u/Union_Glum

Quick background: bachelors in criminal justice with decent grades, then worked as a patrol officer for 2 years before moving states and working as a patrol officer for another 2 years. Then promoted to a detective position where I have been for the past 3 years.

Once I moved to a desk position and got a little raise, I began taking my wife and I’s finances very seriously. I have consumed so much personal finance content in the past 3 years that I realized a career in finance may be more fruitful for me than sticking with law enforcement. After this realization, I have been seriously researching career changers into a CFP role and have requested certain training (paid for by my department) to market myself better in a second career.

Through my research, I’ve learned my best path will likely be passing the SIE by the end of the year and if I am still passionate about the change, than I will purchase BIF CFP course myself and work on that throughout 2027 while keeping my day job. I then plan to work for an RIA in the middle Tennessee area because I will be fine taking a reduced salary for a while when learning and obtaining my CFP license. One thing that I absolutely will not do is the sales version of CFP where I have the pressure to build my own book and call high school and college buddies.

I’m hoping that by the time I’m 30; 8 years in law enforcement plus having the SIE and actively working through the CFP coursework will make me an impressive enough (and serious enough) career changer candidate for a good RIA in my area. Hopefully, a good one will take a risk on a 30 year old with life experience (no offense to the lower 20’s folks on the thread).

Any thoughts, tips, advice, training recommendations, or anything else from the folks that are in the industry now? And anyone else in here specifically career changed from law enforcement?

So today I gave a bunch of super conservative assumptions to ChatGPT to estimate my net worth by age 40 to see if my goal of 1 million by age 40 was possible. I was SHOCKED to see the compound growth taking effect in this context. Wife and I just turned 29 with ~150k invested, ~37k cash, and ~100k home equity. Basically found out that if we can somehow continue to save and invest about 25k a year, then it’s almost impossible to miss the 1 million mark by age 40 which is just wild to me.

I also confirmed the same estimates on Grok so I’m feeling confident that AI isn’t totally wrong here. Is there anything I’m missing or should be factoring in??

I weakened the assumptions as much as I could. I tried 6% annual return, only 15k for a year or two, no 3% annual increase on home equity (which represents just matching inflation not including principal payments).

WHAT AM I MISSING?!?? Has anyone else tried this with AI instead of just doing the compound growth calculator on individual accounts? I thought I was decades off from becoming a client but looks like we may get to work with Brian before he retires lol… I assumed Bo would still be hanging around the office either way 😂