of an obsession with education, and using our massive amounts of education to make not very much money. We have a very high PhD to dollars ratio.
Although I would like to make money someday…but my thinking is that whatever I miss in the CFP won’t be as difficult to pick up as it would be if it were the other way around. Same reason I took AP Calculus in high school even though at that time I wanted to be a lawyer.
Click to expand...
it’s nice that you admitted to education v income level. stick with that expectation. I don’t think anyone wants you to find out years down the line that CFA with no industry experience is a dead end. The issue here is you dont’ have experience and you don’t seem committed to getting it in the traditional routes, so it’s sort of like talking to a undergrad who has no focus on what they want to do but spout the PE/VC/PM/etc dream. I commend your dedication to learning but I don’t see an viable endgame here unfortunately. I hope you prove me wrong.
Click to expand...
the odds of making it in finance is higher than winning the lottery i suppose… that’s what i said to another candidate, there isn’t anyone who can say no to you here, we are not your boss or your client.
 
^ Depends on location. If you were born in North Korea, I would say you have a better chance of winning the lottery.
 
former trader wrote:
^ Depends on location. If you were born in North Korea, I would say you have a better chance of winning the lottery.
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Do they have lottery in North Korea?
 
It’s not our definition of lottery, but it’s just as hard to win.
I would paste the passage from wiki if the paste function worked here.
 
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