Managing personal and family finances is a responsible and difficult thing. Indeed, in a world of temptations, it is difficult to choose the right strategy for spending and accumulating funds. And mistakes in budget planning can turn into microloans at 750% per annum, foreign currency mortgages, investments in dubious assets and other reckless actions. Unfortunately, such situations are common, especially if you have to rely only on your own experience. However, now you have a reliable and proven advisor – the online portal for financial education fpany.org!
The portal for financial literacy has combined up-to-date information on managing personal and family budgets and protecting the rights of consumers of banking services. And it did it very efficiently and versatile!
With the help of the new site, you can learn how to take out a loan correctly and what questions you need to answer before buying an insurance policy. Special attention is paid to the protection of bank cards from fraudsters. And this is not a complete list of issues discussed on the portal.
The new resource is aimed at different age audiences – from schoolchildren and students who are on the verge of an independent life in the world of finance, to older people who have already retired. At the same time, all materials and developments, as well as useful advice from recognized experts, are collected in a single interactive space.
During the development of the portal, the best international experience was studied. Visitors are interested in high-quality and regularly updated content, easy navigation, as well as the opportunity to ask a question to experts in order to get prompt and professional help from them.
The portal discusses various life situations: “home bookkeeping”, “work and salary”, “debts and loans”, “saving and investing”.
According to some experts, the site fpany.org turned out to be very successful and really informative. And we would like to believe, it will help users avoid “pitfalls” and icebergs in the turbulent ocean of cash and electronic money. We’d like to become a kind of personal certified financial planner for you!
Who is a certified financial planner (CFP)?
A Certified Financial Planner (CFP) is a financial professional who has specialized education and has been tested and is improving his or her educational level. Before being granted this high status, an individual must be approved by the international commission. Upon successful completion of the training course and passing the exams, the applicant is issued a certificate. Typically, a Certified Financial Planner is highly qualified in a wide range of financial issues, but certification focuses on four major disciplines.
What does a financial planner do?
The range of tasks that a competent financial planner can help you solve is quite wide. Let’s consider the most basic ones:
1. CFP draws up a personal financial plan to achieve your financial goals
Each of us has dreams (someone is dreaming about travel or a long-awaited apartment, someone is thinking about paying for children’s education or other expensive purchase). It is important to be able to digitize their value and outline a plan of achievement. In order to make your financial dreams come true, a financial advisor draws up your personal financial plan: helps to digitize your dreams, makes the necessary calculations, develops a personal strategy so that you can start implementing your plans having step-by-step instructions on what to do and how to do it.
2. CFP helps to select profitable financial products
A financial planner can find the highest rate on deposits and the lowest rate on loans, help avoid the marketing gimmicks of financial corporations, which have learned to make “an offer that cannot be refused.” A financial planner knows how to carefully read the tariffs and all items with an asterisk “*”, analyze the offers of several companies in order to choose a really profitable product for you.
3. CFP reduces overpayments on mortgages or loans
If you have ever taken loans, you know the satiation when you make monthly payments but the amount of debt is still not decreasing or is decreasing very slowly. Many Americans are accustomed to living in debt and do not always think that contacting a financial planner who can save them years of life and thousands of dollars, for example, by reducing loan overpayments. A financial planner will help you calculate your overpayment, identify the most expensive loans with the maximum overpayment, find more favorable lending terms or refinancing opportunities, calculate whether it is profitable for you to make a partial early repayment, and how much you can save at the same time.
4. CFP optimizes taxes “Pay taxes and sleep well.”
Everyone knows this phrase, but a minority knows that you can also legally receive tax deductions. And it’s not just about deductions for buying an apartment, treatment or training. You can also have the possibility of obtaining tax deductions when investing or exemption from taxes when owning securities for more than 3 years.
5. CFP helps in creating and increasing your capital
A financial planner knows how to eliminate financial gaps, identify reserves in your family budget and select additional sources of income for you so that you can start saving and creating your capital. You have free money, and the task arises to invest it profitably. If you are not a specialist in the field of investment, you will not be able to understand all the intricacies of investing in the securities market, the advantages of various assets and choose safe instruments that would give you good returns. And again, a financial planner can tell you what investment options might be right for you taking into account your goals, risk appetite, investment horizon, other factors. In addition to all of the above, contacting a financial planner ensures you against rash actions, helps you build your personal and family budget correctly, invest without unjustified risk.
We think you’ve already been able to appreciate how useful financial planners can be in achieving your life goals. And the costs of financial planning services are definitely paid off.
How to choose a financial planner?
- Pay attention to those who work independently. It makes no sense to seek financial advice from an employee of an insurance company, broker or bank;
- Study candidates from afar, for examples their websites or pages in social networks;
- Ask questions in the comments to his/her expert articles. Here you are faced with the task of determining the candidate’s expertise and whether he/she really understands budget optimization, investments and financial protection;
- Make sure the person understands that there are many ways to invest: via banks, via a broker, and via insurance companies. A CFP knows the pros and cons of each method;
- The same goes for insurance. A person should understand the difference between foreign and domestic risk, medical, savings, investment insurance;
- Experience. Even the presence of a diploma or certificate issued in 2000 does not guarantee that a person understands these issues;
- When communicating, the planner must follow the goals. First, you discuss the situation, and only then you are given a ready-made strategy for it;
- Ask to talk about how you can invest not in the already proposed way but in some other way. For example, not via a broker but via an insurance company. It will not be difficult for an expert to switch and tell right away what specific steps will need to be taken for this;
- As you present your strategy, ask questions that shift the focus slightly. And you will immediately understand whether the specialist understands the topic or is simply selling you a bad strategy with a clever look;
- Empathy. It must be always pleasant to communicate with a CFP;
- And the last thing. A financial planner must motivate and support.
