Small Business

Have you wondered how to pick a financial planner with the myriad of titles and designations that exist in Canada?

Before I go through them, know that only Investment Advisors can recommend stocks. Everyone else sticks to financial planning without recommending any stocks.

This article is a comprehensive list of professions and the possible designations these professions may have. Individuals can have multiple designations or no designations. This doesn’t talk about the courses or certificates individuals have. But, if you can put some letters behind your name that relates to retail financial planning (i.e. financial planning for consumers and the general public), then this article will have it. But, if you have a certificate that doesn’t grant you any letters behind your name, I may not have covered that.

Let’s go through some of the titles now. I’ve broken them down by the granting organization.

 

Organization Website:
http://www.fpsc.ca/

Certified Financial Planner

Designation: CFP
Formal Training: Yes

The CFP designation is granted by the Financial Planning Standards Council (FPSC). They’ve been around since 1995. Advisors with the CFP designation have gone through a lot of education and learning. It’s definitely a designation I trust. They probably have the most rigorous training among the financial planners.

If you want someone to go through your income, expenses, and assets and figure out: How much money can I leave for my children? When can I retire? When can I stop working? How do I get out of this hellhole? Well, maybe not the last question, then this is the profession to go for in my opinion.

 

 

Organization Website:
http://www.iiroc.ca

This isn’t an official website for Investment Advisors, however, they must work for an Investment Dealer which is regulated by IIROC

Investment Advisor or Stockbroker

Designation: Investment Advisor
Formal Training: Yes

An Investment Advisor is the only type of financial advisor that can recommend stocks. At at early point in time, they were called stockbrokers because that’s all they focused on: Selling stocks. Nowadays, their training includes an increased amount on financial planning. And many advisors take extra courses and obtain certificates or designations related to financial planning.

Obviously, if you want recommendations on stocks, you need to go to an investment advisor. Their minimum education includes the Canadian Securities Course, ethics and a 90-day training program.

 

 

Official Website:
http://www.step.ca

Trust and Estate Practitioner

Designation: TEP
Formal Training: Yes

This designation is granted by Society of Estate and Trust Practitioners (STEP). This designation is a specific area in financial planning. A planner with the CFP designation has already covered this during training, but, if the person also has this designation, then you know they’ve studied this area in much depth. I don’t see this designation much. It doesn’t seem as well known as the CFP. Even still, if I had an issue dealing with trusts or estate planning, I would try and find someone with this designation along with a legal or accounting background. Knowledge in this area is much less available publicly than general financial planning or investment decision making.

 

 

Official Website:
http://www.iafp.ca/

Registered Financial Planner

Designation: RFP
Formal Training: Yes

This is another financial planning designation accorded by the Institute of Advanced Financial Planners. This organization was originally from the Canadian Association of Financial Planners. In 2002, CAFP merged with the Canadian Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors to form Advocis. RFPs created the IAFP instead of joining with Advocis.

Their website says they’ve been around since 1987, longer than the CFP designation. Even still, their designation is not as popular as the CFP, which is much more recognized.

 

Organization Website:
http://www.iafe.ca/clu.aspx

Chartered Life Underwriter

Designation: CLU
Formal Training: Yes

Planners with this designation specialize in wealth transfer and estate planning.

 

Chartered Financial Consultant

Designation: CH.F.C
Formal Training: Yes

Planners with this designation specialize in wealth accumulation and retirement planning. Note that the governing organization does not provide the educational requirements courses for this designation anymore. But, they still need to meet continuing education requirements.

 

 

Organization Website:
https://www.csi.ca

Personal Financial Planner

Designation: PFP
Formal Training: Yes

The Canadian Securities Institute grants this designation to individuals who have completed formal training attained via 4 different paths. This designation doesn’t have the respect as a CFP, but, from what I’ve seen over the years, the course curriculum is becoming more rigorous, as are all financial designations I’ve looked at.

Designation Webpage:
https://www.csi.ca/student/en_ca/designations/pfp_info.xhtml

 

Chartered Investment Manager

Designation: CIM
Formal Training: Yes

Generally, this title is acquired by Investment Advisors. Individuals with this title can offer you discretionary portfolio management which is when they can trade for you without asking you for permission for each individual trade. This doesn’t mean they won’t ask you for permission with each trade. It means that they are licensed to do so with clients who want this. But, if you want to know each trade before they execute on it, that’s not a problem.

Designation Webpage:
https://www.csi.ca/student/en_ca/designations/cim.xhtml

 

Certified International Wealth Manager

Designation: CIWM
Formal Training: Yes

According to the CSI website, global wealth is growing rapidly and Private Banking is the fastest growing market in the financial services industry. This designation is for managing the affluent client who may have assets globally. Advisors with this designation cover trust and estate planning in depth generally because when you have a lot of wealth, you want to be able to pass it on to your children or benefactors in the most tax efficient way.

Designation Webpage:
https://www.csi.ca/student/en_ca/designations/ciwm_info.xhtml

 

Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute

Designation: FCSI
Formal Training: Yes

This is the highest designation accorded by the Canadian Securities Institute. There are different paths to get this designation. And designation holders need to maintain Continuing Education credits as do all the title holders above that require formal training.

Designation Webpage:
https://www.csi.ca/student/en_ca/fcsi/index.xhtml

 

Other “Designations”

Life License Qualification Program (LLQP)

Designation: N/A
Formal Training: Yes

This is technically not a designation although I have seen it behind people’s names before. It’s actually an exam required to sell life insurance products. It’s offered by several approved providers. You need to find someone with this certification to buy life insurance in Canada, except Quebec, where they have a different licensing requirement. The certification is managed by the Canadian Insurance Services Regulatory Organizations.

Official Website:

http://www.cisro-ocra.com

Financial Planner

Designation: None
Formal Training: Not required

This title is not regulated. Anyone can call themselves a financial planner, but, only those who have gone through the training and attained the experience as accorded by the FPSC can put the letters CFP behind their name.

Official Website: N/A

Financial Advisor

Designation: None
Formal Training: Not required

This is another title that is not regulated. It’s the individual or company’s preference that determines this title. There are organizations with the term Advisor in it, but, you don’t have to be part of any organization.

Official Website: N/A

There is a website by Advocis which says they are the Financial Advisors Association of Canada, but, the term is not regulated and many people not part of the association can call themselves a financial advisor.

Financial Coach or Money Coach

Designation: None
Formal Training: Not required.

These people are possibly TV personalities, writers, or bloggers. There is no formal training and the term is not regulated. If you need someone to drill things into you and watch over you because you can’t, then a coach is the person to go to. Some advisors with designations may also advertise themselves as coaches for marketing purposes.

Official Website: N/A

There is a website called Money Coaches Canada, but, they’re not an official website for money coaches. Because the term is not regulated, they used the term in their company name.

Master of Business Administration

Designation: MBA
Formal Training: Yes

Some people may think that if you have an MBA, you’ll know about stocks and finance. They may, and they can learn about it in business school, but, it may not be the right information and they still cannot sell or advise you on any investments unless they have the proper licenses. One exception is the Financial Services MBA from Dalhousie. People with this MBA definitely learn about retail investing but, they are still not allowed to recommend investments unless they are an Investment Advisor. There are also many financial planning topics that they do not cover that CFP graduates do. Insurance and estate planning being two big topics.

Chartered Financial Analyst

Designation: CFA
Formal Training: Yes

People with the CFA designation generally move on into investment analysis, can become portfolio or wealth managers, and other positions related to investments. This is probably the most training of all the investment analysis positions in this list.

Recommendations:

The easiest recommendation is that if you’re looking for stocks, then find an Investment Advisor. This is assuming you don’t want to do this yourself, otherwise, you should try a discount brokerage.

If you’re looking for financial planning which for many cases means figuring out how much you need to save for retirement, then you have a few options. These calculations are not too difficult. I plan to add a sample retirement Excel or LibreOffice workbook online for readers to download. For me, the first person to find is an advisor with the CFP designation. I would say they have the best reputation and recognition. After that, it could be an Investment Advisor, or someone with an PFP, and then an RFP. All these individuals may be good for general financial planning.

If you have financial planning that involves estate planning and trusts, then someone with a TEP designation would be more appropriate. Often times, advisors will work with other individuals who specialize in estates and trusts.

If you have financial planning that involves insurance, then someone with the LLQP certification is required for insurance sales. Although someone with a CFP can still do the planning for you, but, may not be able to sell you the products.

If you have financial planning issues that involves taxes, then an accountant would be the best bet.

Finally, if you need someone to handhold you, then a coach may be the right person.

Remember than many individuals may have multiple designations.

If you know of more designations you’d like listed here, feel free to send me a note or comment below.

This is an article I published several years ago and I’ve reviewed and updated it to ensure it’s current.

A few days ago I did a search on “couch potato portfolio” on Google. I saw a few really good blogs on the topic. I went to one of them where the website was completely devoted to the topic and it had so much information. It had lots of good content. The focus was on ETFs and couch potato investing.

If I remember correctly, the term came about from the Toronto Star when they wanted to profile investment portfolios from several experts in the industry specifically several different mutual fund managers vs a professor in finance vs dart board.

It was basically those in practice vs theory vs randomness.

The randomness was the Toronto Star throwing darts against a wall with a list of TSE 300. They picked their stocks based on the dart throwing. According to the Star, they had a difficult time getting any mutual fund manager to participate.

When you’re looking for investment advice, think about it, mutual fund managers would be afraid to go up against randomness. They’ve got everything to lose.

Let me say upfront, I’ve had all the educational requirements to become a portfolio manager or investment manager, at least back in 2008. And I can understand why they wouldn’t want to participate. Think about it, you’ve done all this studying and received these credentials, and then you happen to lose against randomness. And there’s pretty good change of losing! Whereas “randomness” is just a concept / process that has got nothing to lose.

In the end, they were able to find some mutual fund managers who made their picks.

The professor of finance (Eric Kirzner) created his couch potato portfolio consisting of 60% stocks, 35% bonds, and 5% cash. The stocks was actually the TSX/60 ETF and the bonds was the Canadian Universe Bond Index ETF. The Toronto Star picked their stocks by throwing darts.

What happened next was a nightmare for the fund managers, and the professor in the short term. The darts went up by huge amounts in the first 2 years and the mutual fund managers and professor’s portfolio’s did not do great. Some picks may have even gone down, but, I don’t recall.

The professor did note upfront though that in the short term, you just can’t predict accurately what can happen with the stock market. After a number of years, if I recall correctly, the professor’s simple portfolio came out on top. And this was no surprise as over the long term, few people beat the market.

Since then, ETFs has become mainstream news. There are so many ETFs coming out, my guess is that they will become like the next mutual fund industry. It will boom like crazy that there will be more ETFs than there are stocks to choose from, the way mutual funds did at least a decade ago, if not long before that.

This is great and it’s not so great. What was originally a simple portfolio has turned into an industry topic. There is so much information on it now, it’s not appearing simple anymore, especially when I see the multitude of different versions of couch potato portfolios.

When I first wrote this article on another website I owned, I thought I was going to have a website like some of the blogs I saw in my search results for couch potato portfolio. But, then I realized, what’s really to talk about? And how much can you write about something so simple?

1. It’s 3 investments
2. Re-balance once a year

That’s it! To any of you reading this, remember these two points! Don’t get overloaded with all the financial information out there which I once read was called financial pornography! If you start trying this country index with that specialty index, and switching between commodity and / or country and then adding inverse ETFs, a hedge fund ETF, maybe a style index ETF, you’re doing no different than trying “stock picking” or mutual fund picking. STOP right now, understand the concept of couch potato in the name, “couch potato portfolio” and go back to the original concept:

1. It’s 3 investments
2. Re-balance once a year

 

MoneySense came out with their own version of the portfolio and it’s just as simple as the professor’s except that it consists of equal portions of 3 ETFs. And how has this (MoneySense) portfolio fared over the years? According to their magazine, between 1976 and 2014, it had an average annual return of just over 10%!

In response, many financial planners and Investment Advisors will tell you, “Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.” They are required by law in written material, at least for the Investment Advisors.

But, tell me this, you need to hire between 2 people: Person 1 has a track record of excelling in 5 different jobs he/she has had in the past 10 years. Person 2 in the past 10 years can’t tell you anything he/she has accomplished in the 5 jobs he/she has had. Who are you going to hire assuming both tell you that they can do the job?

And what are these 3 investments. First, let me say in caps, I CANNOT ENDORSE OR RECOMMEND THESE INVESTMENTS. ONLY A LICENSED INVESTMENT ADVISOR FOR YOUR PROVINCE CAN. This is another legal requirement by the Ontario Securities Commission. The three investments are:

XIU – Canadian TSX/60 ETF

XSP – S&P500 ETF – Canadian Hedged

XBB – Canadian Universe Bond Index ETF

 

I know, some are thinking, just because someone excelled for years, doesn’t mean it will happen forever.

I realize that. I’ve had conversations where people bring up the “student excelled in high school and flopped in university” line. Heard it.

And if you want to go with that logic, by all means. Go ahead and buy that stock with no history or earnings and is supposed to make a million bucks real soon.

It’s your money, not mine. I can’t recommend stocks anyways!

One of the most important things to do as a consultant / freelancer / contractor is to have a job in hand. This article will provide a list of websites that you can use to find contracts. You may find with Workopolis and Monster is that you’ll get contacted by recruiters instead of the actual company you want to work for. That’s fine, but, know that they will take a cut from your salary or more often, give you a set salary, let’s say $60,000, but, they are being paid by the employer, $75,000.

I’ve categorized the work into Large (Traditional) Businesses and Alternate. When I say large, I’m talking Rogers, Royal Bank, TD, Bell and similar companies. I say they are traditional because most of the jobs require you to come in to the office, most of the time. Everything else is alternate and they allow working from home. They may be project based, adventure travel, volunteer, or traditional in that they need a regular full-time or part-time employee, but, still allow you to work from home.

Large Businesses

Workopolis

Workopolis was probably the first job site I used for finding jobs. It’s been around a long time and focuses on Canadian jobs.

Website: http://www.workopolis.com/

Monster

Monster is an international job site and has specific country jobs sites. This is my second “go-to” job site and you will find that companies post here a lot, similar to Workopolis. It’s a good site to use if you’re looking for international contracts.

Website: http://www.monster.ca/

indeed

Indeed is the latest job website I go to. It collects jobs from different sources and lists them on their site. It’s fast and has an app as well.

Website: http://ca.indeed.com/

Eluta

Eluta is like indeed. I found out about this after using Indeed. I can’t say whether one is better than the other. But, I prefer using the app on Indeed, which Eluta does not have. Their website says it’s the official website for the Top 100 Employers project.

Website: http://www.eluta.ca/

LinkedIn and their Job Search App

Find jobs on LinkedIn using their Android or iOS app.

iOS URL: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/linkedin-job-search/id886051313?mt=8

Android URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkedin.android.jobs.jobseeker&hl=en

Alternate Jobs – Projects, Short Term Contracts, Online, and Adventure

Freelancer

Although I’ve known about this job site for years, I’ve never used it. It’s more for finding short-term contracts compared to the above sites. And it’s more geared towards small businesses employers and are almost all project based and work from home. I don’t think you’ll find jobs from the Big 5 Banks, for example, listed on Freelancer. They may have bought scriptlance.com since that domain redirects traffic here.

Website: https://www.freelancer.ca

Upwork

This site seems to have bought odesk.com and elance.com since these sites redirect traffic to Upwork. They take up to a 20% cut on job you find.

Website: https://www.upwork.com

Flexjobs

I just recently found this employment site that is geared towards work from home or telecommuting. Looks like it’s US based but it lists jobs in Canada. Job seekers have to pay to apply and use the important features of the site. Seems worth it if you’re a US job seeker who wants to work from home as the selection looks good. Job listings not as good for Canadians.

Website: https://www.flexjobs.com/international/Canada-telecommuting-jobs

AirTasker

Airtasker is a trusted community platform that connects people who need to outsource tasks and find local services, with people who are looking to earn money and ready to work.

Website: https://www.airtasker.com

Ratracerebellion

“Real Work from Home Jobs by Rat Race Cerebellion” is their slogan.

Website: http://ratracerebellion.com/

My Job Helper

This job board is more for the “revolving” or high turnover jobs such as restaurants, cashiers, sales, retail, clerical, warehouse, and other similar jobs.

Website: http://ca.myjobhelper.com/

Back Door Jobs

Pegged as “Short Term Job Adventures”, this site focuses on fun, creative jobs that are often outdoors and can involve travelling to a new country and teaching fun classes such as wilderness therapy. This isn’t a Canadian job focused site, but, it’s so cool, I wish I knew about this when I was in university.

Website: http://www.backdoorjobs.com/

Let me know if you have a favourite job site that you think should be included in the list. Maybe if you’re a photographer or writer, there might be other specialty sites you use.

One of the tools needed by individual contractors is a way to collect money from your clients. Invoicing software has come a long way since I started consulting. The choices are vast. But, don’t forget that a simple Word document template you can download for free is still probably the simplest way. If your recruiting company doesn’t manage the invoicing and billing for you, then software is your next step. Here is a list of software you can use to invoice clients.

Desktop Invoice Tools

Microsoft Word

This is probably the simplest way to invoice your client. You can download free templates off the internet.

Microsoft Excel

Using Excel is probably better than using Word since the calculations would be easier to manage than the table cells in Word.

LibreOffice Writer

If you don’t have Microsoft Word, you can download LibreOffice for free. This is a fully functional word processor that rivals Microsoft Word. I haven’t used Word at home, ever. I just use LibreOffice. It can read Word documents and save as Word documents as well. So you don’t have to worry about compatibility, except when there are macros involved.

LibreOffice Calc

This is the free alternative to Microsoft Excel. Like Word, I haven’t used Excel at home, either.

NCH Software Express Invoice

I’ve seen this software often at Staples and formerly Business Depot. I haven’t used it, but, their software looks good and I would try it if I wasn’t using LibreOffice or Freshbooks already.

Online Invoice Software

Wave

Wave offers free online invoicing and charges a percentage fee if you want to accept payments online. I would prefer Freshbooks since you can integrate your payments with their bookkeeping. Wave doesn’t offer the bookkeeping services.

Website: https://www.waveapps.com/invoice/

Invoicely

Invoicely offers free online invoicing and charges a flat rate for accepting payments online. I prefer this kind of payment than the percentage fee that Wave uses.

Website: https://invoicely.com/

Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice offers flat rate plans like Invoicely. They also offer Accounting, Expense, and Subscription management software that can be integrated with their invoice software.

Website: https://www.zoho.com/ca/invoice/

 

All the major accounting software also offers invoicing such as Intuit and Sage50 (formerly Simply Accounting). But, their costs are higher, except for Freshbooks which offers free online invoicing. There are a multitude of other invoicing software, but, they are for larger businesses or enterprise. I don’t cover them in this article.

If there is a software you think should be included, feel free to post a comment below.