THE CAREER CHANGE FINANCIAL PLANNER

With this — the last post of Higher Ed month on the blog — I would be remiss if I failed to recognize the efforts of college planning expert Todd Weaver of Strategies for College, Inc., who helped me with valuable input on posts throughout the month. Many thanks, Todd!!

Last post, I promised to follow up with one more story on managing the costs of returning to school for graduate study.  In that post, I described some strategies I used to minimize the costs of getting my MBA. One of the points I made was that, although time = money, sometimes the equation shifts, so that time actually equals more than money. And that was certainly true for me when I decided in 2001 to go back to school yet again, this time to pursue CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification, which would allow me to make the major career shift I had in mind.

In deciding NOT to work full-time while getting certified, several factors came into play.  First, I was pretty burned out after 4 years of working in the dot-com maelstrom.  Plus, this was a scant 4 years post-MBA, so the struggle of trying to study part-time while working full-time (translation: no life) was still fresh in my mind.  And now that I’d finally found the answer to the question “What do I want to be when I grow up?”, I just wanted to get on with it, frankly, as opposed to dragging it over several years.

A few other factors that enabled this decision:

• While not cheap, the costs of CFP® certification are relatively reasonable compared to other professional programs.
• While I could have kept the actual dollars invested lower by learning the materials via self-study,  I decided it was worth the extra money to pay someone for formal classroom instruction.  As a trained engineer who might tend towards overengineering when left unchecked, I know myself well enough to realize that externally imposed deadlines would be valuable far beyond the outlay of cash required.
• There was another absolutely critical piece that made this work…  At the time (and maybe even now), only colleges 45+ minutes drive from my home even offered this curriculum, and most did so in the traditional “one class per week for a full semester” mode.   Northeastern University, however, was unique in offering what I called crash courses, where the instruction of an entire semester was delivered in 2 full days over 2 full weekends at their more easily accessible suburban campuses.  Although this format was probably targeted at full-time employees who could only attend on weekends, it was also the perfect way for me to fast track my certification, while also avoiding the commuting costs and wasted time (= money!) of driving into Boston every week for probably 2 or 3 years.
• I did some consulting work, using skills from my previous life, but in the new industry.   Not only did this help defray the costs of living and tuition, but it was a major coup in another, perhaps even more important way.  That is because it required me to discuss fee-only financial planning practice models with a variety of experienced members of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), to whom I otherwise wouldn’t have had access.   Talk about fast tracking an education!  This work was absolutely integral to helping me understand what my desired career change would take, and how I would want to run my own practice when the time came.  (A big shout-out to Warren Mackensen and the rest of NAPFA for this tremendous opportunity!)

As I look back over this post, I realize it is not so much a tale of controlling costs, as it is of matching the time/money equation to the wanna-be student’s needs and resources.  Something tells me that might be worth a lot more when the final tally is made.

Tags: Back-to-school, Career change stories, College, Sherrill's career change // Add Comment »