What is your reply to Lewis McDonald? That pretty well summarizes my question too. I would love to do what he describes as well. Full or part time. How does one properly prepare? etc.

Keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
Dan A.

My questions are linked to your part-time financial planning question/answers. Here is what I would like to do, I want to provide financial advise to people “on the side so to speak”, and for free. I’ve always had an interest in personal finance (& read lots of books, go to seminars, etc) and wish to hold classes and offer advise to people (generally this would most likely be for other workers in my agency, folks from my church, etc…and this could involve folks I do not know). I was military for 26 years and now work for TSA. I am financially secure and just wish to help people in this area. I see the vast majority of people with practically no knowledge on personal financial planning, and want to help in this area. By the way, some of my motives for this is because I made some naïve financial choices when I was younger, due in large part with a great intent to save and invest, but not having a solid understanding on choices, risks involved, growth potential, and potential consequences of actions (or inaction). Furthermore, I was also taken advantage of (as a young military troop) by a pretty predatory whole-life insurance company (with a track record of bad practices targeting young military troops…surfaced in courts years later). After some of those choices, I began self educating myself by attending financial seminars and classes and a lot of reading. After educating myself (and while still in the military), I did provide basic savings/investing classes and advise for my troops so they would have a much better understanding of the impacts of knowledge and actions and (hopefully) set themselves up for financial success and prepped so as not to be taken as I was early on.
So now, I would like to do something like this for others (as I mentioned); however, I do not know if there is certification requirements (such as CFP), if there would be any legal issues (what are the requirements to be able to do this); and if there are applicable efficient/beneficial courses to this end, all the better in order to provide the best advise possible.

So, any recommendations to this aim?

Hi Raj – It varies by state, so there are 50 possibilities! Check the web for the licensing board in your state.

In an article with many thousands of words a typo or two is bound to happen, despite our best efforts. Hope you found the article informative anyway!