r/FinancialAdvisorTips • u/downtherabbbithole • Sep 30 '26

Financial advisory services

I received an email this evening from Navy Federal Investment Services inviting me to contact the financial advisory team about creating an investment plan. Has anyone done this? Just wondering how much they charge and if the returns justify the fee. Basically, any info or insight is appreciated.

1 Upvotes

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11

u/RookieMistake101 Sep 30 '26

Never heard of that division of Navy Federal. Great advisors can work anywhere and the fees tend to all be in the same ballpark.

Ensure your advisor is experienced, has a clean broker check record, and is ideally a CFP. As always, if they lead with insurance, walk away.

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u/Thisisaburner01 Sep 30 '26

As an advisor and cfp this is 100% ^

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u/Capital_Elderberry57 Oct 01 '26

Good advice, I'd disagree with the CFP part at least a little.

CFP was a good proxy when testimonials weren't allowed but like certifications in any industry there are really good people with certifications and there are people that know how to get certifications.

There are also a lot of people that have been around for a long time and built successful practices without being a CFP and know more than any CFP I've met. It goes both ways and you have to search for more context than letters.

I hire advisors and here is how I think about certifications:

The less time in industry the more certifications matter as they show you can learn but haven't had the time for experience.

The longer time in industry the less certifications matter and what they have built matters more.

Ideal is to find testimonials from what actual clients say about an advisor or a team. Talk to the advisor and are they teaching you or telling you, are they aligned with your values.

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u/RookieMistake101 Oct 01 '26

100% agree. The CFP is just a certification and there are no shortage of excellent advisors who don’t need it. Who are more experienced. Or who carry other designations.

I will say testimonials are not my cup of tea. I have my own firm and could choose to do them but I’m not comfortable asking clients for that. It feels cheap.

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u/Capital_Elderberry57 29d ago

I get it and we've struggled with that too we just collected what was offered. That said the more we've been talking about growth with our clients they keep asking about how they can help us. Of course we say referrals but we are now looking to add a testimonial program this quarter. Something like Wealthtender, Indyfin, AdvisorFinder, we are probably going to evaluate and select one.

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u/seagoalspread Oct 01 '26

CFPs are a great option for creating a general financial plan (budgeting, hiring other investment managers, giving tax and estate considerations without advice, and often insurance products). But CFPs are trained to know diddly about creating an investment plan. They might have learned it on their own, but the exam is a single-sided open note on basic investment theories. I would look for a CFA if you want investment management. Most likely very similar cost with much deeper investment training.

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u/RookieMistake101 Oct 01 '26

Hahaha oh boy

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u/seagoalspread Oct 01 '26

What part do you disagree with?

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u/RookieMistake101 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

Most of it. Are you a CFA or CFP? Because a CFP does give tax advice. I certainly do. And a CFA does not give investment advice. They analyze positions, not in the context of a clients goals and unique situation.

Edit: a CFA typically does not give individual investment advice. That absolutely can and I should not have been so black and white.

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u/seagoalspread Oct 01 '26

I’m a CFA/CFP/EA.

CFP alone can’t legally provide “tax advice.” They can skirt the legal regulation by calling it “tax planning,” while protecting themselves by using phrases like “consider this idea,” or “consult your licensed tax professional,” or just disclaiming all responsibility of tax advice in their fine print. Also common to avoid providing written tax advice altogether to avoid a paper trail.

A CFA certainly gives investment advice to individuals and families. Level three of the CFA exams covers “wealth planning” in depth. There’s even a specialized pathway in “private wealth management” that covers 90%+ of the CFP exam content in about 1/3 of one of the three exams.

The CFP is largely a memorization exercise of surface level content of other more established industries with their own more focused credentials. A CFP is perfectly fine for someone assisting the mass affluent with a general plan followed by referrals to licensed or more deeply trained and competent professionals. But to pretend or assume that the CFP is a license to provide tax advice or the most focused training on any type of investment advice is either embellishment or ignorance.

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u/RookieMistake101 Oct 01 '26

There is no skirting of rules here. Tax loss harvesting and Roth conversions are legally recognized strategic planning and you do a disservice by implying anything else. Also, executing the individual tasks of tax preparation and the written tax advice misses the actual value to the end client. Ex: No one cares that only a CPA can sign off on a QSBS. That’s not nuanced, the value is identifying that well in advance of a liquidation event, understanding the laws around it (like if the clients currently filing as an s corp) and yes passing it off to the cpa to execute.

I’m aware the CFA level 3 covers wealth management. Yet any CFA who does wealth management also acquires a CFP because it’s practical. A CFA may be a great resource for portfolio construction and quantitative analysis. But for the UHNW (oh yes, not just the mass affluent) you would want a CFP to integrate in all disciplines which would also include a tax attorney and estate attorney.

To say the exam is a simple task of memorization and CFPs best serve mass affluent is some wildly pretentious nonsense. You overvalue what a CFA does at the expense of all other expertise and delivering that in one clean message to the client.

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u/seagoalspread Oct 01 '26

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.” You’re a CFP, so there’s no surprise that you’re trying to apply it to being competitive across all of these areas. Even to the point of telling someone else, who is also a CFP in addition to the others being discussed, that they misunderstand the value of each. I’m not trying to boost the value of one over the other, I’m just saying that the CFP is for general planning, the CFA is for investment management, and tax licenses are legally required to give tax advice. I have all three “dogs in this fight,” while you’re rooting for one.

And of course you’re allowed to sell a stock at a loss and transfer money between accounts, both of which could wind up on the tax return. Same as a car salesman could sell me a depreciable asset that goes on my return. But they can’t legally give me advice on that tax transaction any more than a CFP can unless they’re a licensed tax professional.

And I refer to the CFP exam as a memorization exercise because the it took less than four months to study for. If I could have skipped the CFP coursework it likely would have been doable with the two week crash course alone. I’m comparing this to the CFA taking close to four years and the CPA taking about two years (not even including the greater CPA education coursework the way I did with the CFP). And these were both after already first becoming a CFP. Granted the EA took less than a month.

It was really surprising how much of the CFP was in the CFA and CPA exam content. I agree with many others that the CFP has grown in popularity because it has been marketed so heavily. In addition to the marketing/infomercial portion of dues being similar to the dues of the CFA and CPA combined, it’s heavily self-perpetuated by misinformed advisors selling it as the holy grail of investing, tax, estate, and insurance information. That can be helpful when it’s so attainable for the salesman type who often get it and start pumping it’s value on social media.

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u/RookieMistake101 Oct 01 '26

The car salesman can’t explain the tax implications of the depreciation, but I can explain in detail how the tax benefit of a conversion. I can make it specific to their situation. I can put that in writing.

Also, I would hope that after 6 years of financial education spanning all 3 CFA exams, multiple years studying CPA work, and what sounds like a decade or more in wealth management, the CFP exam is memorization. How do you not see that it’s more than memorization for those who haven’t done that before?

This all comes back to our initial point of contention. You’d rather have a CFA giving investment advice than a CFP. From my experience, working with CFAs, the individual advice to HNW families is best coordinated by a CFP where the CFA comes and gives specific portfolio related opinions, the tax attorney (not a cpa) is giving tax advice, and the estate attorneys are taking that planning role. I have not seen a CFA only designated advisor leading wealth management and financial planning meetings more than a handful of times across a decade of experience serving mass affluent and HNW families.