Financial Planner

What is a Financial Planner?

The following job responsibilities are common for individuals in financial planner roles:

• Conduct initial meetings with clients to establish, determine, and record financial goals
• Review individuals’ finances and look for opportunities to suggest alterations in spending, investing, and saving to meet established financial goals
• Recommend different savings opportunities that offer the largest return on investment
• Conduct seminars and market services to recruit new clients
• Stay abreast of changes in investment opportunities in order to best advise clients

A Day in the Life

Financial planners assist individuals with meeting long-term financial goals by educating clients on the risks and rewards of certain purchase and investment decisions. They may assist clients with simple tasks like forming a budget, or they may help clients find ways to save enough money to cover a major life expense. For example, a financial planner may look at inflation, investment returns, and typical spending in order to determine how much a client needs to save each month in order to prepare for retirement.

Financial planners help individuals with many different types of financial planning. They may help individuals with young children form a plan for paying for their children’s college education when they reach adulthood. They may also help individuals determine what amount of money they can afford to finance for a mortgage when considering a new home purchase. They do this by meeting with clients, determining their long-term goals, reviewing their finances, and finding a wise investment and savings plan that will serve their needs when it’s time for the goal to come to fruition.

In addition to working with and counseling clients on financial matters, financial planners must work to recruit new clients. They may conduct public seminars to educate people on the importance of financial planning in order to recruit clients, or they may market their services through managing a website and creating educational financial planning content. They may also offer incentives to existing clients for referrals, allowing them to grow their networks by offering a discount to clients who refer others.

Typical Work Schedule

Financial Planners usually have long working hours and they commonly have to work to later evenings. This depends on the field and level of their work, the type and number of clients, the workload and its related time and effort required to deliver. This gives their schedule a wide range as they can sometimes work part-time with under 40 hours per week and sometimes have a more difficult schedule that exceeds 40 hours per week. The schedule must also have enough flexibility to accommodate their clients’ schedule and to be able to respond to their concerns which may occur on evenings and weekends. Also, Longer hours may have to be allocated to accommodate the conducted analysis, research or further education that can be sometimes required.

Projected Job Growth

According to the US bureau of labor statistics, the employment of Financial planners and advisors is expected to grow by at least 4 % from 2019 to 2029 which is as fast as the growth of other jobs. Financial planners and advisors are different jobs but closely related as an indicator of the economy health. The role of a financial planner includes developing personalized financial plan for your clients. The limited growth of the demand for this job makes the job market more challenging for fresh graduates who need to earn the trust of their clients. You may consider earning certificates like CPA (Certified Public Accountant) or an MBA as well as his interpersonal and communication skills to improve your chances in this competitive job market.

Typical Employers

Financial planners have a wide range of job opportunities especially as they get more qualified and experienced. More than half of financial planners work for different finance or insurance companies including securities and commodity brokers, banks and insurance carriers. In addition, about 40 % of financial planners prefer to work independently in their own small investment advisory firms (especially in urban areas) where they use their skills and experience to gain new clients. The experience and connections required to be able to prosper can be gained by working first in related financial companies such as accounting or insurance to be able to prove your competence in the field.