May is a busy month for CFP Board. The Education Task Force is meeting and rapidly closing in on a set of recommendations. The Board of Examiners just met and, in addition to their exam-content work, handled some challenging issues. The Board of Governors will be addressing a very substantive agenda later in the month including finalizing the selection of grant recipients who will be the first to receive grants (at CFP Board's August meeting) under our new grant program.

Most significantly for practitioners, the Board of Governors will also be deciding whether to release for public comment an edited version of its Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility and Financial Planning Practice Standards. This review process started in 2004 and has benefited from the expertise of many CFP® certificants and regulatory professionals. Proposed revisions to the documents have ranged from simple organizational changes that align the contents better with the typical financial planning engagement to complex debates over disclosure requirements and fiduciary standards. The documents have been reviewed twice already by the Board of Governors, by a committee of the Board and by the Board of Professional Review.

The Board of Professional Review is considering some additional improvements to its own processes and has begun work on a set of sanctions guidelines that will very substantially increase the guidance available to practitioners and the public alike.

All of these activities, on top of a record-setting month for exam takers, have kept everyone busy, quite apart from the substantial preparations for our Annual Meeting in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. If you read no further, please at least go to www.CFP.net/annualmeeting and register to join us in August.

Sarah Ball Teslik

Financial Adviser is the third best job in America, according to a recently-released list of the "Best Jobs in America" compiled by Money Magazine and Salary.com.

The criteria for the professions landing on the list included such things as the ease of entering and advancing within the profession, the potential growth in the profession, stress levels, flexibility in working hours and environment and creativity. Their findings include a prediction that the financial adviser profession will see 26% growth over the next ten years. The anticipated growth in the profession was attributed partly to the increase in colleges offering financial planning education programs as well as to the number of business professionals, lawyers and accountants who are finding financial planning a "lucrative but more people-friendly profession."

Read the full list at: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/

One of my favorite skits from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno is when he roams the streets of Los Angeles with a photograph of some famous person and asks passers-by to say who it is. On one show, Leno was wielding a picture of Karl Marx. He asked a half a dozen people who it was, and not a single one could correctly name him. The most frequent response: Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. (For trivia buffs, Colonel Harland Sanders was an actual person-not some artist's impression of an archetypal, chicken-frying uncle-and really did found the KFC fast-food franchise.) I couldn't help but remember this episode of the Tonight Show when I read that a drug, originally developed to treat pathological gamblers, could be tested on compulsive shoppers as well.

Pathological gambling is a so-called "impulse control disorder," a clinical condition recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1980. A 1999 study carried out at the University of Chicago estimated that approximately 2.5 million Americans are pathological gamblers. Other impulse control disorders include kleptomania, pyromania and compulsive buying.

There is currently no approved drug for pathological gambling; treatment usually consists of behavioral therapy or membership of Gamblers Anonymous. A study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, however, showed that pathological gamblers who received the drug nalmefene, previously used to treat alcoholics, had a statistically significant reduction in the severity of their gambling urges. "The part of the brain that gets revved up when they have that urge to gamble, it quiets that down," Jon Grant, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota and lead investigator in the trial, told the Hartford Courant. Grant also suggested the research could have possible implications for other addictive behaviors, like compulsive shopping.

There really are no reliable estimates for the prevalence of compulsive shopping. But the anecdotal evidence is strong that more and more people are coming to regard the condition as a problem. The Web is filled with sites offering advice to people who can't stop shopping. The tagline from one such site reads: "Shopaholics and the people who love them can begin the journey to wellness right here." That journey often starts with spending anywhere from $20 for a book to several hundred dollars for an online course.

Why would a drug to treat addictive gamblers possibly work on compulsive shoppers, too? Nalmefene is an opioid antagonist; it targets the brain's pleasure centers to blunt the rush of excitement associated with gambling. Since the same biochemical processes are involved in other types of addictive, thrill-seeking behaviors-like compulsive buying-nalmefene might potentially take the edge of those kinds of urges, too.

An effective drug to help problem gamblers and compulsive shoppers beat their addictions would be a boon. But in these types of disorders, sociology can be just as influential as biology. Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College and author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, points out that by the age of 10, the average American child has memorized about 400 brands and from as early as the age of two kids are "bonded to brands." No wonder no one on the Tonight Show recognized the author of Das Kapital!

Schor defines this "new consumerism" as a shift in the way people measure their lifestyle and financial expectations. Instead of just keeping up with the Joneses (i.e. people from the same socio-economic class), people now feel they need to keep up with the likes of Madonna and J-Lo. Consumers are constantly bombarded with images of the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and easy credit has convinced many that such lifestyles are within their reach. For people with serious addictive disorders, drugs like nalmefene could be useful. For people who find that keeping up with J-Lo means falling further and further into debt, regular doses of fiscal realism and financial planning could help. I wonder what Colonel Sanders-I mean Karl Marx!-would have said.

- James Geary

It's no secret that mutual funds are increasingly becoming a dominant part of the investment landscape in America, especially as consumers increasingly rely on self-directed investments to supplement company pensions or provide the main source for retirement funds. It's also no secret that the management of mutual funds can be complicated and confusing to consumers. In 2000, Fund Democracy was established by Mercer Bullard to help give mutual fund shareholders a voice in the management and regulation of the mutual funds they own. Read more about Fund Democracy and the progress that has been made to make the mutual fund industry more transparent to its shareholders.

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

Results Released for March 2006 CFP® Certification Examination

Score results for the March 2006 CFP® Certification Examination were released to exam takers last week. Read more about the March 2006 exam results.

Report on May 2006 Board of Examiners Meeting

CFP Board hosted a meeting of its Board of Examiners in Denver on May 4-6, 2006. Read more about the May 2006 Board of Examiners meeting.

Board of Governors Meeting May 17-19, 2006

CFP Board's governing body, the Board of Governors, will meet May 17-19, 2006 in closed session in Washington, D.C. Read more about the items on the meeting agenda. Read more about the items on the meeting agenda.