Financial Planning Competency Handbook, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 1 Theory and Practice

Charles R. Chaffin, EdD

CFP Board

This book is designed for the discipline of financial planning—practitioners, faculty, and students. Regardless of discipline, practitioners gain from reconnecting with theory as well as questioning how it may relate to practice and their specific work. Faculty gain from witnessing how their work, whether research or teaching, relates to practice as a whole. Students wishing to join a given profession gain not only from acquiring a basic understanding of the theory associated with a given field, but also from learning, observing, and ultimately demonstrating the necessary skills and abilities associated with current practice.

At the risk of oversimplifying, this book is essentially divided into three parts: What a financial planner should know, what a financial planner does, and a systematic expansion of the body of knowledge for this discipline, incorporating related topics and disciplines. Chapters 2 to 70 outline the topics that encompass the content found within many financial planning preparation programs. The objective within Part One is to outline the topic and then discuss competencies relative to a given area. Competencies may be defined relative to a financial planning classroom or online learning platform or may be relative to the career track of the individual with years of financial planning practice. Just as important, this part outlines the contexts in financial planning practice in which these competencies ...