Getting Started as a Financial Planner

Rating:
Summary: An emerging Ethical, Caring and Holistic Profession
Review: Initially, there is a typical cheap-sell impulse about this book (even labeled on the back of it) that breaking into the lucrative financial planning field has never been so easy! Such misleading comments will only damage a highly respectable profession.

Before reading this book, I was intimidated with a perception that financial planners were just another concoction of pesky stockbrokers reborn. When I began reading Chapter 2, I realized that becoming a Certified Financial Planner requires many years of acquired wisdom with scores of training to best understand the needs of their clients. Mastery is comparable to the same level of other respectable professions!

Rather than push product-centered transactions, services offered must be sophisticated, personal and accommodating to ensure long-term success. Now, subjective and objective targets must be met, along with technical prowess and imagination.

As a novice for this review, it seems that financial planning is still in the nascent stages. Therefore, anyone can be a Certified Financial Planner, an exhilarating but also frightening thought. I agree that this is the ultimate mid-career switch for the burned out CPA, attorney, stockbroker, or college-grad housewife.

This leading expert must publish a new edition to reflect the many changes occurring in a burgeoning, potentially volatile, financial service sector. The book was written right before the dot-com bubble bust, so financial planning does not seem to be taken seriously enough.

Jeffrey H. Rattiner portrays the profession in a warm-hearted position, similar to the motion picture Jerry Maguire, where the celebrity athlete is the only loyal client on a hard road to redemption and personal growth for both individuals and their families.


Rating:
Summary: Getting Started as a Financial Planner
Review: Jeff's book is a great resource for the new CFP or planner. He does an outstanding job of outlining the "building blocks" of a financial planning practice. His explanations are clear and concise and the illustrations and exhibits helped to take concept into an actual practice situation. Great instructive book! It will remain on my bookshelf in my office for some years as a resource and guide.

Rating:
Summary: Getting Started as a Financial Planner
Review: Jeff's book is a great resource for the new CFP or planner. He does an outstanding job of outlining the "building blocks" of a financial planning practice. His explanations are clear and concise and the illustrations and exhibits helped to take concept into an actual practice situation. Great instructive book! It will remain on my bookshelf in my office for some years as a resource and guide.

Rating:
Summary: Good Organizational book for a new financial planner
Review: This book has provided me with a lot of useful information in starting a new Financial Planning Practice. The only drawback to this book is that it was written before significant tax law changes took place in 2001. If a new edition came out with that information, it would be excellent!

Rating:
Summary: Good Organizational book for a new financial planner
Review: This book has provided me with a lot of useful information in starting a new Financial Planning Practice. The only drawback to this book is that it was written before significant tax law changes took place in 2001. If a new edition came out with that information, it would be excellent!

Rating:
Summary: Jeffrey Rattiner's book hits the mark
Review: When I started out as an independent financial planner almost 8 years ago there was little on the market in terms of well written, content-rich references on financial planning. I recently came across Jeffrey Rattiner's "getting started" book for financial planners. First, I wish I had this book 8 years ago. It would have saved me time and mistakes when I got started. The second point to make is that Rattiner's book, especially the sections on managing client relationships and marketing, is thorough and practical. For example, as Rattiner points out there are important psychological issues at play (denial,guilt,avoidance, etc.) between planner and client that affect the relationship.These issues need to be recognized and managed to forge a productive, long-term association. The section on marketing is also right on target. While Rattiner's advice largely focuses on the new planner, I found his range of marketing strategies to be a good reminder of the broad approach the financial planner needs to take to get the best ROI on marketing spending. Overall, Rattiner is very successful in presenting the various challenges and solutions the new(and experienced)planner needs to address. "Getting Started as a Financial Planner" is money well spent.