President’s Message

Ryan M. Fleming, CFP®

Happy holidays to everyone. Hope you enjoyed a great Thanksgiving, are enjoying this early Chanukah and are looking forward to a festive Christmas. We wrap up our year long before New Year’s, so if we don’t see you at the next event, we hope you end the year on a good note and are looking forward to seeing you next year.

Our December is typically not very outwardly busy – just a single luncheon. This year’s wrap-up lunch is Thursday, December 12^th at Maggiano’s in Tysons from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. After that, we just work behind the scenes to transition board committees, knowledge, and volunteers from one committee to another. We’re also finalizing plans for the first few meetings of 2014.

This December’s lunch meeting, featuring local tax lawyer John Dedon presenting a “Year End Tax Planning Update,” includes our annual election of the 2014 FPA-NCA board along with a big thank you to our volunteers – this is also our volunteer appreciation day for the chapter. With that in mind, we are going to have volunteer sign-up posters at the event. NexGen members have indicated a desire to volunteer, and several will be coming to the event just to sign up for FPA-NCA committees. We will also have a gift for each Attendee at this meeting to express our appreciation for all that our members do to help our chapter, our pro bono events and our many activities throughout the year.

And while we’re on my favorite topic – integrating the next generation of planners firmly into our chapter and our businesses – we are thrilled to share some November news with you. The national FPA NexGen membership has elected as its 2014 President-elect our own board member, Laurie Belew. Congratulations to Laurie! She takes her role of inspiring the next generation of planners seriously, and has driven our chapter’s NexGen programs to be among the best in the country. Laurie has encouraged the chapter to be both inclusive and supportive of NexGen’s membership. She brought innovative ideas to our National Capital Area Board, including February’s Career Fair. We look forward to seeing Laurie’s growth on the national stage.

If you have not already, remember to register for our Winter Symposium by December 15 in order to receive the early bird price for this terrific event. Our Chair, Rita Cheng, has lined up a great program for this event. Please see the schedule for the day in this Newsletter. We anticipate that we will have 6 CE approved, plus our 2 CE for the Ethics Course. Don’t miss your chance to knock out a great portion of your required credits, while still finding time to network with colleagues and engage with our sponsors.

As mentioned above, we are excited to announce our inaugural Career Day on February 21, 2014. Look for the flyer later in this newsletter (along with Peggy’s dozens of emails to come – I promise), and register early for this event. Several chapters have been successful in integrating a career fair. We will have interviewing firms, job seekers seeking full- and part-time employment and internships, and we will have a wonderful professional development program over lunch with networking and speakers. You will not want to miss this day packed with opportunities! More importantly, it is a chance for our chapter to establish something meaningful for the profession. Please consider coming out to interview a CFP-candidate from one of the nearly two dozen programs we’ve reached out to.

Our 2014 calendar will be available soon. For the regulars, we look forward to seeing you each month. If you didn’t attend an event in 2013, please try to join us for one event in 2014 – we would love to spend some time with you.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! Thanks for taking a few minutes to read this note. As always, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, or just want to say hi, please feel free to reach out to me or any of my fellow board members. All of our contact info is on the last page of the newsletter, every month, and our new Board info for 2014 will be posted in January. Looking forward to seeing you at one of our events.

Best regards,

Ryan M. Fleming, CFP®
2013 President, FPA of the National Capital Area