Customer Reviews

Getting Started in Financial Consulting

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Getting Started in Financial Consulting by Edward J. Stone is a well written description of what you need to do for a career in Financial Counseling. It is well organized, complete and provides inside information on what it takes to get started, run a business, and be a successful Finanacial Counselor. The review of the various certification programs is quite extensive. This book can be considered the bible in not only in getting started in Financial Counseling, but in making it a career. It is also helpful for present Financial Counselors to use as a benchmark to measure up to Mr. Stone's high standards that are essentially required in this profession. Follow his guidelines and you will be successful over the long term. A must read if you are considering going into Financial Counseling.

As a new person to the world of financial consulting, I was searching for a way to make sense of all the different certifications available, how to go about getting them, which would be the right certification for me, etc. This book gave me 100% of what I was looking for and more. In addition to certification information, the author discusses, in a highly readable manner, other nuts-and-bolts beginner's topics, such as legal/regulatory issues, marketing, and different services one could offer a client. I highly recommend this book to anyone starting out in the field, or to someone just wanting to explore whether financial planning might be for them.

Being a CPA and Financial Consultant in Hong Kong, I still find this book provides a lot of usefull information about the industry in far East. It gave me a more solid theory backup and marketing idea from US in my practice in Asia.

Instead of filtering information and writing it appropriately, the author keeps quoting financial planners and their opinions about different topics. These opinions are often not well fundamented, repetitive, biased by self-experience or contradicting each other, in a way that it makes reading very difficult and boaring. It took me weeks to finish the book. It has useful (although basic) information for people thinking of starting in financial planning, but contend could be condensed in 20% of the pages.

I borrowed this book from my local library back in 2001 when I was getting into the financial planning business, and it gave me some basic information. It was easy to read, but I never felt I could trust what the book said, because it all sounded "too easy." But it was an eye-opener, hence the 3 stars.

But, this book is now six years old, so it's of very little value to someone wanting to get started. The only book on this topic that's been updated is Jeffrey Rattiner's "Getting Started" book, but that's more toward starting an FP business. Another expensive book by an author named Nancy something offers too little for the $55 price; besides you cannot trust that book's reviews on Amazon because all the positive ones seemed planted by the same person. So check out Rattiner's book (2005 edition) to see if it's right for you.

The author Edward Stone did nothing for this book but interview a bunch of different financial consultants then write this book. Shouldn't an author of a book know what he is writing about? Find a book written by a financial consultant. The writing style was incredibly boring and I had a hard time finishing this book. This book did very little to educate me on getting ready to be a financial consultant.