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Leveling Up with the CFP®

leveling up with CFP® text with plant growing in jar of coins

Three years ago, I never would have imagined I’d be where I am. Working independently, living in a house I OWN, and helping people improve their finances every day. It took a lot of risks and leaps of faith to get here, but I don’t regret any of them.

As I started working with more clients last year, I realized that I needed to level up. I needed a deeper understanding of some of the nuances in financial planning, and I needed to signal to future clients that even though I don’t have decades in this industry, I’m so committed to this work. So, last November, I started the coursework to become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. (Apparently, you get in trouble if you don’t write it that way, so please don’t think I’m extra for the all-caps). Some of the CFP® material was a refresh – at that point, I’d already been working with clients for almost two years. But some of it, the parts that I didn’t get as much exposure to with my clients, was brand new. Estate planning minutia, tax strategies, and so many different retirement plan rabbit holes.

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Grief and Growth

It’s so hard to realize that this year is almost gone. And more than that, this decade of my life is almost gone – I turn 30 in a few weeks. In a lot of ways, it feels like we’ve been paused since March 2020. Like the past year and a half shouldn’t even count; like we should get a “do-over.” But that’s not true. We’ve had to keep surviving, living, growing, changing even with all of the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic. Maybe even BECAUSE of that stress and uncertainty. I think there are plenty of people out there who experienced forced introspection in 2020 when they might not have done that work otherwise.

When I look back at the past year, I see so many changes. At first, I tried to talk about all of them in one post, but it very quickly got excessive. They’ll each get their own post. I make no promises about when those posts will happen. They’re all changes that are poignant – that I consider pivot points in my life. Today’s post, the first post of 2021 after almost a year of not writing, is for SunCat. It’s half reflection, half eulogy.

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