Money U.

Training financial planners

Until a few years ago, personal financial planning was a service for the very rich provided by full-time family lawyers and investment managers. Middle-and upper-income people generally had to make do on their own in a topsy-turvy investment world where the rules for efficient use of money have become shredded shibboleths. A penny saved is no longer a penny earned; it might well be a penny lost to higher taxes and inflation.

Enter the certified financial planner, a new breed of personal financial consultant with expertise on how to help people make the most of their money. C.F.P.s assist families in straightening out finances, dealing with high interest rates, saving effectively and managing their debts. Says William Anthes, 38: "Many people should be living a lot better than they are. There are families making $50,000 that are feeling pressed but shouldn't."

Anthes is in a position to know. He is president of Denver's campusless College for Financial Planning, a nine-year-old institution whose alumni have grown from 41 in 1973 to 3,020 now, with a current enrollment of 5,200. Mainly through correspondence courses backed by rigorous testing at 140 centers throughout the U.S., the college turns out C.F.P.s trained in such areas as risk management, taxes and investments, and estate planning.

Many of the college's students already have some training in law or accounting; one is a marriage counselor who wants to deal effectively with marital money difficulties. C.F.P. does not yet have the status of C.L.U. (chartered life underwriter) or C.P.A. (certified public accountant), but Anthes and his fellow faculty members hope to change that by funneling more people through 18 to 24 months of courses at a tuition of $850. About 50% of the college's graduates belong to the Institute of Certified Financial Planners, which in January will begin setting education standards for its members. The Atlanta-based International Association of Financial Planners claims 8,200 members. As of now, there are no licensing requirements anywhere in the U.S., and almost anyone with a pocket calculator can call himself a financial planner. Says Association Executive Director Vernon Gwynne: "There are people calling themselves planners who aren't really qualified."

Once trained, C.F.P.s do very well, commanding hourly fees ranging from $50 to $150 and flat fees of $300 or more, depending on the size of a family's income. Richard Silverstein, a C.F.P. working in Los Angeles, earns more than $100,000 a year. And the market is growing. Families earning $25,000 to $50,000 are the ones most in need of planning, and the number of those households has more than tripled since the mid' 70s.

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