I finally got around to reading the October edition of Forbes magazine and saw Lee Gomes’ Digital Tools column.

Click here to read Forget Disruption. Dive Deep Instead on Forbes.com.

The point of the column is how Dropbox programmers worked extremely hard to tackle some very difficult code, yet the result is a simple and elegant program that just works. Once you “get” the concept of Dropbox and start using it, you wonder how you ever lived without it.

The beauty of Dropbox is there’s nothing to think about. You don’t need to read a manual. Dropbox just runs in the background, synchronizing files, backing them up, and even tracking revision changes, all without requiring user intervention. When something bad happens to files stored on Dropbox, you’re happy it’s there to rescue you (often from your own stupidity after “accidentally” deleting your latest market commentary newsletter).

How does this apply to financial planning and wealth management? Think of the many systems involved in an adviser’s practice, all with varying levels of complexity. I receive many questions about which program is the best for CRM, document management, or any of the other core adviser systems, and I often gravitate to the same answer.

The best program is the one that just works, where advisers don’t have to think to get work done or capture information. The best tools have extensive programming under the covers, but feature an elegant, simple, and easy to use interface.

Think about this when contacting vendors and VARs about the latest and greatest adviser tool. Does the program “work?” Or are you required to follow a myriad of cascading tabs, nested menus, and button clicks to access what should be core functionality?

Here are the details:

If you’re a current PortfolioCenter® user, you can earn a $500 credit for each referral that signs up for the aggregation service by December 31, 2009.

If you’re not a current user and sign up before December 31, 2009, you’ll receive one free quarter of aggregation services. Put another way, new advisers save 25% off the annual ByAllAccounts aggregation fee.

Click here to see the offer on the ByAllAccounts website along with 3 short lines of rules.

Again, I’m not paid to push ByAllAccounts (or any of the other vendors and service providers I write about); I’m a past user and understand the leverage their service can add to the right advisory firm that continues to update captive account information manually each month from paper statements.

One of the tools I recommend in my productivity presentation is a service from Dropbox. Dropbox is a utility that synchronizes all files stored in the Dropbox folder on a computer with any of your other computers where the software is installed. It also has a web interface to browse, view, and download the files stored in the folder. The first 2GB of data stored on Dropbox is free; additional storage is available for a nominal fee.

When I checked in a few minutes before presenting my productivity session, I had a problem. The staff couldn’t find my slide materials on the presentation laptop. I did bring my laptop to the event, but it was in my hotel room at the opposite end of the facility, requiring a round-trip of at least 10 minutes.*

Instead, I pointed the laptop’s browser to the Dropbox website and logged in to my account. I selected my presentations folder and downloaded the latest version of my presentation, as Dropbox is always keeping my files synchronized across my computers.

In less than a minute, I went from crisis mode to crisis averted, and started the presentation right on time. It’s one thing to say how useful Dropbox can be to advisers, but providing real-world examples really drives the concept home.

*Yes, I could have carried a USB thumb drive with my slides, but thumb drives get lost and it takes extra time to make sure files on the drive are up to date.

FINRA is offering a compliance webinar on December 16, 2009 to cover “compliance and regulatory considerations when using social networking sites to communicate firm business.”

Why FINRA decided to charge $50 for members and $100 for non-members is beyond me. I would think they would want to make this information free to increase compliance with the guidelines set by FINRA. I digress.

Click the image below to connect to FINRA’s website and get the webinar details.

Isn’t Junxure on version 8 now?

Full coverage of the releases is provided by Davis Janowski at Investment News.

ProTracker Advantage is a CRM system originally developed by Warren J. Mackensen, a fee-only planner in Hampton, N.H., for use in financial planning and wealth management firms.

In my opinion, ProTracker is a suitable CRM solution for advisers who seek a system with a lower learning curve than competitors and one that is not hosted over the Internet (and subject to service interruptions and less-than-realtime performance). Although one drawback of locally-installed programs is that someone must perform the update to the latest version!

First, most (but not all) tweets from conference attendees contain the hashtag #fpa2009. The hashtag present in the tweet allows Twitter Search to easily find tagged messages and display them all at once.

Since not all attendees are tagging tweets with #fpa2009, I’m providing a list of people that have been posting conference related messages. If I had more time, I’d make an  icon to allow Twitter users to follow these individuals in one click, but I have to change some dirty diapers.

For now, here’s the list (in order of my personal rating of quality/quantity tweets):

[Updated Monday, October 12, 8:40AM PDT]

• The Financial Planning Association official Twitter feed
• Sam Fawaz, CPA, CFP® (aka TheMoneyGeek)
• Michael Branham
• Liz Pulliam Weston
• Sam Richter
• John Comer, CFP®
• Brett S. Ellen
• Matt Porter
• R.J. Nashleanas
• Louis Barajas
• Lee Baker

I imagine there are more out there, so as the conference continues and new people send tweets, add their names to the comments below and I’ll do my best to update this list.

Read the full press release on the Ebix Inc. website and read E-Z Data’s statement to SmartOffice customers on its website.

Today, CFP Board announced that it issued an Interim Suspension Order to Mr. Weitzman suspending his right to use the CFP® certification marks. The suspension was issued because “Mr. Weitzman failed to respond to CFP Board’s Order to Show Cause within 20 calendar days, as required by CFP Board’s Disciplinary Rules and Procedures,” according to CFP Board.

CFP Board’s will complete further investigation on the claims and likely issue further action, but until then, Mr. Weitzman is no longer able to use the CFP® certification marks in any literature, advertisements, or correspondence.

I want to share an article published on IATechForum that highlights Laserfiche’s Avante product. Joseph Salpietro, President and CEO of Xpyria Investment Advisors (why the website domain is yannico.com is beyond me), shares his experience integrating the product into existing firm functions.

While the article features only the Avante solution (Laserfiche is one of the primary forum members), pay attention to the concepts of how the software was used to eliminate paper-pushing in the firm’s processes.

Click here to read Making Work Flow on IATechForum.

Schwab has uploaded a majority of the conferences presentation materials to this website. Slide handouts can be downloaded for free and many of the presentation audio recordings can be downloaded for $15 each.

Also, many conference attendees are providing live updates from the event through Twitter. Follow tweets from the following individuals and companies for more information, or search for updates containing the #IMPACT09 hashtag.

• Kristen Luke
• Brooke Southall
• Matthew Kenaston
• John Stone
• AdvisorShares
• Morningstar Advisor Workstation
• The Investment Managers and Advisors Alliance (IMAA)

Today, Tamarac Inc., best known for their SaaS rebalancing solution, announced the release of its Tamarac Advisor® 9 platform (coverage from InvestmentNews). This platform expands on the company’s rebalancing offering to include the following technologies:

• Advisor Rebalancing & Trading™ – the latest version of the flagship rebalancing application
• Advisor Performance Reporting™ – a new custom reporting application that can use data from Schwab Performance Technologies® PortfolioCenter® and ByAllAccounts to generate a variety of client reports.
• Advisor CRM™ – a new CRM built on Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM and tailored for financial services, all with the look and feel (and easy learning curve!) of Microsoft Outlook.

In addition to these built-in applications, Advisor 9 offers direct integration with PortfolioCenter and MoneyGuidePro’s financial planning software for those advisers who license the programs.

Tamarac Spins Off Outsource Group

For firms who wish to outsource such tasks like daily account reconciliation or quarterly billing, Tamarac is also unveiling a new service group called Tamarac AdvisorServices™.  AdvisorServices can perform many of the routine tasks of portfolio management that can suck up a day’s worth of time from employees, such as trade reconciliation, allocation tolerance monitoring, and generating ad-hoc performance reports.

The really cool thing about AdvisorServices is that for those advisers who use PortfolioCenter, AdvisorServices converts the desktop-based application into one that is hosted on the web. As a result, advisers will be able to view portfolio data in PortfolioCenter wherever they have Internet access, without having to deal with VPN or remote connections (e.g. GoToMyPC and others) to office systems.

So makers of other integrated solutions like Fidelity’s WealthCentral, Adhesion’s WealthADV, and Interactive Advisory Software should pay close attention to Tamarac. In my opinion, Tamarac is poised to quickly conquer the competition and become the industry standard in integrated software for independent registered investment advisers.

Case in point, CRM Software pre-announced its upcoming releases of Junxure 8, an updated version of its CRM software, and a new offering called Junxure Mobile, a product that allows advisors on the road to access data in Junxure 8 via laptop, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Also just announced is ExpertPlan’s launch of a new trading platform to advisors who custody assets with Schwab.

I expect the flood of announcements to last throughout the duration of the conference, and there will be too many for FPPad.com to keep up with.

Be sure to watch Schwab’s IMPACT® 2009 website for all the details.

This is a quick post on developments in the search engine space. This advisors4advisors article link talks about Google’s infusion of “caffeine” updates to speed up indexing and improve results. This is likely a response to the introduction of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

If you’re like me, you don’t want to spend much time searching. Browsing the Internet is so 1990s.

I want a “find” engine, one that gets me the information I want as quickly as possible. Here’s a tip how can you compare the two search engines to determine which one works best at finding information for you.

Launch the website http://bing-vs-google.com. Enter your search terms and see your results from both Bing and Google side-by-side. If you have dual monitors, you can set your browser window to span the entire workspace and see full-screen search engine results. Searching “financial planning technology,” Bing lists my blog FPPad.com on its second page of results, while it’s buried much farther down at Google (yes, I quickly updated my Google SearchWiki to promote FPPad.com to the first page).

Despite the listing disparity in a sample size of one, I’m still a die-hard Google user. But Bing vs. Google may change that in due course.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) recently said not so fast. $8,100 is severely underestimated.

According to SIFMA, estimates for surprise audits of RIAs who custody funds are as high as $282,800. You read that right: nearly three hundred thousand dollars.

Obviously the exact estimate depends on the amount of assest under management and the number of accounts, custodians, and securities maintained by an RIA.

For more information on the cost estimates, refer to this article at InvestmentNews.

Nearly all wealth management firms are experiencing declining revenues and increasing operating costs, compressing profit margins in all areas. Here is one simple solution to save time and money on a ubiquitous entry in a firm’s operating expenses: long distance phone calls.

Google has a free 411 service, GOOG-411, that allows users to call nearly any business nationwide and connect for free.

How It Works

GOOG-411 is simple to use. From any phone, dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-4664-411). At the prompt, say the business name followed by the city and state. GOOG-411’s voice recognition will attempt to match the request to businesses listed in its ever-growing directory. If the request is recognized, GOOG-411 offers the top listing and will automatically connect to the business unless given other instructions.

GOOG-411’s voice recognition saves time when calling businesses. Advisors no longer need to look up a business phone number in Outlook Contacts, the company CRM, a misfiled business card in a Rolodex, or (gasp) and handwritten address book. Simply pick up the phone, say the business, and get connected.

If the request is unclear or doesn’t match a listing exactly, GOOG-411 will announce top matches from which users can select by simply saying “connect me.”

Here’s a 90 second video from Google on how easy GOOG-411 is to use.

Is Your Firm Listed?

If GOOG-411 is a cost-effective solutions for advisors, think about how clients may use it, particularly those living in other states. Instead of dialing the firm’s toll number, clients can call GOOG-411, say the business name, and if the firm is listed, get connected immediately without having to pay a dime in long distance.

So stop reading this post right now. Call 1-800-GOOG-411. Say your firm’s name, city, and state. Are you in Google’s listing? If not, you need to change this immediately.

Get Listed on GOOG-411

Google 411 works on the information provided by Google Maps. To update your firm’s listing in Google Maps, follow the link provided in this FAQ:

http://mobile.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76434

Eliminate Your 800 Number, Too

Not only can advisors save money by using GOOG-411, they may also consider dropping the toll-free number that cuts into the bottom line.

This is a great opportunity to touch clients, too. Communicate to clients located in other states and let them know about Google 411, how easy it is to use, and how clients can use it to call your firm for free. Not only can clients call your firm for free, but they can call nearly any business nationwide for free. That’s a great money saving tip that I’d appreciate receiving from my advisor.

In summary, saving on long distance calls may not seem like much, but it’s a simple step to reduce costs. It’s just one way advisors4advisors.com is trying to help advisors save money and operate more efficiently.

I was asked, and have accepted, to be the technology contributor to a new practice management website for financial advisers, advisorsforadvisors.com.

Now I must admit, practice management website is not the best way I’d describe advisorsforadvisors. Yes, you will find articles and commentary on practice management issues, but advisorsforadvisors offers much more.

advisorsforadvisors is positioned to be a key destination for financial advisers looking for timely, relevant information on the markets and economy, investment news, regulatory changes, compliance, marketing, practice management, software reviews, and technology.

Instead of visiting dozens of websites to read new articles (e.g. Wall Street Journal, InvestmentNews, Financial Planning, Financial Advisor, etc.), advisers can log in to one site and view an aggregated list of articles that pertain to financial planning and wealth management. In addition, advisorsforadvisors contains elements of social media so articles and reviews are highlighted based on their popularity.

These features offer a more efficient way for advisers to obtain relevant news from the web, saving precious time. They are also bound to introduce articles advisers may not normally see based on their web surfing habits.

advisorsforadvisors is still new, but I encourage you to sign up and try it out.

I’ll be catching up on emails and voicemail messages after being offline for the last 4 days, so please be patient while I get back into my routine of tracking technology trends in the financial adviser marketplace.

Thanks to those who wished me safe travels, and for those of you in the DFW metroplex, I look forward to meeting you in person.

The replay of that webinar is available here, but this week InvestmentNews published an abbreviated transcript of the webinar. I highlighted the following 10 technology tips to help advisers cut costs and increase revenue:

• Rebalancing software (e.g. iRebal, Tamarac, TRX) to increase trading efficiency
• Account aggregation services like ByAllAccounts and CashEdge
• Desktop search tools
• OCR software for scanned images
• Hosted file synchronization services (Dropbox)
• Google Analytics for website metrics
• Internal Wikis for business processes and procedures
• Multiple LCD monitors
• Judicious email use
• Inbox Zero
• Virtual meeting software

For all the specifics and details of the highlighted tools, read the posted transcript.

You can post your questions about these tools below or provide your experience on how they have worked in your practice.

CagedTweets is another utility that captures and archives comments posted on Twitter. Customers have three options of service depending on the number of Twitter accounts to be archived. Archiving of one account runs $50 and covers 3 years of service (I think), ten accounts runs $100, and firm-wide archiving runs $500.

Unfortunately their website does not have a demonstration of how the service works, nor is a free trial offered to test the service. Yet I have to hand it to the folks behind CagedTweets; they are offering this service through rapid development after being inspired by an April 27 Wall Street Journal article on compliance requirements involving social media.

Still, I’m inclined to endorse LifestremBackup over CagedTweets for two main reasons. First, the former tool features connections to other social media services in addition to Twitter, and second, the service is offered for a very similar price as CagedTweets.

However, according to their website, users who sign up for CagedTweets before the end of July will receive free archiving for all social media applications added to the service.

Check out CagedTweets through this link.

(Hat tip to @jrueckert for mentioning CagedTweets to me)

Many advisers who consult with me regarding the use of social media are justifiably concerned about compliance when it comes to using such services. Advisers can use outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate with others and to broadcast information to targeted niche markets. These tools are fantastic ways to build brand recognition for an adviser or a firm and to identify the level of services offered to the public.

I’ve written here previously how FINRA and the SEC may determine that any message disseminated through social media services constitutes marketing and/or advertising and at the very least should be archived and retained in a compliance file. If you are a representative regulated under FINRA, you likely need pre-approval from compliance before posting any messages through social media services. SEC-registered advisers should consult with their Chief Compliance Officer before posting messages as well.

Now let’s assume that an adviser decides to use social media to grow the business. Terrific! But what can be done to efficiently archive and retain those messages sent through social media services?

A new service called Lifestream Backup can help reduce the burden of retaining social media content for compliance purposes.

Configuring Lifestream Backup is very straightforward. After activating the service, users only need to enter login credentials for each social media website to be backed up and select appropriate backup preferences. Lifestream Backup then proceeds to backup various types of messages and content posted through supported social media services.

The content that Lifestream Backup saves is stored on the Amazon Web Services network, another “cloud computing” service. In other words, until the backups are saved to a local computer or server, they are subject to loss in the event the service experiences unexplained data loss. So I recommend that users of Lifestream Backup download data saved by the service. Downloading data once per month is likely sufficient, but it may be prudent to perform this task once every week.

Lifestream Backup currently supports eight social media services:  Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Google Docs, Wordpress, Delicious, Basecamp, and Zoho. Backup functionality for Facebook, Gmail, and YouTube are expected to be added in the future.

The Lifestream Backup service costs $4.95 per month. This is a very reasonable expense considering the time it would take for an adviser to manually track down and save social media content from various sites to a local compliance file.

In the end, this service (along with previously mentioned Smarsh Twitter archiving) allows regulated advisers to take a proactive stance about meeting compliance requirements when using these rapidly evolving social media services.

In the letter, Lassus writes:

Rest assured, NAPFA is not ignoring the accusations made against our former members, and we will continue to do what is right for our members, for our industry, and for the consumers we all serve. This commitment has guided us for more than 26 years and will continue to guide us well into the future.

See the entire letter by clicking here (PDF at NAPFA.org).

It turns out the Mr. Weitzman is facing very serious charges. Here’s a snip from an InvestmentNews article released today:

Earlier today, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan and the New York office of the FBI said they charged Matthew Weitzman, 43, of Armonk, N.Y., with one count of investment adviser fraud and six counts each of securities fraud and wire fraud.

He also faces charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission over the alleged theft of client funds.

Click here to view the full story at InvestmentNews.

It’s unfortunate to see anyone take advantage of clients, and it’s even worse when the individual in this case once had an affiliation with NAPFA, a group of respected fee-only financial advisers.

So again, take this opportunity to communicate to your clients about the processes and procedures you have in place to prevent fraud and protect your clients’ interests.

If you were not able to attend the live presentation, click here to register at Advisor Products and view the replay.

Also, you have a little more than 24 hours to register for the upcoming webinar 50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes hosted by InvestmentNews.

Click here to register for the InvesetmentNews webinar.

First, Andrew Gluck at Advisor Products, Inc. has asked me to participate in Friday’s Financial Crisis Webinar Series. The topic is Advisors Using Social Networking Successfully. I will share some of the experiences I’ve had through the use of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook mediums that have personally resulted in new connections and new business.

Click here to register for the Friday, June 5 webinar Advisors Using Social Networking Successfully.

Second, I’ll be part of a panel hosted by InvestmentNews to offer 50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes. I have a list of my top 10 technologies that I believe financial advisers can use to save money, make money, and sometimes both simultaneously. There should be at least one good tip for every adviser listening to the webinar.

Click here to register for the Tuesday, June 9 webinar 50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes.

Hope to “see” you on the web.

This proposal, just barely three weeks old, seems likely to be rescinded according to this Financial Planning article published by Donna Mitchell.  In it she writes:

Unofficial reports from the SEC, however, now suggest that the regulator is dropping the third-party compliance audit requirement for advisors, according to the Financial Planning Association’s Web site.

To read the full article, click here.

Smarsh continues to impress me as an innovative force and market leader in email archiving and compliance. They recently announced a Smarsh CRM product to help users be more efficient and productive (a post I’ve had in my drafts section ever since my son was born!).

Today I read an article on a new service that may prove to be very useful and timely to the adviser community.

Smarsh has announced a social media (a.k.a.Twitter) message archiving service at a Twitter conference this week.

“This innovation is a logical extension for Smarsh, which has built its business by providing email archiving and compliance solutions for clients in the highly-regulated financial services industry,” said Smarsh founder and CEO Stephen Marsh at 140, a Twitter conference in Mountain View, Calif. that is sponsored in part by Smarsh.

For more information contained in the press release, click here.

As I’ve written here before, Registered Investment Advisers (both SEC and State) as well as FINRA Registered Representatives need to be diligent about archiving messages distributed through social media platforms such as Twitter. I’m very happy to see Smarsh, a technology player in the adviser space, step up to the plate and offer exactly what advisers need.

Related posts

NBA Fines Mark Cuban $25,000 for Twitter Comments; Will the SEC be Next?

Adviser Use of LinkedIn May Violate SEC Rules

Tweets and Blogs from T3 (Tech Tools for Today Conference)

It should be no surprise to financial advisers following the Madoff Ponzi scandal that the SEC recently issued proposed rule changes to custody requirements. The release, IA-2876 (click to view PDF from SEC.gov), addresses custody requirements of client funds and securities and is open for a 60-day comment period through July 28, 2009. Should the proposed rules be adopted, advisers may face additional compliance fees of $8,100 on average.

Surprise Examination Proposal

The SEC proposes that advisers with custody of client assets must undergo an annual surprise examination by an independent public accountant, regardless of whether or not assets are held by a qualified custodian. The premise behind the surprise examination requirement is to provide “another set of eyes” on client assets to prevent fraud and misappropriation of client funds by registered advisers.  Reports of theft and fraud by advisers have plagued the SEC since the Madoff scandal erupted in late 2008. So what does this mean for advisers meeting the custody definition?

Custody Defined

Custody of client funds is a topic that has been discussed before on FPPad.com. See my past posts linked below:

• Webinar to Discuss Risks of Custody and Client Credentials
• The Custody Conundrum at Advisor Perspectives
• Client Login and Custody Issues Covered by Financial Advisor Magazine

I’ll repost the definition of custody here for reference.  Under Rule 206(4)-2, an investment adviser has custody of client funds if it “holds, directly or indirectly, client funds or securities or has any authority to obtain possession of them.”

Advisers that meet the definition of having custody must adhere to additional regulations and requirements described in the rule (see my article The Custody Conundrum in Advisor Perspectives for all the requirements).

Advisers Subject to Custody Requirements

I’ve found that some advisers are under the false impression that custody requirements do not apply since they use a qualified custodian such as Schwab Institutional, Fidelity, or Pershing. Using a custodian alone does not avoid custody of client funds. If advisers withdraw advisory and/or management fees directly from client accounts, then the adviser is deemed to have custody of client funds.

Unless advisers are paid via other mechanisms such as credit card payments or by check, they have custody of the funds from which fees are debited. Note that if deducting fees is the only reason custody is triggered, the SEC allows advisers to check No in Item 9 of From ADV Part I.

Cost of Surprise Audits

Buried in the proposal is an analysis of estimated costs incurred by advisers who would be required to retain an independent public accountant to perform the surprise audit. The SEC estimates that over 9,500 registered advisers would pay an average of $8,100 in accounting fees.

Comment Period

If the only reason advisers have custody of funds is to debit management fees, should the SEC exempt them from the surprise examination requirement? Is the withdrawal of advisory fees less likely to be subject to abuse than full withdrawal authority? What do you think?

Advisers have two months to submit comments to the SEC regarding the proposed changes to existing custody requirements. Click here to open the form to submit comments on the SEC website.

In the article, though, Mr. Lawrence said one thing that grabbed my attention. He wrote (my emphasis added):

A common mistake made by some firms is to use a system that saves documents in a PDF instead of a more secure format such as a TIFF. This means documents can be altered after the fact, and the firm risks potentially violating federal regulations. While some scanner manufacturers have addressed this issue with post-imprint symbols and other coding mechanisms to ensure authenticity, there are still lingering doubts about the security of the original documents.

Now hold on for one minute. TIFF files are “more secure” than PDF files?!?

So I reached out to my contacts for some clarification on this statement. I contacted Rick Borstein, Adobe’s Business Development Manager for the legal market and asked him to address the security of the file formats. Mr. Borstein also blogs about the use of Adobe products by lawyers and attorneys at Acrobat for Legal Professionals.

Mr. Borstein replied that the perceived security difference is a “common misconception.”

“A scanned page image in a TIFF or PDF are identical. They are just as hard or just as easy to change,” he added.

Straight from the horse’s mouth (well, straight from Adobe at least).

So advisers, if you’ve been using the PDF file format to save your scanned images into a document management system, rest assured that there is no difference in security between the TIFF format and PDF. Both formats are subject to modification and can be tampered with by someone with the knowledge to circumvent security properties.

To that end, I must emphasize how important it is to consider using document management software that contains audit trails of documents saved (and deleted) in the system. While PDF and TIFF documents and scans can be manipulated and forged, it is much more difficult to crack the internal audit tracking of a capable management system.

Lastly, my exchange with Rick Borstein occurred entirely through Twitter. It’s an awesome resource. Click here to follow me on Twitter. Follow Rick Borstein at @acrolaw.

Related posts:

• Streamline Your Practice in a Recession
• Get the Financial Planning 2008 Software Survey
• Improve Your Paperless Document Searches

Since many of the subscribers and visitors to FPPad.com are CFP® Certificants, I set up a poll to get a sample of how many hours others have spent preparing for the exam. I spent about 200 hours preparing for the July 2008 exam.

Take our poll below (if vieweing in an RSS reader, click here to submit your answer):

Related Posts:

• How Long Does it Take to Complete the CFP® Certification Process?
• CFP Board Proactive Exam Communication
• CFP Board to Increase Transparency, Certificant Communication