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Shares: Let’s Talk Taxes
Join our host Michael Finke, PhD, CFP® and Jeffrey Levine, CFP®, CPA, PFS, CWS, AIF, RICP®, ChFC®, BFA™, Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, for a detailed conversation on what financial advisors get right and wrong when thinking about tax planning, as well as key strategies to help your clients keep more of their hard-earned money.
Jeffrey Levine, CFP®, CPA, PFS, CWS, AIF, RICP®, ChFC®, BFA™ is Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, working closely with the Buckingham team to create a seamless and enjoyable experience for clients that makes it easy to plan and instill confidence as they work towards their most important goals. He serves as a technical resource for advisors and the firm’s primary thought leader regarding evidence-based planning concepts and strategies. He excels at distilling complex financial laws and policy into understandable resources. His work at Buckingham gives him the ability to train and educate hundreds of advisors and support them in their pursuit of helping clients fulfill their financial dreams. Levine is a nationally recognized thought leader within the financial planning community. He is the lead financial planning nerd for Kitces.com, home of the popular Nerd’s Eye View blog, and the founder of Fully Vested Advice, Inc., which provides financial education and consulting services to industry professionals. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, as well as various industry publications, and has promoted retirement and tax education on television stations such as CNBC, Fox Business News, CBS and PBS. He is regularly sought after by journalists for his insights and is frequently quoted in publications throughout the country.
Any views or opinions expressed in this podcast are the hosts’ and guests' own and do not necessarily represent those of The American College of Financial Services.
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Mark McLennon, Seasoned Tax and Estate Planning Professor, In His Own Words
In March, McLennon joined The College as a full-time assistant professor in tax and estate planning and also serves as the Clark/Bardes Chair in Retirement Planning and Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation. Students in the CFP® Certification Education and Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) programs will benefit from his immense knowledge in business planning, estate planning, executive compensation, life insurance planning, retirement planning, and vast experience having served in a variety of positions over a 25-year successful career in financial services.
We posed a few questions to McLennon, and in his own words, you can learn more about his journey back to The College as a full-time faculty member and what he enjoys most about working with students.
1. How has The College impacted your career in financial services?
My experience with The College began as I pursued my CLU® and ChFC® designations over 25 years ago while transitioning from corporate tax into an "Advanced Planning" role at a major financial services firm. Despite taking every trust, estate, and tax class I could at my law school and working as a research assistant for the tax professor, none of that prepared me as much for the practical and real-world client/advisor issues I would face as did The College's curriculum.
The knowledge and credibility that came with achieving those designations and the great people I subsequently met through The College have served me well in the varied corporate and client-facing roles I have taken on. Over the years, as organizer and host of several wealth management and financial planning conferences, I have also had the privilege of working with some of the distinguished faculty of The College. I first began teaching at The College about five years ago and am now very excited to be doing that again as a full-time member of the faculty.
2. What are today's most significant challenges and opportunities for financial professionals?
Advisors need to know or access relevant information from multiple disciplines to provide the type of holistic advice clients expect as the marketplace has responded to such demand over the years. Combine that with the time needed to truly know your clients, much less acquire new relationships, and the significant challenge for financial professionals is how to best utilize those limited working hours.
Of course, no one can be expected to know everything, and bringing in outside expertise is something savvy clients have come to expect. The good news is that opportunities exist to acquire timely, relevant knowledge through programs such as those at The College, where one can also get assistance identifying situations where outside expertise is warranted.
3. How do The College's CFP® Certification Education and ChFC® Programs work together to enhance advisors' skills?
Both the CFP® and the ChFC® programs cover the core knowledge that clients come to expect when financial service professionals hold themselves out as dedicated to providing a higher level of expertise.
The College's requirements are the same across the two programs with one additional specialized course needed for the ChFC®. It is how that knowledge is applied in practice that has somewhat differentiated the two over the years, as each has its own unique background and history.
4. How is The College ensuring that students who enroll in the CFP® Certification Education Program achieve success in the CFP® exam?
There is deep and continuing coordination between the particulars of the programs at The College and the ongoing requirements of achieving the CFP® designation. The College is very much invested in the ongoing success of its students, and maintaining the curriculum to help students succeed with the exam is a priority while still emphasizing the critical importance of the application of that knowledge in practice.
5. What do you enjoy most about working with The College's students and being part of The College's community?
I most enjoy seeing that light bulb go on over students' heads. A few subject matter areas in the financial services world have historically seemed daunting to students, even those who are experienced or "seasoned" financial advisors. I like to relay stories to my classes about how I would initially dread getting calls on certain topics, like ESOPs or generation-skipping taxes for example, as a newer Advanced Planning attorney as I felt out of my comfort zone.
However, I add, I chose instead to step back, take some time, and break down these "daunting" concepts to their core components, thus replacing that dread with the anticipation of helping someone else get past their anxiety over the issue. That is one of the things I enjoy most about working with students at The College: taking what may seem a difficult concept at first, breaking it down to its core components, shedding a little light on what something truly means, and shining a larger light on its application in practice.
Being part of The American College community has been a great experience for me, and I know my colleagues feel the same way about the importance and satisfaction of getting through to students and helping them help their clients.
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FinServe Ambassador Highlights the Power of Education
Winslow is a managing partner at Nabell Winslow Investments & Wealth Management, a boutique wealth management firm affiliated with IBD Cetera Advisors, LLC, and located in the Wilmington, North Carolina area. But he often talks about his humble beginnings; of growing up on a rural farm and spending a lot of time hanging around the local general store, which served as a community gathering place. That, he says, is where he got his first taste of the importance of financial planning.
“One day, when I was 10 years old, I overheard a conversation about a family losing their farm to estate taxes,” he said. “The conversation was somber, and everyone was dismayed. At the same time, the old black and white TV in the corner was showing the current stock market numbers, and there was a lot of negative comments about how capital markets were a scam. Yet I couldn’t help but notice other families seemed to avoid losing much larger farms after a death in the family. It seemed obvious to me, even at that age, that someone was helping them create a better strategy.”
Winslow says when he got in his father’s old truck after that moment in the store, he talked about how he wanted to be someone who could help people with these sorts of matters: to help them understand money, structure their income and wealth, and to have a meaningful impact on their lives.
“My father thought I was crazy and an idealist,” he said. “But I never changed, and now I’ve been an advisor for nearly 30 years.”
From Emergence to Independence
Winslow’s career in financial services began in 1996, when he was recruited directly off his college campus by a financial services firm; from there, after an extensive training program, he moved from company to company, including stints at General Electric and a large regional bank – but he eventually realized this large-firm model wasn’t for him.
“I had a lot of problems where I felt I had managers who weren’t as skilled or well-informed as me making decisions that weren’t in the best interest of me and my family, and a few other people I knew felt the same,” he said. “My now-business partner and I wanted to be independent and client-focused, and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Winslow isn’t afraid to share his insights about the challenges of the RIA model, but he’s also quick to point out the benefits of being independent.
“There’s always a lot more risk in going it alone; we’re the people being held accountable, and if we’re not successful, we have no one to blame but ourselves,” he said. “On the other hand, our clients are now our bosses, so we’re able to focus on doing what’s best for them. It’s refreshing, but I know some advisors struggle with that being all on their shoulders.”
“There’s always a lot more risk in going it alone; we’re the people being held accountable, and if we’re not successful, we have no one to blame but ourselves. On the other hand, our clients are now our bosses, so we’re able to focus on doing what’s best for them.”
Because of the small nature of Nabell Winslow – five advisors and professional staff – Winslow says they didn’t even have to close during the COVID-19 pandemic like many other firms. While many of his peers found themselves running dry for business, the firm never once shut down and in fact saw some of the best years of its existence.
Powerful, Applied Knowledge
All that strength, however, is also owed to the fact that the Nabell Winslow team is highly educated – and Winslow says The College’s programs are in large part responsible for their success.
“My original firm was a big supporter of The College, and the people at the top of the production boards were always the ones with multiple designations,” he said. “I knew I wanted to be like them, so I made education my priority. Living in rural North Carolina, how else was I going to get a world-class education in specialized financial planning knowledge without a distance learning partner? The College was always there for me in that way, and with some of the top thought leaders in the world as part of their curriculum.”
“Living in rural North Carolina, how else was I going to get a world-class education in specialized financial planning knowledge without a distance learning partner? The College was always there for me in that way, and with some of the top thought leaders in the world as part of their curriculum.”
Winslow has earned multiple College designations over the years and says he values the knowledge he’s gained from all of them – but perhaps the most powerful and game-changing for his business has been the Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) Program. In his view, the RICP® is one of the best opportunities advisors in the industry have to serve their clients better.
“A lot of advisors are set on going after the ultra-wealthy or business owners, but when you’re working on retirement planning fundamentals like long-term care, it’s doesn’t matter if someone has a few thousand or a few million to retire on – you’re going to make a difference in their lives,” he said. “The RICP® shows you how to put so many techniques and strategies together and create a process, and with the retirement crisis facing America today, it provides an enormous opportunity.”
“The RICP® shows you how to put so many techniques and strategies together and create a process, and with the retirement crisis facing America today, it provides an enormous opportunity.”
Winslow also says that despite some concern among advisors about the fatigue of “alphabet soup” designations, the education financial professionals receive will help them in one hugely important area: standing out to their clients.
“While some designations may be more recognizable than others, what your clients really want to know is that they’re in good hands and that you’ll be thinking about what’s best for them, their family, and their situation,” he said. “They want to see you’re serious about doing right, having an applied, scientific approach to planning, and maintaining down-to-earth communication. Having designations across multiple areas really rounds you out and makes you more confident so you can provide better outcomes and a better client experience.”
Raising the Bar in Financial Services
As a former president of The College’s alumni council, Winslow remains passionate about the power of The College and its community to transform the industry and society through education. He says much of this is incumbent on individual advisors to seek out greater knowledge and opportunities to contribute to benefitting society.
“We need successful advisors to up their game; we need more mentors, more contributions of time and treasure, and to be constantly building our profession through applied financial science,” he said. “Education improves ethics, and improving ethics improves our standing and perception among consumers. We can build on that trust to increase financial literacy and lift everyone up.”
For these reasons, Winslow says he sees The College as uniquely positioned and prepared to take the lead in accomplishing these goals for the industry. He cites the work of The College’s many thought leaders, its Centers of Excellence, and its academic programs to demonstrate his belief that there is “no ceiling” to what can be achieved. However, he also emphasizes that individual advisors are also responsible for helping to build change.
“The success rates of advisors who join supportive teams and are mentored are much higher than ones who don’t. I went it alone and it was very hard; most people who I started with aren’t in the business anymore,” he said. “We need advisors to take responsibility for what they create – when you start getting up in years, you should take the opportunity to have a succession plan to ensure your business continues, for the sake of your clients and employees.”
Finally, Winslow accented a point that’s at the heart of The College’s mission with the FinServe Network and its NextGen Advisory Task Force: the power of young people.
“Lots of people I know in the industry tell me investing in young people is expensive,” he said. “That may be true, but in my experience the effort is well worth the reward.”
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