r/CFP

How much cash would you give clients child in their high school graduation card?

Client is an “A” client if that matters

We recently took on a sizable account and are seeing large unrealized capital gains in some of the main holdings. (ie SPY, QQQ, AAPL, etc). I don’t have the time (perfect know how?) to research/trade covered calls, so I’m wondering if anyone out there is using a service that can provide this ‘advice’ specific to submitting a portfolio of holdings. (I should add we custody at Fidelity Institutional) Thanks in advance!

If you have added Medicare plans as an offering in your firm, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

As many of us are, we talk about Medicare all the time and have a few local independent agents we refer to who we trust. This seems like a service we can bring in-house as part of a more comprehensive service offering for clients.

We’d likely have to hire a new employee who would just focus on this rather than adding it to the workload of one of our advisors. Ideally, we’d be able to market this service and cross sell financial planning and wealth management too.

I’m still figuring out the economics of all of this. It would be great to hear success stories, cautionary tales or anything I should be thinking about as we consider adding this as a service.

For context, we’re a $500 million AUM hybrid with an independent B/D.

I have a client whose mother recently passed away. Roughly $2.5 million of a $3 million portfolio is concentrated in Exxon stock with significant embedded capital gains. The assets are held inside a family limited partnership, so approximately 75% of the position did not receive a step-up in basis.

The client is relying on the portfolio for lifestyle income, but also wants to structure the assets for long-term, multi-generational wealth preservation. My primary concern is the concentration risk. Exxon has had a tremendous run over the last several years, and I worry about the potential impact if valuations revert closer to historical norms.

At what point do you determine that the risk reduction and diversification benefits outweigh the cost of realizing long-term capital gains? More specifically, how do you evaluate when it makes sense to begin reallocating a highly appreciated concentrated position like this?

Curious to hear niche businesses that clients have.

One of mine is a fixed base operations owner (airport). Quite the business he’s got and you’d never know.

These are the two services I'm aware of in the space of allowing us to manage 401ks for clients and recieve a fee.

Which is best and what are the pros vs cons and the best platform from people already using one of these services?

Recently added Right Capital to my stack in addition to Moneyguide. I’m curious about the budgeting functionality and am ultimately wondering if this can give me and my clients enough tools to actually track cash flow and ditch third party tools like Monarch? (I still miss Mint…)

Let’s say we are gonna oversimplify timeline for onboarding a new client.

1)Day 1 appt they haven’t brought anything or sent anything before hand because they wanna meet. But while there they get comfortable pull up statements on phone and send to you and agree to open accounts and bring money. You fill out transfer paperwork etc.

2)………

What does the progression for financial planning look like for yall?

Do yall ask for docs and start working before the assets hit? Do yall do insurance on its own, estate planning l its own, investment recommendations on its own. Retirement planning on its own etc…

If you do how many appts and how much time in between.

Thanks!

Update:

I can’t separate first appt from trying to close business. Ima sales guy.

I don’t wanna do any work until assets are en route or in already.

Will yall gather hella docs even if they aren’t clients with assets en route or with you already?

Hi everyone,

I work at one of the large financial services firms (Schwab/Fidelity/Vanguard type environment) in an entry-level advisor role. I’ve been there for about a year and a half. Most of my job is taking client calls, helping with service needs, having planning conversations, and recommending managed accounts or mutual funds when appropriate.

Long term, I’d like to become an independent advisor and eventually build my own practice. I’m currently working through the CFP education and hoping to sit for the exam sometime next year.

I feel like I’m getting valuable experience, but I’m still unsure what the smartest next step is from here for someone with that long-term goal.

For those who went independent, what experience or skills helped you the most before making the jump?

In your experience, for those that have gone through in-house succession agreements and offered equity to next generation - what would you consider a “meaningful” equity percentage that they would feel like they were actually a business owner? Rather than just a ploy to keep them happy and not leave.

Short story to the point: was at very tail end of onboarding client and spouse after a few meetings. Had agreement to move forward from “decision maker” husband. All accounts in his name. Wife had been present and on board in all meetings. Kid you not, morning of meeting to sign paperwork and start moving funds, husband passes away from sudden heart attack. Obviously tremendously devastating to wife and family.
This is approaching 3-4 weeks ago. I’ve communicated with wife, but only via text, and last communication was open ended with “I know I’ll need your help but will need some time”. I want to be respectful, allow time for grieving, and be empathetic in light of everything. What says the “group-mind” on follow up cadence, and verbiage for next approach gets bonus points.

Anyone have recommendations for compliance firms that handle the transition from state registration (FL) to SEC?

I’ve been talking with my current consultant, but the pricing they quoted feels pretty steep. Hard to tell whether that’s just the market right now or if I should be getting other opinions.

Part of why I’m questioning it is because our last state exam went pretty smoothly, and the regulators more or less indicated that our existing framework already aligns closely with SEC expectations.

Hoping to get some advice on how i should market myself as a 23yr old advisor. I understand that being young it can be tough but I have a great support system and team that is backing me up.

What have you guys seen be a successful avenue that people my age can access.

Is it working with young professionals ?

Retired people ?

Thanks in advance for any and all of the feedback.

I am building a comp structure for a junior advisor who is fully in sales right now, but wants more revenue on individual cases. Right now they are bonused on total firm revenue.

For any revenue generated on this advisors clients, I am taking 50% off the top of all AUM & premium as my support team will fully support applications, planning, trading etc, and all they need to do it talk & work with clients, send a task to the team and its done.

They also get my 90% grid rate.

I would give them 40% of all revenue they personally source - premium and AUM fee's.

The get 20% on all revenue closed from leads our team gets and they run with the lead. After 3 years if they wholly own the relationship it goes up to 30%. This is NOT to be underestimated, our firm gets 1M+ income earner referrals daily from our cpa partners. Likely they can rollover 15-30M a year on this. They have experience and proven they are capable of this.

base salary of 75k - They immediately get about $35M that they solo manage now that was from my book, and it would immediately go into the 30% tier.

Revenue for them on 100M AUM + some insurance ends up round 350k of net income.

What do you think?

Are their financial-service firms who are looking for folks who have their CFP (especially career changers) but don't want to build their own book of business? What roles are there for those people?

Curious to hear from advisors who have transitioned from large bank/brokerage platforms to running or joining an independent RIA.

Trying to get a realistic sense of how these moves play out in practice, especially for those coming from more restrictive or non-protocol environments.

For those who’ve done it:

Client retention: What did retention actually look like in the first 3–6 months vs. expectations?

Transition approach: How did outreach and client communication evolve post-resignation? What seemed to work best?

Operational reality: What were the biggest challenges in the first 30–90 days that aren’t obvious from the outside?

Infrastructure: Any tools or systems (custodian, CRM, planning software, etc.) you were especially glad, or wish, you had in place ahead of time? (Examples I see mentioned often are Altruist, Wealthbox, and RightCapital.)

Economics: How long did it take for revenue to normalize compared to prior roles?

Not looking for generic pros/cons. I’m more interested in how expectations compared to reality and what tends to get underestimated in these transitions.
Appreciate any perspective from those with firsthand experience.

Does anyone know if there is a client friendly guide for the account view app?? I’ve found the account view guide for the full site but not the app.

I know it is a relatively straightforward app, but I also know that clients tend to forget where things are in the app if they’re not using it all the time.

My goal was to give clients something that they can refer back to if they need to find their tax forms or change their electronic delivery on something.

I couldn’t find one so I created one and submitted it to ART but they told me that I needed to use what was available in the resource center, and I just can’t find one.

Am I missing it altogether or is there not one?

I think I’m getting into a real predicament here. I was part of an RTP at Edward Jones, and from day one the advisor and I really haven’t seen eye to eye on portfolio management or client relationships. To be fair, there are a lot of things he’s done right, and at his core I genuinely believe he’s always tried to act in clients’ best interests. But there are certain client situations and portfolios I’ve reviewed that make me cringe.

I think the latest case may end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

I met with a client who has roughly $2 million in investable assets sitting in a brokerage account. The portfolio is structured as a traditional 60/40 allocation, but the entire fixed-income sleeve is made up of individual municipal bonds with a 17-year duration — and no, that’s not a typo — despite the client being in only a 12% tax bracket. The muni portfolio is yielding around 3.5%, and there are significant unrealized losses there, offset by large unrealized gains on the equity side, which is primarily A-share American Funds.

Then you layer in the planning side. The client is trying to sell a business. He has a special-needs son who lives with his ex-wife, and he’s deeply concerned that if he dies and his son inherits the assets outright, the ex-wife will manipulate the situation and burn through the money. There are obvious estate planning and trust considerations here beyond just “manage the investments and move on.”

I pitched moving to a managed relationship centered around comprehensive financial planning. The client seemed genuinely engaged, excited, and relieved leaving the meeting — at least from my perspective.

Then that night I get a random email saying he doesn’t want to make any changes.

Obviously something felt off.

So I called him the next morning and asked whether he had seen or heard something that changed his mind. He says, “Well… I remembered talking to Johnny (former advisor) a few years ago and we didn’t do that kind of account, but I can’t remember why. I called him yesterday and left him a voicemail.”

Okay… odd.

So I call Johnny and ask whether he connected with the client. He says, “Uh actually yeah, we spoke, but I told him I haven’t had a chance to really look at the portfolio. I know there’s a bunch of bonds but I can’t really remember. I’ll call you back and we can talk more — I’m tied up right now.”

That was over 24 hours ago.

The stories don’t line up, and the reality is Johnny has hated financial planning and managed accounts since the day I got there. This relationship has been uphill from the start.

I’ll be honest — if I find out he’s actively undermining my recommendations behind the scenes, I’m not going to take that lightly.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of situation? I’d genuinely appreciate pushback, perspective, or hearing from people who’ve navigated something similar.

I have a client that I’ve worked with for 5-6 years. She’s made incredible progress over that time and has really improved her retirement outlook. That said, she never was near the 80-90% probability of success.

During some recent meetings she lamented about what’s the point in saving, “I’ll never be able to retire.” I pointed out her recent progress, the fact she has reasonable expenses and good savings habits. I told her I don’t lose sleep over her outlook because we will continue to make progress towards her goal.

She recently inherited $700k. She thought this would allow her to retire 5 or more years earlier than her current goal (that she’s currently not on track to achieve). When we plugged her inheritance into the system, she was as on track for the original plan, but can’t retire 5 years early.

She has since taken the position that I was too optimistic. She’s extremely disappointed and blames me for her disappointment.

I’ve model four different scenarios showing her different ways to retire between 62 and 65. Nothing seems to appease her.

How do I reset the conversation in order to move forward? I have enjoyed working with this client and would hate to see her leave.