Success with a Certified Financial Planner™

Creating a financial plan helps you see the big picture and set long and short-term life goals, a crucial step in mapping out your financial future. When you have a financial plan, it’s easier to make financial decisions and stay on track to meet your goals. Working with a CFP® professional can secure your financial well-being and help you reach financial planning success.

The Process

Financial planning is a holistic approach in which we look at your entire situation before recommending a course of action. A financial plan can include planning for retirement, education needs for children, taxes, investment advice, estate planning, debt reduction and insurance planning. The result is usually a written financial plan. We use a six step process when developing your plan:

1. Establishing and defining the client-planner relationship
2. Gathering client data including goals
3. Analyzing and evaluating a person's financial status
4. Developing and presenting financial planning recommendations and/or alternatives
5. Implementing the financial planning process
6. Monitoring the financial planning recommendations

The benefits

You may want to seek help from a Certified Financial Planner™ professional if you:

• Don’t have time to do your own financial planning
• Have an immediate need or unexpected life event
• Want to better manage your finances, but aren’t sure where to start
• Want a professional opinion about the plan you’ve developed
• Don’t have sufficient expertise in certain areas such as investments, insurance, taxes or retirement planning

why Work with a certified Financial Planner™?

Anyone can call themselves a financial planner, but a Certified Financial Planner™ has taken the step to demonstrate their professionalism by voluntarily submitting to the CFP® certification process that includes thorough education, examination, experience and ethical requirements. In addition, the designee is required to complete 30 hours of continuing education every two years.

The CFP® is recognized in the United States and a number of other countries for its:

1. High standard of professionalism
2. Stringent code of conduct and standards of practice
3. Ethical requirements that govern professional engagements with clients.

This code of ethics and financial responsibility requires six principles which are: integrity, objectivity, competence, fairness, confidentiality, professionalism, and diligence.