This is a hard one. The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation is the highest distinction in the investment management industry. On average, it takes candidates 4 years to complete the CFA Program. With all the difficulty, roadblocks, and hurdles it took me 6 years! The amount of sacrifice not spending time with friends and family was immense but the knowledge gained from the curriculum has been very valuable. The CFA curriculum for the 3 levels combined spans over 9,000 pages. The curriculum covers a wide range of financial topics (full list of topics covered for each exam 1, 2, and 3)

Thinking of buying a house vs retiring? Planning your child’s education, or your estate plan? You will likely bump into a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) then. While your estate planning attorney will be the one drafting your documents. A Certified Financial Planner is essentially a personal finance expert to help plan and quarter back the big picture finance decisions that aren’t always directly investment specific. Becoming a CFP involves the “4-E’s” bachelors level degree, the CFP Certification exam, 6,000 hours of qualifying experience in the field, and upholding the CFP board ethics and standards.

Unless you are in tax firms often you are likely familiar with the term CPA but not familiar with EA. That is partially because there is only 50,000 EA while there is 600,000 CPA’s Nationwide. An Enrolled Agent is the highest credential that the IRS awards. It is 100% focused on taxes and all 72 hours of continuing education every 3 years is all tax related. While not all CPA’s specialize in tax, all EA’s specialize in tax. 

The Series 7 exam is the stock brokers examination. It allows a individual to sell securities and charge a commission for doing so either explicitly like you see if you trade a stock and get charged $5 lets say or implicitly which means the investment has the commission embedded in the investment. If you are curious to see if someone is considered a stock broker myself included. Every active stockbroker must have their credential hung with a broker dealer and be registered here. I do not operate as a stock broker so my license is not actively in use with a broker dealer.

The Series 66 is the Series 63 & Series 65 exams combined. The Series 63 is a credential that is taken along with the Series 7 as a state requirement to operate as a stock broker. The Series 65 allows someone to either charge a percentage on money they manage or charge a specified fee for investment advice.

Health and Life licenses are each a distinct separate license. However, it is common to say them as one string of words. A Health insurance license is self explanatory it allows a individual to sell health insurance. A life insurance license allows a individual to sell not only life insurance policies but annuities as well! This may be sound strange but that’s because annuities are created by insurance companies and therefore considered insurance products.

The lines of insurance one is able to sell with these licenses many are familiar with like auto insurance, homeowners insurance, renters insurance. However, property and casualty insurance also includes things like dwelling policies, commercial insurance, workers compensation, E&O insurance, boat insurance, and even pet insurance.

I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada and am a proud graduate of University of Nevada Las Vegas. With UNLV’s international partnerships, during my time I was lucky enough to be a Gilman Scholar to go study abroad at Kangaku University in Kobe, Japan. 

Big businesses have teams of in house accounting teams to coordinate and create the financial statements that are audited and released publicly to the people. Small businesses don’t have the same resources for this but require many of the same things, enter bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is the financial tracking and reporting backbone of a organization. Quickbooks is one of the largest software providers for small business bookkeeping. A quickbooks ProAdvisor must cover basic bookkeeping and be familiar specifically with quickbooks products.