When my grandfather was born in England in 1885, Victoria was queen and debt was only gradually being abolished as a crime.¹

When my father was born in 1915, the mortgage interest-rate deduction had just been enacted.²

Shortly after I was born in 1953, a song about coal miners deep in debt to the company store became the most successful single ever recorded.³

Just before my oldest son was born in 1981, South Dakota became the first state to repeal legislation limiting the interest rate that credit cards could charge. The industry took off.⁴

The point isn't to impress you with how long my family's generation gaps are.⁵ The point is that it is only recently that the average person's financial life became complex enough to need professional help. In addition, the average person's life is now longer, so the need to plan for retirement has increased along with the intricacies of the planning process.

But how does a profession addressing a new need get started?

A profession cannot exist without buyers for its services. But because financial complexity and human longevity are relatively recent developments, many people do not realize how important it is to plan their financial lives. Unfortunately, most people who could benefit from financial planning (and afford the services of a professional) do not yet purchase assistance.

So what do individuals creating a new profession do? Exactly what many financial planners have done-practice a different profession-selling insurance, selling securities, selling real estate, and so forth-while trying to convince people that financial-planning services are important enough to purchase whether or not in conjunction with other services.

The need to earn a living while building a profession creates a problem. People who have heard of financial planners begin to think of them as only insurance salespeople or brokers or real estate agents and the like. When I was debating whether to accept an offer from CFP Board, and asked around about financial planners, nearly everyone I asked thought the profession existed to sell insurance or securities. This misperception slows the profession's growth-if people think financial planners are merely well-trained insurance or securities professionals, they won't seek them out for broader financial-planning services. You don't look to purchase something you don't know is there.

This is an important barrier. There is another barrier, as well. People are about as eager to discuss their financial lives with a stranger as they are to discuss their weight.

How can the profession overcome these barriers? Innovative certificants are working on ways that will help the profession get from where it is today to where it needs to be when my sons have their children.

To appreciate one such approach, let's start with some facts generated by CFP Board itself. CFP Board reimburses its employees a set amount if they purchase the services of a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner. Yet many staffers do not use this "free money."

Why? The answers to this question are very telling.

Our employees give the following reasons for not hiring a certificant: They do not make enough money to need professional help. They are embarrassed about their finances. They can't afford a babysitter. They don't know where to find a good practitioner. They are afraid to ask professionals what their services cost. And they only want help on one or two issues, not a full plan.

It is fair to assume that many people share these reasons for not seeking help with their financial lives. So what can be done to get past these problems and get people the help they need?

A number of certificants are coming up with inventive answers. One service lets people find, evaluate and hire certificants online. With this service, potential clients can, from the privacy of their own homes, educate themselves about the kinds of services certificants provide, compare certificants' price ranges, "shop" any hour of the day, interact by phone or E-mail, get clear reports, and offer and obtain feedback.

What is particularly interesting is that half of this service's clients prefer to interact exclusively by E-mail. This suggests that an initial online interaction may be a good way for some people to work around their fear of face-to-face discussions of their finances.

Also interesting is that most of this service's clients start by wanting answers to limited questions. This suggests that many people want to put their toes in the financial planning waters before their bodies.

Another innovative service is a kind of certificants' collective in which individual certificants with separate practices share certain costs and experiences and help their members extend the reach of financial planning to people who might not otherwise become clients.

Initiatives such as these create both the services and the data about human behavior that a new profession needs to reach larger numbers of people. A new profession needs to pay attention to what gets people in the door the first time if it is going to grow. The good news is that the data suggests that, once in the door, clients stay-the value of financial planning sells itself.

I invite anyone with interesting ideas on how to get individuals to make their first foray into purchasing financial planning to share them-by E-mail, of course, as I am one of those people for whom E-mail opens doors that would otherwise stay closed. This includes everything from innovative practice designs to things as simple as what words best capture the essence of financial planning for potential clients. One certificant, for example, uses "I can help you achieve financial independence" to explain what he does.

While you are at it, if you have any ideas on how to get my sons to produce grandkids for me, that would be welcome, too.

Sarah Ball Teslik

The views expressed here are solely those of the author, who can be reached at steslik@CFPBoard.org.

1 The first English debtors reform acts were passed in the mid 1840s. More reforms in the 1860s effectively restricted imprisonment for debt to the working classes. Debt was finally abolished as a crime in 1970.

2 This provision was contained in the Internal Revenue Code when it was enacted in 1913.

3 The song, Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons," was on the back of a record shipped nationwide on Oct. 17, 1955. (The front of the record contained, "You Don't Have to be a Baby to Cry," but deejays flipped the record over and played the back more than the front.) It sold a million copies in 24 days and two million in 8 weeks. It was so popular Senator McCarthy targeted Merle Travis as a potential communist because of the song's sympathetic stance toward miners. A song about debt to a company store would not only not resonate with today's music buyers; they wouldn't know what it meant.

4 In 1980 both Citibank and South Dakota were in trouble. The former had lost more than a billion dollars in its foray into credit cards because inflation exceeded the interest rate the law allowed the bank to charge. South Dakota's economy had tanked because the price for hauling wheat made it cost more to produce than sell. A call from Citibank's Walter Wriston to South Dakota's Governor Janklow changed the history of credit: rapidly passed legislation converted the billion-dollar loser into banking's most profitable sector, generating $30 billion in revenue in 2004.

5 We take so long that I only have to get back as far as my great-grandfather to have a relative who fought in the Civil War.

Director of Education and Director of Certificants Join CFP Board

CFP Board's senior management team will be joined by two new members as of Dec. 1, 2005. James E. Dobbs, CFP®, adjunct instructor of financial planning and the program director at The University of Texas at Austin, will become the Education Director. Jim has maintained a financial planning practice in addition to developing the financial planning programs at UT and Southern Methodist University.

Keith J. Soressi will become the Director of Certificants. This is a new position at CFP Board that will tap into Keith's experiences revising the disciplinary and practice standards, as well as organizing volunteers for numerous boards and committees at the District of Columbia Bar. His duties will include some certificant outreach and he will be working with the Professional Review Department.

Additional promotions and changes in job duties include: Theresa Bartlett has taken over as the Exam and Education Coordinator, LaTonya McPherson will be moving from the Continuing Education department to work in External Relations and James Dalessio will be taking her place as he moves from Customer Service Relations. The changes will be fully effective Dec. 1.

Annual Meeting Update

Plans are in the making for CFP Board's Annual Meeting, which will be held in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, Calif., during the first week of August 2006. In addition to the Board of Governors' meeting, members of the subsidiary boards will be on hand to meet and participate in conferences for registered program directors and firm representatives. In addition to the Santa Monica meetings, CFP Board will host a public conference on Aug. 4, 2006, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This portion of the meeting will be open to certificants and their clients as well as members of the general public. CFP Board staff is in the process of finalizing details about speakers, costs for the conference, and hotel availability at a range of facilities. Be on the lookout for further details in the coming months, but in the meantime keep that first week of August open on your calendars.

CFP Board Disciplinary Actions

CFP Board announces this week the following public disciplinary actions have been taken:

Phillip Kohlmeyer of Pleasant Hill, Calif., and Bradford C. Bleidt of Boston no longer may use the CFP marks. The rights of Robert W. Esch, Alhambra, Ill., to use the CFP certification marks are suspended for two years, and the rights of Scott D. Krause, Windemere, Florida, are suspended for one year and one day. CFP Board also issued letters of admonition to Sheila D. Miller of Anchorage, Glenn C. Moore of Manassas, Virginia, and Ronald J. Sloy of Portland, Ore.; but each retains the right to use the CFP marks.

Read more about these disciplinary actions.

Paper Studying Financially Knowledgable Spouses Presented at AFS Meeting

More than 47% of couples surveyed as part of the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances conducted from 1992 to 2001, reported that the wife was the financially more knowledgeable spouse. Suzanne Lindamood and Sherman D. Hanna both of Columbus, Ohio, presented their paper "Determinants of the Wife Being the Financially Knowledgeable Spouse," which was funded by a CFP Board grant, at the October 12-13, 2005, conference of the Academy of Financial Services in Chicago, Ill.