Saturday, June 29, 2019


Chris Rivers, CFP®
President’s Message

Hello. I hope you’re all having a great start to your summer and are finding some time to recharge your “batteries” and gear up for the second half of the year.  

We have what is sure to be a popular event scheduled for July 11th. We kick things off with ethics from Dan Candura at a reasonable hour of the morning, followed by a luncheon talk from behavioral finance expert Morgan Housel. Sign up now if you haven’t already.  

For those with NexGen team members, this would be an excellent program for them to attend.  Morgan writes an on-going blog for Collaborative Fund focuses on the intersection of investing, statistics, and behavior.  You can get a flavor of his views in his pieces on pessimism, spending, and the power of compounding.

We had a wonderful Spring Symposium last month, bookended by Mary Beth Franklin and Ed Slott. In between we got a primer on opportunity zones from Hines, a market update from Russell Investments, and a run through of 529 strategies from Legg Mason.  FlexShares walked us through an overview of factor investing and market cycles, and David Lau presented on commission-free insurance and annuities.  At lunch, we presented Alex Armstrong with the Planner of the Year award, and watched a touching presentation on the impact of Foundation for Financial Planning’s ProBono4Cancer initiative.

Our chapter supported several pro bono activities in June. On June 5th, in conjunction with Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, FPA members from across the country volunteered to provide free, no-strings attached financial planning advice to Hill Staffers on our Financial Planning Day on Capitol Hill event. The event was a major success!

In addition, our chapter supported FIT for a Financial Readiness Clinic on June 18 at Marine Corps Base Quantico that provided one-on-one financial counseling to 64 Marines ranging from Corporal to full Colonel. Fifteen financial planners from our chapter provided these services. The service members who participated shared that they learned important steps for getting their finances under control and plan to follow-up with the Personal Financial Management Specialist at Quantico. Financial Independence Training (FIT) is dedicated to increasing military financial readiness and inspiring service members to achieve financial independence.

In our office, we spend the summer catching up on long-term projects, team building, and travelling to meet with out of town clients.  In the FPA, we spend the summer finalizing our fall line-up of programs. Please let us know if you have a topic or speaker you’d like to hear.  

In the meantime, have a wonderful 4th of July.  Thanks so much for you all that you do for our community.

All the best,
Chris
Chris Rivers, CFP®
2019 FPA NCA President