One of my goals during my three month work hiatus was to look into a career in financial planning. Even though I majored in aerospace engineering during college, it wasn’t until after I graduated and started working that I found out how much I liked helping people with their finances. People are usually surprised to discover that I’m so into personal finance considering my educational background. But I think the two go hand in hand; I base a lot of my investing principles/techniques off facts and reason instead of conjecture and hand-waving. And I think that’s what makes me so good at what I do.
I’ve actually always had an interest in money and investing. I started working my first job for a start-up when I was 14(looking back this had to be illegal) and I was also investing(poorly) in stocks during high school. Once I started making a real salary though, I figured there had to be a better way to invest than picking stocks randomly. That’s when I started reading everything I could get my hands on: blogs, books, forums, etc. The great thing about the personal finance sphere is that you can self-educate yourself for free. I paid a lot of money for my engineering degree and it still didn’t prepare me that well for my first job.
Why I Want to Help
I started my blog in January of 2012 with the intention of helping other young professionals. I looked at my friends and their spending and saving habits and I knew trouble was brewing. There are lots of young very successful people out there who have no clue what they’re doing when it comes to their money. They don’t understand the difference between a marginal and effective tax rate and they don’t realize that making small sacrifices now will pay huge dividends later.
I didn’t set out to change their opinions though, I know that’s a very difficult task. The reason why I started my blog was to enlighten and educate those who would listen. Since most people don’t like being told what to do, I never tried to do that. But I also know that there will be a small percentage of people who take my advice and use it to make their lives better.
I’ve been blogging for nearly two years now and I love it. In fact, I love it so much I started another blog and I’m writing for four different sites right now. That’s about 20 hours worth of work on top of my day job but I love doing it. All of the work I’ve put in blogging and writing during the past two years made me wonder if a career in financial planning was right for me. I started seriously thinking about it recently since I had to leave my old job when we moved up to Orange County a few months ago. I figured it was the perfect time to look around and see what else was out there.
Who Would I Work For?
The only problem with switching careers is that you have to know someone in that new field. I’ve made a lot of good networking contacts during my lifetime, but no one came to mind when I was looking into the financial industry in Orange County. Towards the end of my work hiatus though, I got in contact with a financial representative from Northwestern Mutual. We connected through a friend that I work online with and this representative told me all about what he does. Everything he described sounded like what I wanted to do: he was basically his own boss, he found clients and managed their money, he was always going to meetings with clients, doing different things every day, etc.
I liked what he described since I’m not going to trade one desk job for another. I actually like my engineering job but I know that there is limited room for advancement. Engineers tend to start off at very high salaries but if you’re not on a management track within 10 years, you won’t ever see much more responsibility or salary. If I was going to make the switch to a career in financial planning it would have to be a job where I would see a direct correlation between how hard I work and how much money I make.
My Sit Down with Northwestern Mutual
I ended up taking a meeting with a recruiter from Northwestern Mutual in Newport Beach. During the meeting, I basically discussed everything I’d been doing online during the past two years, my educational background, my personal background and more. NW Mutual is one of the big boys when it comes to financial products and although I had obviously heard of them, I didn’t know too much about them. Here are my takeaways from the meeting:
- NW Mutual would help you pass the series 6 and 63 tests and then you’d be 100% commission. Yikes!
- The whole presentation seemed a bit pyramid-schemey to me. I kind of felt like I was hocking Advocare or Herbalife products instead of financial products – that’s not what I want.
- They kept asking me for referrals for new agents. I saw it on their website and I saw it on some forms I was filling out. It didn’t seem like they were very selective with who they interviewed.
- The only person I met with was a recruiter. Although she was nice, she was about 25 and had no investment background so I couldn’t ask a lot of the questions I had in mind.
At the end of the meeting, the recruiter let me know that if I’d like to proceed she could schedule me for an interview. My overall takeaway from the meeting wasn’t negative but I wasn’t that impressed to be honest. It seems like NW Mutual will just take anybody off the street and let them hock their products. Although they reiterated that you are not forced to sell NW-Mutual products exclusively, I’m sure there is a big push to sell their own products or how else would the company be so successful? It just seemed like there was a lot they weren’t telling me.
Post-Interview Research
As soon as I got home, I went online and did some research into careers at NW Mutual as a financial planner. What I found confirmed my suspicions: NW Mutual’s agents tend to work long hours for little pay and they ask you to pitch their products to all of your friends/family. Nearly all the reviews I saw were somewhat negative and echoed the same sentiments. From what I read online, it was the exact job that I’m trying to move away from. But I took everything I read online with a grain of salt since people tend to post crazy stuff online.
Obviously NW Mutual is doing something right since they’ve been in business for over 100 years but it didn’t seem like a career with them would be the right fit for me. I looked at the starting salaries for a financial planner with NW Mutual and I could make more than that working online if I did it 40 hours a week.
Money is probably the biggest barrier right now that’s preventing me from making the switch to a career in financial planning. I make good money at my day job and great money working online so I don’t have to take a low paying entry level finance job. I’m not sure that the right opportunity will ever fall into my lap so until then I always have my blogging and writing.
My Blog is my Outlet
I really enjoy helping people with their finances. When people e-mail me and ask me questions about what they should do with their finances or how they should invest I love helping them out. For now, I think I’m content to keep blogging and writing and getting paid for what I love to do. It’s not as stable of a career as one in financial planning but I’m not sure there are many financial planning jobs that would fit my needs. I know there’s a job out there that’s right for me but I don’t think it’s going to be with one of the big financial planning firms. More likely, it’s probably going to lie with a smaller firm that has fee-only financial planners that think like me.
Everything I talk about on this blog relates to finding the lowest cost investment products and getting the most for your money. I’m not sure how conducive my financial planning style would be to me making good money as a financial planner. I know I’d be saving my clients a ton of money and helping them out but I don’t know if I’d be rewarded appropriately working for a big firm since they tend to offer some of the worst products.
Career Goals
Ultimately, I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing. Although I really enjoy helping individuals out with their finances, I haven’t found the right career opportunity that will let me follow my passion and get paid accordingly. I like blogging and writing so I can see myself doing that indefinitely. I did it full time(well four hours a day) for the past three months and I made good money and never got tired of it. Ideally, I’d like to do some combination of financial planning and writing/blogging.
So far the income from the latter has been well worth it but I am a little concerned about the financial planning salary. I know there are people out there making good money as financial planners but I have a feeling they are the ones selling the high expense ratio products that I always recommend against buying! If things go well though with my other streams of passive income then I might not care about how much money I make as a financial planner though. I’d be able to do it just because I like it and that’s a good place to be in. It also doesn’t hurt that I’ll be marrying a doctor.
Readers, what do you think about my choice to some day pursue a career in financial planning? Am I crazy, greedy or stupid to want to leave a successful career in engineering to pursue a passion?
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I don’t think you are crazy. Passions can develop unexpectedly and lead us in a direction we had not originally intended. I feel that is what happened with the development of my blog. You just need to plan out the transition well if it’s something you really are passionate about. We’ve been working with a fee-only planner for the last several years and I know he is doing well. He doesn’t sell us products, which for me is a big turn off.
Yea the nice thing is that I’m not in a big rush. I can be patient and make a nice slow transition or wait for the right opportunity. Who knows I might stay at my day job if things go well..
Sounds like a great idea Harry! Seems to fit in well with your love for finance blogging too! I think there is still a huge barrier that stops people investing and there needs to be more people with experience willing to give advice about topics like this!
Thanks Joe, yea that’s why I started my blog. I think I’m doing a good job of reaching out to the younger generation but as people accumulate more wealth/assets they tend to feel like they have to pay to get good financial advice.
Hi Harry,
I’m a CFP and work at an investment firm. I’d love to provide you with some insight into the industry and best practices for pursuing your passion. Email me.
Will do thanks Richard.
This is something I’ve struggled with as well actually, with the salary/compensation being a similar issue. I love investing and helping those who need it most. The ability to help guide folks through tough financial decisions without pushing expensive products and other such nonsense would be great.
Yea I’m thinking a tiered system would be best. That way you can help everyone out and if you do land a few big clients you can charge them more and provide more of a full service/hand-holding role.
Very cool you are looking at your options at least and being thorough.
I have a guest post pending from a fella who went through the fin planning process and basically hated it.
Interesting, I’ll be curious to read it and see if he went through a big/small firm. To be honest, going with NW Mutual seemed like it would not be very fun for a lot of reasons.
I know that I’d like the end result of being an FA, but I’m not looking forward to all the grunt work at the beginning.
I don’t think you’re crazy for wanting to follow something you’re passionate about, but I think your concerns about working for a big company as a planner are valid. The bigger firms are all about making money, and sometimes that clashes with doing what’s best for clients. If you stick with blogging and can make an income off of that, that might be the best of both worlds – you’re working on something you’re passionate about AND you’re offering advice and tips that you stand by 100% and your number one priority can be to help your readers.
Yea I completely agree: the big firms are all about making money and that’s never best for client’s interests. I’m not sure if it’s possible to become an FA on your own but it’s something I might look into. Ultimately, I’d like to use my blog or online activities to turn readers into clients or something along those lines.
I studied for 9 years to become a teacher, worked for 10 as a radio DJ and am a web designer now. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Keep your mind open and accept any good options. You never know where your passion will bring you 🙂
Yea that’s a good point. People change careers all the time. I think I saw a statistic that said some very high number of people end up working in fields completely unrelated to their college major.
I have a very close friend who is working for one of their competitors and he has experienced the same things you described. He immediately got to work contacting his family and friends trying to sell them life insurance, which he hates. I think this is one of the reasons why even though working in finance intrigues me, I don’t know that I am willing to do what ti takes to get into it. Do you think you will give it another shot somewhere down the road?
Interesting, after talking with some financial advisors over the past couple days it sounds like the big guys are all like that. You’re basically a salesmen pushing their crappy and expensive products.
I think I’m definitely going to give it a shot down the road but I’ll probably have to partner up with someone or start at a small firm. I don’t want to be a FA bad enough to start at the bottom and work my way up. I’m really hoping that I can meet someone in the industry who has some good contacts and show them what I’ve been doing online and intrigue them that way. Maybe they’d consider taking me on in an apprentice type role.
That seems like it would be the best way to go. He had almost gotten a job with a small firm, and that would have been an ideal situation. The apprentice idea also sounds like it has potential. Good luck.
I have also looked into a career as a financial planner and come to the conclusion that I couldn’t work for someone else. In most cases you are just a salesman and there is a huge conflict of interest between you making money and giving the best advice to your client. If I ever did make the jump I would probably start my own business as a “fee-only” financial advisor. You don’t sell anything so you are free to offer the best advice to your clients. The problem is I am not sure how much you can make doing this. There is a network of fee-only advisors called The Garrett Planning Network that could help you get started. Their website is http://www.garrettplanningnetwork.com. They seem to have a really good reputation and I think if I did it I would work with them. You should take a look.
Wow that’s so funny that you mention the Garrett Planning Network since I spoke with a CFP today who also recommended I check them out. They sound a lot like what I’m looking for though.
After doing a ton of research, I’ve pretty much decided that if I do make the switch, I’m going to get my CFP and either start on my own or do an apprentinceship-type program with a small firm or someone willing to take me under their wing. Now I just need to work out all the timelines and details…would love to chat more offline with you if you’re interested, let me know.
Great article Harry! I also want to get into the financial planning field. I was very hesitant to go with a large firm for the same reasons you listed. Northwestern Mutual instantly turned me off when a rep came into my international finance class at school with two “secretaries” that were gorgeous in mini skirts sat in the front for no reason and he wore a pin stripped suit with a french cuffs and tons of gaudy jewelry from head to toe. He single handedly made me second guess my career choice. My brother works for a very small firm and sells whatever products he deems suitable for his clients. I passed my series 7 and just need to get my 66 and i start to work under him. Having a personal mentor to help guide me in my earlier years will be great. It’s really scary, but working with a family member and unlimited support from a small firm is just the right fit for me.
Yea if you actually like helping people, NW Mutual is not the answer haha. Sounds like you’ve got the perfect situation going for you though. I still like helping people with their investments but I’ve kind of moved away from it as a career choice. There’s a lot you can do online with a blog/media to get the word across without having to work your way up…