We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelly Klingaman, CFP®, RLP® a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kelly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Early in your career, how did you think through the decision of whether to start your own firm or join an established firm?
I considered joining an existing financial planning firm early on since starting a practice was difficult and required a lot of personal capital. The problem? Most financial planning firms are built to serve older clients who have already saved up a lot of assets to invest. I ultimately decided that if I wanted to serve my ideal clients – professional women and dual-income households (particularly millennial families where the woman was building a career in a male-dominated industry) – I would need to design a business from the ground up.
Before launching my boutique financial planning firm, I spent nearly 12 years building a sales & consulting career in the investment management industry at Dimensional Fund Advisors, a large asset manager whose long-term approach to investing relies on financial science instead of attempting to guess where markets are going next. I grew up with the firm from my entry-level position as an intern in 2010 while I was still finishing my undergrad BBA degree in Finance at the University of Texas. Most recently, I was a Regional Director and Vice President on the sales team and Lead Chair of the Women’s Inclusion Network for employees.
In my role on the sales team, I got the chance to educate hundreds of independent financial advisors about how to invest their clients’ hard-earned savings using the principles of evidence-based investing. Through this work, there’s something else I came to understand during my time at Dimensional – how important it is for individuals and families to partner with an independent, fee-only advisor to bring them better financial peace of mind through all of life’s experiences.
These financial planners didn’t just help invest their clients’ money – that was really just a means to an end – they helped families strategically use their financial resources to live their ideal lives, free of worry and stress.
I was intrigued by that work, so I ended up studying for and completing my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification in 2014. The CFP® mark is table stakes if you want to be an effective financial planner due to the rigorous education and exam on the front end and ongoing hours of education required to maintain the designation each year. Once I had my CFP® designation, I was convinced that “when I grew up,” I wanted to be a financial planner too.
In the meantime, as a young professional, I loved the fast-paced environment on a sales team. True, I was usually one of the very few women in a room (if not the only one) since I worked in a very male-dominated industry, but it didn’t bother me too much. Then as my career progressed and home life evolved, there were many times when I began to face unconscious biases or felt isolated.
This was especially true going through my first pregnancy and then attempting to figure out parenting in a dual-career household where I was also the main breadwinner. There were no women with kids in sales leadership roles that I could look to for advice as I became a “working mom,” and it is still one of the toughest transitions I’ve ever made.
Most of my clients and colleagues were men with a partner who stayed home. They could easily compartmentalize everything in their personal lives to appear more focused and dedicated on the job. For me, everything bled together, and some things just didn’t get prioritized. I saw this happen to my successful female peers as well.
This made me realize that professional women’s personal finances probably never get the attention they deserve. What’s worse is the financial services industry tends to neglect this need because it wasn’t designed with women in mind. A big factor: most financial advisors are men. The CFP Board recently reported that only 23.4% of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals are women, a number that has hovered steadily around this point for over a decade.
I recall that in my own life, I didn’t know if I was using my financial resources effectively to enjoy the journey ahead. Was I spending/saving/investing in a way that allowed me to live my most fulfilled life? And what about my family? My young kids, and a husband who works full-time too: I felt like I was neglecting to protect what we were building and didn’t know my financial blind spots.
All of this uncertainty, and I was a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional – trained to help others answer these questions. It just shows how tough it is to make objective decisions about your money.
One thing was clear: my peers in the corporate world – other professional women – deserved financial guidance from someone that understood what a day in their life felt like. They deserved the option to partner with someone who could save them time, boost their financial confidence and help them proactively grow their wealth.
I contemplated this huge gap in financial services long enough to start imagining how I might build a business to help solve the problem. For professional women, in particular, I understood their weight and wanted to offer them relief, namely the organization and process around managing their financial life.
Suppose more financial planners catered specifically to successful women in their early to mid-career. In that case, they’d have a better chance of optimizing their high-income years to build long-term, sustainable wealth. More importantly, these women would be free to focus more on themselves – their career path, marriage, kids, friendships, or whatever they value most.
I continued to get more involved in the financial planning community and discovered an entire movement of financial planners closer to my age who were starting their own businesses to serve their ideal clients, especially individuals and families who were still in their wealth-building years.
I was drawn in – could I do that too? Is this how I could become a financial planner? For the first time in my life, I considered what it might look like to take a huge, calculated risk, forgo the security of my predictable salary, and pursue what I was truly most passionate about.
The most refreshing part about considering a huge change like this was that I didn’t have to do it alone – so many financial planners who had taken the plunge to start their businesses before me offered advice and encouragement to help me decide which path to take forward.
Many of those planners were women, some with small kids just like me, and they’ve remained my close friends and mentors over the years. To them, it wasn’t a question of “if” I should start my own financial planning business but “when?”
My husband also gave me his full support in chasing this dream. I’m sure he secretly thought I was nuts for wanting to give up my career as a sales professional. Still, deep down, he knew that my heart and passion were already invested in launching an independent business to serve families like ours.
In the five years that followed, my husband and I set aside a good amount of our take-home pay into a savings account that I lovingly titled “The Dream.” The plan was for me to launch my own financial planning firm once we had enough of a cushion to account for my lost salary while I worked to bring on clients and build from scratch.
In the same time frame, we had our second baby and shifted routines as we transitioned to being a dual-career household that was now a family of four.
The ultimate strain on my plan to leave my stable job came when the global pandemic hit about a year after my second child was born. The highs and lows of pandemic parenting, homeschooling, and virtual school, coupled with the uncertainty of everything going on in the world, was enough to scare me out of launching a business entirely.
There were plenty of practical reasons to play it safe and stick to the corporate track. At Dimensional, I had been made a Vice President and was running business development for my team, which I really enjoyed. I even had the opportunity to serve as the Lead Chair of the newly-formed Women’s Inclusion Network for employees, which felt like really important work that we were all doing as part of broader diversity and inclusion efforts at the firm.
It would be easy to stay where I was, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone who decides that’s what’s best for them and their family. I ultimately figured out that the right thing for me, and the example I knew I wanted to set for my kiddos, was to get uncomfortable and try something different with my life moving forward.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hopefully, my last answer gave enough background on how I got into my industry and launched my business.
The service I provide is Ongoing Financial Planning with Investment Management. Before anything else, I work with clients to clarify what they value most and help them envision all the possibilities that would define their most fulfilled life. We continually revisit this as dreams become a reality and new possibilities emerge. My 4-meeting new client onboarding process takes about 3-6 months to set the foundation for ongoing financial planning and investment management work.
Building on the foundational work of year one, we shift to the ongoing planning phase and meet twice a year in the spring and fall. This allows us to monitor and adjust the many details of your financial strategy as life happens and priorities evolve. I continue to get to know clients on a deeper level and make sure their financial resources are used in pursuit of what they value most.
Throughout the year, I’ll also proactively check in via email to review important planning and investment details at a micro level. If something pressing is on my client’s mind and they need advice, I want to be their first point of contact. The same goes for any life changes, big or small. My clients have unlimited email support from me, so I encourage them to reach out whenever they have questions, and we’ll schedule additional calls or meetings as needed to work through it.
We will cover most of the following topics continuously as life happens, priorities shift, and what’s important to someone evolves:
Cash Flow Analysis: income, expenses, and creating a values-based spending plan, organizing your money flow, automating your savings plan (“pay yourself first”), building an emergency fund, debt management, funding large expenses, lines of credit
Insurance & Risk Management: reviewing existing policies and benefits (homeowners, auto, etc.), identifying your need for term life, disability, or umbrella insurance policies and helping you find an insurance broker
Investment Planning: assessing your tolerance for investment risk, creating your investment policy statement that guides your investments, review of existing accounts, consolidation and organization of accounts in one place that I manage, advice on employer-sponsored plans (401k, 403b, etc.) that I can’t directly manage, set-up, maintenance, and rebalancing across accounts using strategic asset allocation and proper diversification
Equity Compensation: helping you manage your concentrated stock wealth, such as incentive stock options, non-qualified stock options, and restricted stock units, in a tax-efficient way
Income Tax Planning: deductions and credits, reviewing cost basis, tax loss harvesting, loss carryforwards, potential Roth conversions, optimizing employer-sponsored retirement savings plans, IRAs, health savings accounts, etc. to lower taxable income, helping you find a trusted accountant for tax prep
Estate Planning: reviewing will, power of attorney, living will, health care proxy, trusts and beneficiary designations and helping you find an estate planning attorney to draw up any documents you still need
Helping loved ones and charitable giving: education funding for children (529 plans, UGMAs/UTMAs), elderly care, Roth IRAs for children, tax-efficient charitable giving, how to teach your kids about money and be good stewards of wealth
Real Estate Planning: should you rent vs. buy, should you pay off your mortgage vs. invest more, should you refinance, taking out a home equity line of credit, evaluating rental properties
Organization & Security: learn best practices to keep your important documents organized and secure sensitive information to avoid identity theft
Your Career: employee benefits optimization, evaluating job offers, negotiation strategies, aligning with career coaches, and networking with industry peers
The problems I solve for clients:
1) I help clients free up their time; we organize their financial life into a manageable system and create an action plan for future success with my expert guidance at each step. This frees up precious time and lightens their mental load.
2) I help clients gain financial confidence; we reorient their finances to align with what they value most. I provide jargon-free education behind my recommendations so that clients feel assured about every financial decision.
3) I help clients proactively grow their wealth with objective advice and attention to detail. This allows us to look out for their blindspots and capitalize on financial opportunities during their high-income years.
What sets me apart from others is my extensive background in investment management, my experience focusing on the needs of women investors (professional women specifically), and because I am a REAL financial advisor. I can break those down a little further here…
My work in investment management is important because the stock market and investing is confusing, stressful, and maybe even scary to many investors. I invest my client’s money in a way that they can understand that’s also backed by financial science, and I empower clients with that knowledge throughout our time working together. I also take discretion of client assets and manage their day-to-day intricacies because I know they don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to do it themselves.
My work on the topic of women investors (and the fact that I am also a professional women investor with my own financial planner!) says to prospective clients “I know the financial services industry doesn’t cater well to women investors. Professional women specifically have particular values, attitudes, needs and perspectives that should be welcomed and respected, and unfortunately, most advisors are men who don’t understand where we are coming from because they don’t have our lived experiences. I’m building a business that is designed entirely around the needs of professional women in their early-to-mid-career to help them anticipate challenges and roadblocks and capitalize on opportunities ahead of them.
In my tenure at Dimensional I helped to run webcasts and workshops on these specific topics, essentially training other financial planners on how to better serve women. I also worked with my fellow coworkers through the Women’s Inclusion Network to foster an inclusive work environment, provide a collective voice around shared issues and concerns, promote a respectful workplace, promote enterprise diversity initiatives, and advance career-developing skills through mentorship and sponsorship for members.
What it means to work with a REAL financial advisor: Through KKFP I am set up as an independent, fee-only fiduciary, which means I am legally required and obligated to act in the client’s best interest when providing financial advice. Since I’m independent, I’m not affiliated with a larger brokerage firm, bank or insurance company so there are no product sales and no commissions/kickbacks for anything I recommend. My fees are very transparent – the only way I make money is directly from clients; they pay me a flat fee for the advice and guidance they receive through KKFP’s financial planning process, and this fee also covers the direct management of their investment accounts. I am also part of esteemed organizations such as the XY Planning Network (XYPN), the Fee-Only Network, and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA).
My designations: I’ve held the CFP®/CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation since 2014; leading up to receiving the CFP® marks required a rigorous process of taking and passing 6 classes covering the major financial planning topics, writing a lengthy case study that combined knowledge across all planning topics into a real-world situation, and then studying for roughly 300 hours in preparation for the 6-hour CFP® exam. Once you pass the exam and receive your marks, you must uphold the CFP® Board’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct and receive 30 hours of financial planning continuing education every two years. In 2022, I completed the Registered Life Planner® (RLP®) designation through the Kinder Institute of Life Planning which requires the completion of three training courses (roughly 100+ hours of training and mentorship). Life Planning connects the dots between our financial realities and the lives we long to live. The Kinder Institute’s tools and trainings make it possible for financial planners and individuals alike to cultivate a Life Plan designed to deliver the most meaningful kind of freedom: The freedom to pursue life’s passions wherever they may lead (much of this I’ve discussed in my service/process outline above).
Unfortunately, the financial services industry is not regulated like other professional services industries, so anyone can use the term “financial advisor” when they’re probably just a salesperson pushing a product to make a quick buck from commissions. Investors must start to educate themselves on the nuances of our industry to ensure they aren’t being swindled; clients need to ask exactly how a financial planner gets paid to determine if they are truly going to look out for the best interest of the client or not.
I am most proud that my husband and I purposely lived well below our means to save aggressively so that I could launch my business. Yet, we could still prioritize what we care most about: experiences over material things. I’m excited to guide my clients toward their dreams and help them use their money effectively to get them there.
The main things I want potential clients/followers to know about me & my work:
I’ve heard too many stories from my female peers about how their path to career success within their respective companies is fraught with roadblocks that men, on average, never face. If these women happen to be mothers on top of building a professional career, everything seems to weigh even heavier on them. Already I’ve seen women pivot and leave their successful positions because it wasn’t worth bearing the burden of balancing their personal and professional lives in such a way any longer.
I started this business to come alongside these women and their families to meet them where they are, show them that I understand the weight they carry, and offer them relief in stabilizing some important pillars of their life, namely the organization and process around managing their financial life and being proactive rather than reactive in order to create opportunities for building intentional wealth into the future. If I can streamline everything and anticipate risks and create opportunity for growth within these families, I know that these women will be free to focus more on themselves – their career path, their marriage, their kids, their friendships, whatever they value. I ultimately just really want that stability and relief for other professional working women so they feel empowered and excited about building long-term wealth instead of drained and exhausted at the thought of tackling it on their own.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
When I was 25-26 years old, my husband and I were trying to get pregnant for the first time. I was also on track for a major promotion at work within the next 12-18 months. The promotion would require a heavier travel schedule, leaving me torn about balancing my personal and professional life. How could I become a mom and start to grow our family when there was no flexibility around job requirements to keep my career moving forward?
A few months before we found out we were indeed pregnant with our first child, one of my long-time mentors at my company offered me a position on his small team. I’d be doing similar work, but the travel requirements were minimal. He also told me that he wanted me to work toward my next big promotion within the next six months vs. the timeline I imagined on my current team. I was weary of the move – his team was newer and they were still finding their footing and respect within the sale group as a whole, whereas the team I would be leaving had a lot of influence and clout across the group.
I was grateful to talk through my options with this mentor, and his belief in my abilities to bring a new edge to his team was encouraging because it wasn’t necessarily something I believed about myself yet. I decided that what was best for my family was to make this lateral move to have more flexibility during this season of life when I wanted to become a mom and balance that with my career ambitions too.
This ended up being the best decision I could’ve made for my future growth and eventual business launch. I would not have received the training and experience that gave me the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship had I not taken a risk, one in which I thought might threaten the respect I’d built within the sales team at the time. I ended up moving into a position that allowed me to take more impactful business risks, be more creative, and grow in my ability to think strategically.
I remember being worried about what other people would think of me. At the time, it felt like I was taking a step back, giving up on the career dreams I had for myself. I’m thankful the voices of my supporters were louder than that voice inside my head. The move turned out to be exactly what I needed to become who I am today.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
The most effective strategy has been creating content that comes from an authentic and deeply personal place. I utilize both writing and video content in my approach to digital marketing, and I’ve avoided using canned, generic content. Instead, I’ve tried to find MY unique voice in how I write and speak to the world.
I talk about personal finance topics that have specific meaning in my life with my husband and kids, and I weave in our “why” as often as possible. Why do we spend money the way that we do? What purpose does money serve in our lives? What do we value individually and as a family? I’ve gotten a lot of consistent feedback that the everyday stories I share are something that my ideal clients can easily relate to. It draws them in deeper to explore the more technical side of my service offering. My approach to showing up online seems to resonate with the right people, and I’m sure those who don’t connect with my story wouldn’t be my ideal clients anyways. I don’t want to be all things to all people, and this approach has freed me from worrying about what I might be missing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kkfp.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kkfinancialplanning/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-klingaman/
Image Credits
All photos by Austin photographer Paige Newton https://www.paigenewton.com/ https://www.instagram.com/paigenphoto/