Another slow weekend around here. I can’t think of anything to do really do this weekend… Well there’s that one little called the Financial Blogger Conference that I think every single person is attending!

Let’s jump into the links as most personal finance bloggers descent upon Chicago.

1. PT Money. Check out every article on this blog and show your support for Phil!

2. I’m In No Hurry To Pay Down My Mortgage @ Canadian Finance Blog.

3. 5 Lessons I Learned From My First Job @ Christian PF.

4. Why You Will Never Get Rich Cutting Your Budget @ Budgets Are Sexy.

5. 5 Tips for Networking on a Budget @ Experiglot.

6. 10 Ways To Stay Calm In These Crazy Markets @ IS.

7. Dividend Growth Index @ TDGB.

8. The Big List of Little Savings That Go a Long Way @ GPT.

9. How to Set Up an Online Store  @ PIN.

10. How To Buy Stock With or Without a Broker @ Good Financial Cents.

11. Do I Need a Credit Card? @ Studenomics.

12. A Practical Way To Estimate And Budget For Home Maintenance Costs @ Money Smarts Blog.

13. Financial Strategy #5: Maintain Your Own Personal Bailout Fund @ FMF.

14. Inheritance? Forget it. 5 Reasons why Gen X & Y won’t Get Inheritances @ 20-Something Finance.

15. When Was the Last Time You Unplugged? @ Corbett Barr.

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What’s the thing about blogging that most of us forget? What do all new, want-to-be, and even established bloggers forget?

We all tend to forget that you need to love to write.

Blogging is all about delivering value. The only real way to deliver value is to consistently pump out amazing content that helps solve problems. This is as simple as the equation that eating well + exercise= weight loss. We all know what we need to do. We just forget sometimes or lose track of what’s important. How does this happen?

Somewhere between dealing with advertisers, networking with other bloggers, turning down lame guest posts, and “optimizing” our pages we tend to forget that we need to love how to write. I’ve certainly been guilty of this far too many times. There are just so many time-consuming behind-the-scenes tasks that come with blogging that it gets really easy to get lost and forget about the actual writing. We find ourselves worrying about such minute things and we forget what the readers care about the most.

Readers care about checking out compelling articles and maybe learning a thing or two. Readers don’t care about how optimized our pages are or how many advertiser emails we respond to.

Why do you need to love to write? Because all popular and successful blogs have one thing in common. That one thing is super-useful content that’s written in that blogger’s voice. If you don’t love to write then your readers and your peers will notice this right away. Whenever I go through phases where I don’t feel like writing I notice that my traffic goes down and the interaction on my blog decreases. This is likely because people realize that I’m not delivering A content. When I get back into things and put everything into my articles I notice that the amount of links goes up, I get more emails, I receive more comments on the posts, and traffic goes up. It sure seems to pay off to take my writing seriously.

You can argue that you don’t have to love how to write. Sure you can do video posts, podcasts, and other interactive stuff. The question is: how long can you keep it up for? How many videos/podcasts can you do before you need to finally write something?

How can your love for writing impact your income? If you write quality articles your traffic is bound to go up. You’re bound to get more links and more eyeballs. Where the eyeballs go, the advertising dollars follow. The more popular your blog gets, the more advertising offers that will come your way. That’s more income coming in. That’s more money for you. If you don’t feel like writing or if you publish C content you’ll get C results. This means less advertising, less readers, less feedback, and less interaction. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen too many times to me and my peers.

How can you love to write? By blogging about a topic that you already think about all of the time. I always think about personal finance, entrepreneurship, psychology, and getting more out of life. This is why I write on the topic. It’s also why I don’t write about certain lucrative topics out there that I just don’t care about. Writing about a topic that I care about allows me to think of tons of different post ideas on a daily basis. This allows me to love to write.

What’s the point of all of this? It doesn’t matter if you plan on starting a blog, are new to blogging, or have been blogging since the Stone Ages, you need to love to write. If not, then maybe blogging isn’t for you.

I’m challenging all bloggers to share how much time they have spent on writing vs. other blogging tasks. Please share your answers here with us.

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The book the 4-Hour Workweek (by Tim Ferriss) has been mentioned on this site before. It’s a book with polarizing view points. Some completely love it. Others think that it’s a complete scam. I guess you could say that I fall somewhere in the middle. There are parts of the book that completely changed the way I think. Then there are aspects of the book that just didn’t resonate with me. At the end of the day, I wanted to share what I learned from the 4-Hour Workweek book:

You can always outsource.

There are simply some tasks that are either really time consuming or we just don’t want to engage in. I learned from this book that outsourcing can be done at almost every level (even the dating world). You can outsource your email, mundane daily tasks, shopping, customer service, etc. The benefit to all of this outsourcing is that you have more time to focus on your business or to do whatever it is that you enjoy doing. Of course the flip side is that you lose money. This then leads to a vital calculation– how and what can you save by outsourcing out certain tasks.

Cut out time-sucks.

There are many activities in a typical day that do nothing more than just waste our time. Anything from a co-worker that goes on forever or a meaningless task that takes hours to complete. My favorite time-suck to cut out involved responding to pointless emails. Anyone that runs a site or has a fairly public email understands how it feels to receive dozens of useless emails. Instead of taking the time to respond to each email, they can either be: deleted, given a standard response, or completely filtered out. Email is just one of the many time-sucks that needs to be cut out. As bad as it made me feel initially, I’ve come to accept that I engage in many time-consuming activities on a typical day that I need to cut out. What time-suck are you working on cutting out of your schedule?

There’s stuff you can’t control.

I used to get overwhelmed with the excruciating minutiae of everyday life. Now I’ve learned to accept that there are many things in life that I simply just can’t control. I can’t control the news. I can’t control decisions made by higher powers. I can’t control what major corporations do. The book suggest that if you can’t act upon something then you should just let it be. Of course there are times where your power may seem minimal but you should still try. However, more often than not we often spend too much time worrying about stuff that we can’t control. We need to learn to let it go.

Time is highly valuable.

When we thinking about making lots of money, we often neglect the massive amounts of time involved. I have a friend that makes really good money. Unfortunately, he’s pretty much always working. He works two jobs and they consume the majority of his time. His bank account is nicely padded, but at what cost? Are you willing to give up all of your free time? I’m certainly not. After reading this book I’ve started to highly value my time. Time away from activities that bring me pleasure and from loved ones needs to be justified. I’m no longer willing to spend all of my time on work. There needs to be more to life.

What have you learned from the 4-Hour Workweek? Do you view the book as a scam or has it helped you out? Please share with us.

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At the beginning of the year, I wrote about my 4 financial goals for 2010. I had selected the following:

#1 Pay off the loan from my parents (done!)

#2 Increase my online income by 50% (work in progress)

#3 Finish in the top 10 financial planners in Montreal (work in progress)

#4 Increase my base salary by 15% (this is where my challenge was).

When I reviewed my financial goals in June, I told you that I just got a huge raise of…drum roll…..1.67%! This was basically just enough to cover inflation (not really in fact since the 1.67% salary raise is taxed!). Therefore, I was pretty far away from my 15% raise this year.

Why Did I Think I Was Able To Get a 15% Raise During A Recession?

I’d say that no matter what the economy looks like, no matter if your employer is hiring or laying off people, there are key employees that will keep the company, the department or the team alive. In my branch, I am the key employee right now as I am enjoying my best years as a financial planner. I don’t mind working hard and I don’t mind spending hours making cold calls and delivering my sales pitch.

At the beginning of the year, I looked at where I wanted to be in 12 months. The objective this year was pretty simple; get a bigger portfolio in order to get a bigger pay check. When I looked at the bigger portfolios in the downtown area, I noticed that they were making about 15% more than me. Therefore, I thought that I could get a 15% raise within the next 12 months.

How to get a salary raise after a raise?

This one is not as simple as knocking on your boss’ door. In fact, if you are not the top producer in your department, I doubt that the following method would work out. It requires a lot of tact and can be quite risky if you abuse it.

#1 Make yourself interesting to other managers

During the past 18 months, I have spent a lot of time talking to other managers so they get to know me and so they remember my name and my face . It was very important to build my network slowly but surely to make sure I can make a quick move if necessary.

#2 Bring in the numbers

Having a good network will get you far, but bringing in the numbers and becoming the key employee in your department will get you exactly where you want to be. So for the past 2 years, I have worked very hard to bring in solid numbers and demonstrate consistency. A good year means nothing in a lot of fields (just think about a hockey player who scores 30 goals in his rookie season… he might never do it again!). So most managers won’t agree to give you a high pay check right after a good year, they want to hire someone with a good work ethic and that is able to do consistent effort. Those are the true keys to bring the numbers.

#3 Apply for a bigger job

During this summer, there was an open position for a financial planner with a bigger book downtown. Due to my great network, I was able to know it before it was posted (I knew the guy that was leaving) and I due to my past results, I was called for an interview.

#4 Make sure you boss knows you applied

Right after I sent my resume for the job (not before because they will think that you’re bluffing), I went into my boss’ office and told him about it. I was straight forward and he wasn’t surprised by my decision.

#5 Open the door for negotiation

This is where the fun starts. When I told him that I applied and that I wanted to work in another branch, I opened the door for him to make a counter offer. I told him that I was super happy where I work (which is true) and that I would prefer to stay here. However, making more money was the real reason why I applied because my wife is at home and I have 2 kids (here again, a bit sentimental but always use the truth!).

#6 Set a time frame

I also told him that if he was able to match my salary, I would not go to my interview which was scheduled in 2 days. Therefore, he had 48 hours to think about it knowing that if I had to go to the interview, chances are that I would switch branches.

You got the raise? Then 2 more things you need to do:

Once I got my raise, there are 2 important things I will do:

#1 shut my mouth (just telling people that you had a nice agreement and that you are happy is sufficient, you don’t want to open Pandora’s box)

#2 shut my mouth (during the upcoming years, I won’t have much room to negotiation for a higher salary. This is why I will have to shut my mouth and know the limit of generosity from my manager ).

So I’m done with 2 of my 4 objectives for the year! I still have 4 months to complete my goals for this year .

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Since I wrote my CFP vs CFA post and I explained that being a CFP was one of the best jobs in the world, I have received several questions about the route to follow to become a Certified Financial Planner. Some folks want to know which classes to take, others about how to build a good book of business and one of the questions that keeps coming back is “Should I start in a bank or with a revenue of 100% commissions?”.

Before I start with my thoughts on the topic, I must admit that I have never worked with a revenue of 100% commissions. I have worked with several independent advisors and brokers but I have never experienced it myself (so if you are an independent advisor and want to add your thoughts, you are welcome to do so!). And with that said, salary or commission, what is best to start with?

Pros of working as a CFP in a bank (or as a salaried employee).

What I like about working for a bank is the hybrid compensation model. We have a decent base salary but our pay check can become very interesting with our year end bonus. What is nice is that I can have a few weeks where I don’t close any deals and still not have to worry about my mortgage payment and my ability to feed my family. My base income will cover for all my financial needs and my bonus will cover all the extras.

Banks are usually a good place to start with as a certified financial planner. You are given a book and learn how to deal with clients that are already “warm” to the bank. It’s easier to grow your book since you will have “free rides” when clients will just come in to invest or to take a mortgage with “their bank”.

Cons of working as a CFP in a bank

As is the case with any other regular job, you are not your own boss. You do not own your book of clients and you can’t make your own schedule. You can’t sell what you want to sell and you have sales objectives that don’t necessarily jive with your personality. You will also have to do tasks that are not always related your functions (like opening accounts, dealing with banking transaction fees, selling Visa cards, etc.).

The last downside of working as a CFP in a bank is probably the potential for salary increases. You rapidly reach their highest bracket and you are sitting on it until you get a promotion for another type of job. While you have a pretty good salary, you can’t dream of making more than 150K with most banks.

Pros of working as an 100% commission CFP

Sky is the limit in terms of income . I have met several people making more than 500K/year. In addition to that, once you have built your portfolio of clients, you benefit from a steady flow of income in trailer fees every year. Therefore, there are advisors making 50K-100k per year just by waking up in the morning.

You are also your own boss. This means two awesome things: #1 you make your own schedule and nobody is watching you. #2 you can deduct tons of expenses before you pay income taxes .

You usually have a coach or director that will teach you how “real life” works. I think you have the opportunity to learn a lot faster since you are on your own and you need to make a lot of mistakes to succeed.

Cons of working as a 100% commission CFP

Now that I have hyped it up, I will drag you down to earth; 100% commission based CFP is a very hard job. The turnover for new advisors is 80% in their first year. The average income after a year is 24K. And I won’t tell you how many hours, nights and weekends you need to do in order to make 30K the first year! The sad truth is that it’s not made for everybody.

People don’t like to be followed and asked to explain their results. On the other hand, most people don’t do much if they are not required to it by their supervisor. If you are not highly self-driven, forget about being on 100% commission.

Since you don’t have a book of clients, you have to build it. It is ten times harder to get an appointment and close a deal when the person doesn’t even know you exist.

One last killer of being on a commission basis is that your income is not stable. Therefore, when you have a good month, it’s not time to celebrate but time to put money aside and make sure it is available for the bad months.

Final thoughts on salary and commission based CFP jobs

I think people are made to do either one of them (and sometimes both!). Fear would be the #1 factor why top salaried performers don’t make the jump and procrastination would be the #1 factor for 100% commission CFP who don’t make the cut.

I have made a chart with the comparison of pros and cons of both type of CFP positions. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any other questions about the best job of the world .

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