Over the long weekend, a few conversations rekindled my curiosity about gaining a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation. Now, I really don’t want to be a financial planner. I’m quite happy with my current career right now. I primarily want the CFP knowledge to help me manage my own finances, but to be honest I might be willing to pay a little extra to put the initials after my name.

According to the , the three main steps are (1) the education requirement, (2) passing the exam, and (3) the 3-year experience requirement. The education requirement can be fulfilled by a $2,000 that takes 6-8 weeks, or can be skipped if you are a CFA, CPA, ChFC, or CLU already. The exam costs $595 to take. The 3-year experience requirement is the most difficult for me, as I won’t have time to rack up 6,000 hours of “experience in the financial planning process” unless writing this blog counts. Annual renewal fees are $325 a year.

What if I just want the education at the lowest cost? There are several online CFP Board-Registered programs each with their own curriculum, but they tend to share the same six overall course topics. Both and make their textbook lists public. 6 courses

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Business owners are naturally protective of their sales information. What they don’t realize is that sharing that data with customers can be a great way to engender goodwill and boost sales. You probably sit down once a year to review your employees’ performance, why not have an annual review meeting with your customers?

As a consultant who helps companies improve their sales operations, I once worked with a client that supplied New England medical centers treating an especially life-threatening disease. One of these medical centers had the potential to become a major customer, but sales were lower than expected.

What amazed me was that this medical supply company had more impressive sales data and analytics than any other client I had ever had. But the managers were very reluctant to share this information for fear that officials at the medical center would react negatively to the data. What happened instead was that the top executive they met there couldn’t keep her eyes off the information. She kept asking for more.

My client’s sales began to climb after the meeting. Sharing sales data with customers makes you a business partner, not merely a vendor.

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The Onion shares their for the ever-important retirement question:

Some quick online research reveals that what I thought was just another funny option is all too real – lotto tickets. According to a 1999 survey by the Consumer Federation of America, 40% of Americans with incomes between $25,000 and $35,000 thought their best shot at paying for their retirement was winning the lottery. Along the same lines, a recent has low-income households spending a whopping 9% of their annual income on lottery tickets.

I wonder what would happen if on a certain number of the losing scratch-off cards, scratching off the latex ink won you free personal finance and budget management services.

In most states that have them, lotteries are justified because the revenues goes towards education. But what I’ve seen happen is every $1 that comes from the lottery just means the government can cut $1 of funding from somewhere else. The quality of education stays the same, if not worse. Acc

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An interesting new trend in the healthcare industry is primary care that patients buy directly from physicians, thereby removing insurance companies from the process and lowering costs for both the doctor and the patient.

Built upon the idea of concierge medical practices, doctors using this innovative model provide day-to-day care to patients who pay a monthly fee for the service. For $49-$130 a month patients receive preventive care, basic tests, treatment for chronic conditions, and non-life-threatening emergency services like X-rays and stitches. Patients are also able to get advice from doctors via e-mail, phone or video messaging, thereby saving both parties time and reducing the number of unnecessary office visits.

What sets practices like the Seattle-area Qliance Medical Group or Silicon Valley-based MedLion, two of the leaders in this emerging care strategy, apart from traditional concierge practices is their fees. Direct healthcare was once the sole domain of the rich, given the thousands of dollars a month in fees charged by doctors who saw relatively few patients.

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IMPORTANT update, 3pm 7 July 2011

Since writing last night, I’ve watched further news and slept (or not slept) on this, plus taken on board the overwhelming volume and tone of your responses. I’ve spoken with the paper’s editor this morning and asked that instead of running my column (filed last week) I have some space to write something of my feelings on what’s happened and the fact that it mustn’t be allowed to happen again – to which he’s agreed.

I’ve also decided to take some time to think this through calmly and listen to the facts as they develop – while I do so I won’t be writing for the paper.

Update Note 4:50pm 7 July

I’ve just read a statement from News International that the News of the World will print its last edition on Sunday see http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/31458/ – staggering. Obviously that may well change the fact that I was going to write a piece about the nasty events and impact on journalism. Yet I’ve not be able to get through to anyone there yet.

Ori

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Ready for the next new investing start-up idea? It’s “customer stock ownership plans” from . Basically, companies encourage consumers to buy shares of their stock with only three clicks of the mouse, in the hopes that this will ownership will garner loyalty (get it?) and thus higher sales. Think Apple, where shareholders of are more likely to buy MacBooks. [Via ]

You’ll be able to buy in increments of as little as $10 via fractional shares, all with no transaction fees at all (they’re covered by the company). Loyal3 hasn’t actually announced the stocks available, but one would guess they’d be brand name makers of consumer goods like clothing, electronics, or food.

My initial impression is lukewarm. Sounds like an easier version of DRIPs. But the stocks will be likely limited to visible brand names, so it won’t really provide investors with actual diversification. Otherwise, I can’t think of any brand I like that much. I have a hard time being emotionally attached to a corporation. The one thing I d

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What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. House now or later? 2. Blender recommendation 3. Long term care insurance question 4. Enjoying music at low cost 5. Protecting a family property 6. Finding the right home 7. Birthdays and charities 8. Keeping food 9. Graduate school planning 10. Found money

Several people have asked me recently if I believe in ghosts. I can honestly say that I’m unsure. I won’t say that I disbelieve in them, nor will I say that I absolutely believe in them.

I will say that I believe that there are a lot of natural phenomena here on Earth that we don’t understand and don’t have any sort of a good explanation for. I’ve witnessed several extremely odd things in my life that have no good explanation as far as I could ever tell.

I am probably willing to believe in a broader definition of ghosts, in that there is some sort of natural visual phenomenon that appears to take on something of a human form. If you start talking about reincarnation and spirits, then I’m far more doubtful.

Q1: House now or later? I’m entering un

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Peter Relan walks around. A lot. On any given day, he’ll spend 70 to 80 percent of his time pacing the halls of the Burlingame, Calif., headquarters of YouWeb, the social gaming incubator he started in 2007. “I don’t have an office,” Relan says, by way of apology, before plunking down on a couch in a sparsely furnished meeting room at YouWeb, housed in a nondescript six-story building an easy 15-minute drive south of San Francisco. But there’s a big smile on his face when he offers the explanation: “I practice MBWA–management by wandering around.”

Here’s how Relan ambles: He’ll chat with employees, meet with his entrepreneurs-in-residence , play pool in the billiards room and answer a lot of e-mails on his iPhone–which he digs out of his pocket, helpfully tilting the screen to show the evidence: subject lines for a tide of messages.

“Do you have any contacts at Sony?” reads one halfway down. Relan pauses, a picture of casual concentration–glasses, loafers, navy blue cardigan and light-wash jeans–before his usual boyish enthusiasm takes over. “It just so happens that I do know someone,” he says.

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Houston – July Copper futures closed up 10 cents Thursday at $4.43 per pound, making exploration companies like Red Metal Resources Ltd. cheer, especially considering the company just added its fourth Chilean property to its stable.

In a press release issued Wednesday, Red Metal Resources President Caitlin Jeffs said, “We believe that we have assembled one of the most attractive, best-positioned exploration packages in the belt.”

Mz Caitlin, a geologist who also heads up a 30-man geological consulting firm in Thunderbay, ON, was referring to the prolific Candelaria Iron Oxide Copper-Gold belt in Chile’s III Region, which is home to Freeport-McMoRan’s Candelaria Mine, Anglo American’s Mantoverde Mine, Teck’s Relincho Project and Andacollo Mine and Far West’s Santo Domingo deposit. Those five projects are reported to hold nearly 2.5 billion ounces in copper and copper equivalent.

While that might produce a complacent outlook towards RMES, you might look closer as the ‘Five’ surround Caitlin’s company’s properties.

Calling its latest acquisition a “highly prospective exploration project in the Candelaria IOCG belt”, Caitlin revealed the terms as being reasonable and well within Red Metal Resources current capital reach, having raised $2 million in April through a private placement managed by Brimberg & Company of New York.

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