In the News

Why are so many baby boomers ignoring financial planning?

By Kerry Hannon January 31, 2020 Market Watch

There’s no time like the present to step up

A new survey by the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) reports that one in three baby boomers who are nearing or starting retirement — hasn’t done any financial planning in the last two years...

...Seek out help from a financial adviser. If you don’t have one on board, you can search for a fee-only planner on the websites of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, the Financial Planning Association, the Garrett Planning Network. Look for a planner with a Certified Financial Planner designation.

One caveat about CFPs. I have long recommended working with an adviser who holds this designation, and still do, but last summer there was a report by The Wall Street Journal alleging that the CFP Board failed to accurately vet thousands of CFP professionals’ regulatory, disciplinary and criminal history. As a result, this information was not reported on its letsmakeaplan.org site, which is designed to help you search for a planner and review regulatory records for CFP professionals.

In response, the CFP Board said it would no longer rely chiefly on self-disclosure to evaluate an adviser’s regulatory history. And that all certificate holders–there are more than 86,000–would undergo to a yearly background check of publicly available information, including FINRA BrokerCheck profiles and the SEC’s IAPD database...