Financial Planning Association of Orange County California

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President's Message
Announcements
A Must Read
Calendar of Events
Committee Focus
Collegiate Corner
Practical Knowledge
Member Highlights
National News
Thanks to Our Partners

January/February 2012

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Welcome to 2012!

With a presidential election looming, continuing federal and state budgeting issues, troubles in Europe, and the end of the Mayan calendar, this year seems to offer more of the same uncertainly as we have seen since 2008. However, do not dismay. The FPA is here to help.

At the chapter level, we provide quality education at our quarterly meetings, opportunities to collaborate with other planning professionals at our study groups, networking at our Allied Professionals Summit, and venues to meet and exchange ideas with like-minded professionals at our Communities of Interest events (e.g., Next Gen, Advisors in Transitions, etc.). At the national level, our organization continues to advocate for our profession. It also provides excellent programs including the FPA Retreat, FPA Experience and the FPA Residency Program as well as a wonderful opportunity to connect with other planners throughout the world and engage in discussions about our profession on FPA Connect (http://connect.fpanet.org/Home/). All of these benefits are designed to provide you with essential resources and tools to help you bring your practice to the next level.

There is one central message upon which our chapter’s Board is focused – Get Involved! You may ask yourself, WHY should I get involved? In fact, at our Board’s Strategic Planning Meeting in December, we asked ourselves the same question. Our answer: To Invest in the Future Development of Yourself. Whether you learn new skills, make connections with allied professionals, or help others through pro bono work, there are many ways our chapter can help you develop both professionally and personally. To learn more about ways to get involved, please visit http://www.fpaocc.org/committees.htm.

This year promises to be another exciting year for our FPA Orange County Chapter! With record-breaking attendance, our quarterly education meetings will continue to provide excellent content and a great opportunity to network with Partners, colleagues and allied professionals. We will also be presenting a Retirement Planning theme at our meeting on February 15th. Please make sure you RSVP! Our Allied Professionals Summit, which had 200 attendees in 2011, has become a wonderful event to learn and network. We continue to explore new pro bono opportunities to serve our community and will again host the Financial Planning Day later this year. To learn more about our chapter’s events, please visit http://www.fpaocc.org/chapter-events.htm.

I would like to thank our Partners, Board members, and volunteers that make our chapter one of the best in the nation. We have a great team assembled this year that is committed to maintaining the incredible momentum that our chapter has built over the past 12 years.

On behalf of the 2012 FPA OCC Board and volunteers, thank you for your membership in our chapter and best of luck on a successful and rewarding year!

Best regards,

Michael J. Shockley

P.S. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments.

CHAPTER ANNOUNCEMENTS

Meet the 2012 Board of Directors

President	Michael Shockley, CFP®, J.D., MBA
President Elect	Mr. William Cuthbertson, MBA, EA, CFP®
Chairwoman	Carolanne M. Chavanne, CFP®
Treasurer	Julie M. Holmes-Grady, MBA, CPA, CFP®
Secretary	Michael Weber
Education Chair	Rick Kagawa, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC, CLU, LUTC
Allied Professionals Chair	Howard Erman, CFP®
Public Relations Chair	Ralph G. Adamo, CFP®
Membership Chair	David K. MacLeod, CFP®
Member Benefits	Stephen P. Kiernan, CFP®
Pro Bono Co-Chairs	Paul Kirz, CFP®, EA, MD and Heena Sha, CFP®, EA
Government Relations Chair	Samantha Vient, CFP®, EA
Communications Chair	Kenneth Yee
Partners Program Chair	Wesley Gunter

Study Group
Join us for our next study group meeting. We meet the first Tuesday of every month from 3:30 – 5:00. We meet at 1801 Parkcourt Place, Building H ("Law Offices of Rizio & Nelson") in Santa Ana. Admission is free, but space is limited to 16 participants.

FPA Members Only. New members and planners of all levels are welcome!

Please contact Julie Anderson-Bray if you will be attending for the first time or would like more information.

A MUST READ

Capital Market Expectations, Asset Allocation, and Safe Withdrawal
by Wade D. Pfau, Ph.D., CFA

Executive Summary

Most retirement withdrawal rate studies are based either on historical data or use a particular assumption about portfolio returns unique to the study in question. But planners may have their own capital market expectations for future returns from stocks, bonds, and other assets they deem suitable for their clients’ portfolios. These uniquely personal expectations may or may not bear resemblance to those used for making retirement withdrawal rate guidelines.
The objective here is to provide a general framework for thinking about how to estimate sustainable withdrawal rates and appropriate asset allocations for clients, based on one’s capital market expectations, as well as other inputs about the client including the planning horizon, tolerance for exhausting wealth, and personal concerns about holding riskier assets
The study also tests the sensitivity of various assumptions for the recommended withdrawal rates and asset allocations, and finds that these assumptions are very important.
Another common feature of existing studies is to focus on an optimal asset allocation, which is expected either to minimize the probability of failure for a given withdrawal rate or to maximize the withdrawal rate for a given probability of failure. Retirement withdrawal rate studies are known in this regard for lending support to stock allocations in excess of 50 percent.
This study shows that usually there is a wide range of asset allocations that can be expected to perform nearly as well as the optimal allocation, and that lower stock allocations are justifiable in many cases.

Click Here to Read More

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

02/15 /2012	All Day	Quarterly Education Meeting
02/28/2012	5:00-7:00pm	NexGen Happy Hour
3/6/2012	3:30-5pm	Study Group
03/04-03/06/2012	All Day	FPA Business Solutions 2012
3/21/2012	5:30-7:30pm	Advisors in Transition Study Group
05/05-05/08/2012	All Day	FPA Retreat 2012
05/23/2012	All Day	Quarterly Education Meeting
08/29/2012	All Day	Quarterly Education Meeting
11/28/2012	All Day	Quarterly Education Meeting

QUICK LINKS:

FPA Orange County Website

FPA National Website

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View our Media Center

View our Classifieds

Promote your FPA membership by using the FPA Member Logo. Displaying the FPA Member Logo communicates your dedication to FPA's Code of Ethics and Standard of Care.

Current FPA members who are in good standing can log in to request and download the 2010 FPA Member Logo (Requires Member Login).

108 REASONS FPA
IS THE HEART OF FINANCIAL PLANNING™

COMMITTEE FOCUS

Pro Bono
by Heena Shah, and Paul Kirz, 2012/2013 Co-Directors

Pro Bono Volunteers Will Not Offer Free Financial Advice at
Community Tax Day Events in Early 2012

After providing free financial planning advice for two years to OC residents at two (2) Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) campaign events, FPA OCC’s Pro-Bono/Community outreach Committee will not be coordinating this event with an Orange County-based community organization this year during the upcoming 2012 tax season.

For some history, the Orange County Financial Stability Alliance (OC FSA) is made up of a number of local CBOs (community based organizations), with umbrella organizations Orange County United Way (OCUW) and the Legal Aid Society of Orange County. OC FSA is comprised of over 30 private and public agencies that have been providing financial stability resources to assist underserved families in Orange County. Orange County United Way is about to launch two new Financial Stability Centers in Orange County that will provide financial stability resources to the low-income families in Orange County.
Orange County United Way, believes FPA volunteers’ time is not best utilized at Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) campaign events, as the families attending these events are only interested in taxes and not in financial planning consultation. Heena Shah, Co-Director of FPA OCC Pro Bono / Community Outreach Committee, will be working closely with United Way during the next few months to organize an event at their new Financial Stability Alliance Center where pro bono volunteers will be providing financial planning advice to the appropriate audience.

If you have any questions, please contact Heena Shah at heena@lighthouselink.com

BRAG LIST

Are you donating some of your valuable time and expertise to help others in our community while at the same time, move our profession forward? If you are, we want to recognize your efforts and provide FPA National with details of your accomplishments! The FPA OCC Board members want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your generosity.

The process is easy! Just click on the link to the BRAG LIST and it will take you to the page providing the fields required for gathering data pertinent to your event.

By completing this form we can submit the information to FPA National so our Chapter receives credit for your good works. In addition FPA National uses this information to develop statistics for the national press and other interested parties. So your generosity at the local level contributes to a positive reflection of our profession on a broader scale!

Should you have any questions, please contact FPA OCC's Co-Director of the Pro Bono/Community Outreach Committee Paul Kirz.

Volunteers Needed to Teach Banking Fundamentals to Orange County Students

The FPA OCC Pro Bono Community Outreach Committee is planning to teach students in the Anaheim area the fundamentals of banking. This project will be conducted in conjunction with the non-profit organization “Banking on Our Future”. We will be teaching Middle School students how to write a check and balance a checkbook as well as the benefits and hazards of credit and debit cards. In addition the students will practice making a financial budget for a hypothetically teenager. We are looking for approximately 20 volunteers who can devote one morning for this event, tentatively planned for late April. If interested please contact Paul Kirz.

COLLEGIATE CORNER

UC Irvine Extension offers the Personal Financial Planning Accelerated Program, an intensive five-part program covering the body of knowledge for Certified Financial Planners™. Successful completion of the Accelerated Program fulfills the educational requirements to sit for the CFP® Certification Exam. This problem-solving, client-centric program provides a strong, comprehensive approach to the principles of financial planning. A hands-on approach including case studies allows students to demonstrate real-world application of the materials.

UC Irvine Extension’s CFP® Live Review Course, offered twice a year—in summer and winter—is designed for those who have completed our Personal Financial Planning Accelerated Program, or any CFP® registered program, and are planning to sit for the CFP® Exam. This intensive course, offered over six meetings, covers all 89 topics tested on the exam. Students who have taken UC Irvine Extension’s Personal Financial Planning or PFP Accelerated program are eligible for a discount on the CFP® Live Review course fee.

Anyone interested in becoming an instructor at UC Irvine Extension should first view our website at:
Click here to read the guide.

Click here for more information.

Contact:
For Personal Financial Planning Program or the CFP® Live Review Course: Francine Berg , (949) 824-4661
For FPA Residency Program: extension.uci.edu/fpa
For Recruitment: Kathy Amoroso.

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

Improve Client Trust and Communications in Volatile Markets
by Michael T. Carpenter

Volatile markets require financial advisers to mobilize the full array of their professional skills, and no skill is more important during turbulent environments than effective risk communications. Communicating effectively with investors experiencing high uncertainty, volatility, fear and increased stress requires using an approach very different from that used in less stressful times.

Click Here to Read More

MEMBER HIGHLIGHTS

NEW MEMBERS
Name	Joined	Company	City
Ashley Boone	November	Merrill Lynch	Irvine
Richard Riegle	December		Laguna Niguel
Kimberly Bernatz	January	First American Trust	Santa Ana
Renee Griffiths	January	Marsh Private Client Life Insurance Services	Newport Beach
Alistair Merryman	January		Aliso Viejo
Robin Sun	January		Westminster
Nathan Truax	January		Irvine

ANNIVERSARIES
Name	Years	Company
Arnold M. Schimsky	35	Schimsky Financial Group
Jeffrey Garell	15	Silversage Advisors
Jay A. Weil	10	Weil Financial Services, Inc.

One Thing Leads to Another... Get involved and make a difference! If we all just did ONE THING, imagine the impact we can have on our Chapter and on shaping our profession!

Help make updates to the chapter website. If you are interested in volunteering, contact Kenneth Yee, Director of Communications at kenyeemail@gmail.com

Help create the chapter newsletter. If you are interested in volunteering, contact Kenneth Yee, Director of Communications at kenyeemail@gmail.com

Help prepare packets for the Education Meetings. If you are interested in volunteering, contact Kenneth Yee, Director of Communications at kenyeemail@gmail.com

NATIONAL NEWS

Read through the Capitol Update newsletter for the latest summary of tax, securities, pension, insurance and professional issues of importance to financial planners.