PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES.

I am pleased to report that CFP Board was just given a clean bill of health - a "no change" letter from the Internal Revenue Service following a recent audit. Of course, one should expect no less of a body that encourages people to value financial planning and that promotes the highest standards in education and the profession. But it is always nice to complete such a review.

CFP Board continues to improve its financial health and is now solidly "in the black," which will be evident when our 2005 Annual Report is released later this month. Nevertheless, we will continue a conservative approach to budgeting until we have a better feel for the impact of recent and upcoming changes, including the requirement that certificants hold a bachelor's degree and the longer-term effects of the Investment Adviser/Broker-Dealer Rule. During this period, CFP Board will use its financial fitness to continue to focus on achieving operational excellence and creating better stakeholder programs.

Although a number of these programs are in the works, two will be particularly evident in 2006. One is the first major grants initiative through which we will be funding creative projects run by CFP® certificants and others that further our mission. This initiative supplements the educational grants CFP Board gives. Second, we are hosting CFP Board's inaugural Annual Meeting in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. This multi-day event will unite, for the first time, all of CFP Board's stakeholders, including sessions open to the public. We are excited to announce that Louis Barajas, CFP® and others are working with CFP Board to ensure that even members of the public who do not speak English fluently will be able to participate and benefit from the Annual Meeting. We hope you will make plans to join CFP Board this August in southern California.

Sarah Ball Teslik

Louis Barajas, CFP®, is a premier example of the American dream. Born in the barrio of East Los Angeles and the son of Mexican immigrants, he began his financial and small business career in his teens by helping his parents with their small business. He graduated from UCLA in 1984, received his MBA from Claremont Graduate School in 1987 and attained CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification in 1990. After years of experience at major accounting and financial planning firms in Southern California, Barajas returned to East Los Angeles to form his own wealth and business planning firm in the community that raised him.

Since 1991, Barajas has become a nationally recognized expert in financial and business issues. His books, speeches, seminars, personal and business coaching all further his purpose in life: to be the catalyst in helping people of all income levels attain their greatest life goals.

Barajas will speak at CFP Board's 2006 Annual Meeting on August, 4, 2006 at the Los Angeles Convention Center and will make presentations in English and in Spanish. Read more about the meeting and register online at: www.CFP.net/ annualmeeting

Below is an excerpt from a recent conversation with Barajas:

Sarah Ball Teslik, CFP Board's CEO: For the people who are interested in reaching underserved communities with financial planning, can you share how you do it? What types of business activities are sustaining your firm?

Louis Barajas, CFP®: My firm is a financial planning firm. We do financial planning, I'm a Registered Investment Advisor, and we give advice and charge an hourly fee. We'll also do our clients' tax returns, but we're a financial planning firm foremost and offer tax services for our financial planning clients who want it. Everyone wants the tax service.

I realized I needed to create extra income, so I write books, I speak, I train other companies, and that revenue supports the salaries of our staff. My first book, The Latino Journey to Financial Greatness, was about understanding the mindset of the Latino community. Getting a book out in an underserved community can be a challenge. How do you sell a book in communities that don't even have bookstores? There's not one bookstore in East LA. You have to go 10 miles out of your way to find a bookstore. I've gotten smart. Latinos like to go to fairs and social clubs - I find corporate sponsors who buy my book, put their logo on it, and then give my book away at these places. They reach people and then send me out to speak and do book signings.

My second book, Small Business, Big Life, will be published soon and is directed at small business owners. What's happening in underserved and immigrant communities is that they're very creative and starting businesses out of their homes. My goal is to take them from creating a job to really being a business owner.

What they're chasing is financial dignity. They want to have health insurance, buy their own home, help their kids live a better life than they've had. The problem is that starting your own business is a way to break the income barrier, but most people don't get beyond that and aren't really creating businesses - they're creating jobs with their names on the doors but are working harder and longer hours. They're getting stuck in their own jobs. I help them develop their business systems and work to create a new mindset.

I talk about life, leadership, what a real business is about and take a big picture point of view. That's the first step. The second step is to get all your information for free from all the resources already out there. I talk a lot about the "Whys" - the "Hows" are already out there. There's a book for everything you want to do. I share the type of information I would have wanted someone to share with my father when he started up his business.

Read the complete conversation with Louis Barajas.

James Geary, best-selling author and former editor of Time Magazine, Europe, has joined forces with CFP Board. Geary is already at work with CFP Board writing for our newsletters and providing suggestions to improve our publications and Web site.

Geary is ideally placed to help gain more visibility for financial planning issues and financial planners. Not only did he rise through the ranks to one of the most coveted positions in the publishing world, he is a well known guest on the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and many other television shows. Geary's books include The World in a Phrase, a history of the aphorism that was on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Body Electric: An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses, which deals with neuroscience, and he has also written Time cover stories on subjects such as the neurological basis of memory-an area related to the behavioral finance field that studies why people make the financial decisions they do.

Geary created Time Europe Web site, which has won many awards. Based in London with his wife and three children, he is fluent in Dutch and has a passive understanding of German. When CFP Board asked him what he'd like readers to know about his other activities, he offered that he's a good juggler.

Here is a portion of Geary's first editorial, which will appear in full in the April edition of CFP Board's consumer-oriented "It's Your Turn" eNewsletter:

A Cure for the Working Wounded

The headlines were truly alarming. MORE COMPANIES PHASING OUT RETIREMENT BENEFIT IN LIEU OF LIFETIME OF WORK, read one; MANY JOBS LACK BENEFITS TO CUT, read another. The articles themselves were even more harrowing. "Even though our workers will no longer be able to collect a pension," bragged one CEO quoted in the first piece, "they will receive checks as long as they are able to be wheeled into work and punch the clock." The second article's author noted dryly that by not offering health insurance and matching 401(k) contributions to their employees in the first place, "American business owners find themselves lacking the crucial ability to take them away."

The fact that I did not immediately recognize these "stories" as journalistic pranks - they are both from the satirical publication The Onion - says a lot about just how drastically the economic and employment landscape has changed, and how drastically our financial expectations and preparations will have to change, too. The days when job security and comfortable retirements were taken for granted are long gone. Our parents and grandparents could expect to work for the same firm for decades, relying on the company pension scheme to see them through their (comparatively brief) sunset years. Today, people can increasingly expect to work for multiple employers during the course of their careers, which are more and more interrupted by bouts of joblessness. And many of us can look forward to decades of retirement just at a time when only about 40% of American employers offer company pension schemes.

It's not just blue collar workers who are feeling the pinch. In her recent book Bait and Switch, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich chronicles how white collar workers are vulnerable, too, as more and more skilled jobs in the Information Technology and Research & Development fields are outsourced. A new class of employee is evolving: the working wounded, people in a job who nevertheless worry about layoffs and how they will be able to afford the increasing costs of things like higher education and health care, much less plan and save for their retirement....

The full editorial will be published in the upcoming edition of CFP Board's consumer-oriented "It's Your Turn" eNewsletter, available by April 21, 2006, at www.CFP.net/learn/enewsletter.asp.

A Financial Planning Clinic for the general public will be held during the afternoon of Friday, August 4, 2006, at the General Session of CFP Board's Annual Meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Financial Planning Clinic will give consumers interested in financial planning a chance to sit down and discuss financial topics with a financial expert, allowing them to apply to their own lives some of the financial planning ideas heard during the morning sessions.

CFP® certificants interested in helping to make the Financial Planning Clinic a success should contact CFP Board by e-mail at annualmeeting@CFPBoard.org or by phone at 303-830-7500 with the following information:

• Name
• Mailing Address
• E-mail Address
• Phone Number
• Any specific financial planning topics you would be interested in discussing with Financial Planning Clinic attendees.
• If you are multi-lingual, the languages you would be willing to use during the Financial Planning Clinic.

Volunteers will be required to participate for 3 hours during the Financial Planning Clinic by providing financial information and personal financial planning advice to attendees. In exchange for the shared time and expertise, clinic volunteers will receive complimentary admission to General Session, including admission to continuing education sessions and the lunch presentation by Hank McKinnell, CEO of Pfizer, Inc. Only CFP® certificants in good standing with CFP Board can participate.

The Financial Planning Clinic may be the first opportunity many attendees have to meet face-to-face with a CFP® professional, and we look forward to assembling a group of first-rate volunteers to assist with the effort. If you have questions about this opportunity or about the Annual Meeting, please contact us at annualmeeting@CFPBoard.org or 303-830-7500.

Read more about CFP Board's 2006 Annual Meeting.

Introducing CFP Board's Director of Education and Examination

CFP Board is pleased to announce that Keith J. Soressi has agreed to become CFP Board's new Director of Education and Examination. Read more about Soressi and his role at CFP Board.

Developing the CFP® Certification Examination

CFP Board continues to see record numbers of people taking the CFP® Certification Examination, with 2,607 applicants taking the exam during its most recent offering on March 17 and 18, 2006. Everyone who has taken or is planning to take the exam knows considerable time and effort are required to prepare for a comprehensive exam of this nature. Not everyone knows how much time and effort is required to prepare the exam itself. Read more about the CFP® Certification Examination development process.

Report on March 2006 Board of Professional Review Meeting

The Board of Professional Review held its first meeting of the year on March 17 and 18, 2006, during which it considered 31 disciplinary cases and approved proposed character and fitness requirements for those seeking CFP® certification. Read more about the March 2006 Board of Professional Review meeting.

CFP Board Updates Policy on Collection and Dissemination of Information

CFP Board has updated its policy on the collection and dissemination of information it collects through its Web site. Read more about the updated policy.