secondary side business or PT job as financial planner implementing HBPP?

[cabronjames]

have any of you worked as a financial planner as a side business or PT job, implementing the Permanent Portfolio, for consumer customers in your metro area that you can easily physically meet with?

As an outsider to that business/occupation, my guesstimate is that there would be more chance of it as an entrepreneur, than as an employee.  My guesstimate from seeing customer materials from Schwab & Vanguard, is that any financial planning/financial services company is going to be very "stock bug" & "anti-gold bug", & limit the autonomy of its financial planners, at least limiting their planner advising any asset allocation that is <50% stock, or >10% gold.

Would one need to buy a professional liability insurance policy to provide this type of service?  If so, would that insurance cost be reasonable, given a planner who is only doing it on a small-scale PT basis?

I suppose the revenue model could be
1 get authorization to manage the customer's custodian accounts, take something like a 0.2-0.5% annual management ER.  Although implementing & maintaining the HBPP is not rocket science, apparently there are some people that lack the intellectual curiosity/priority to learn about asset allocation/etc, & prefer to pay a planner.

2 pure consulting service hourly fee ($50-100/hr?) to hand-hold the customer in to setting up & maintaining their own custodian accounts.  This service would probably have no or minimal sales, because the type of person willing to manage their accounts themselves, would likely be comfortable learning the "how-tos" for free, via this forum, talking to Vanguard phone support, etc.

Any thoughts?  Thx in advance

[AdamA]

To me, the nice thing about the PP is that this really isn't necessary.  Very easy to do on your own.

[KevinW]

I looked into this a bit myself.  From what I gathered, anyone can hang a shingle as a financial advisor.  AFAIK there's no requirement for a license or certification, so if you can promote yourself well enough to pull in customers, you can charge for giving financial advice.  Of course letters after your name can help convince potential clients that you actually know what you're talking about.  Then again, as far as I know Harry Browne had no degree or certification and yet he became very successful.

Also AFAIK, the finance lobby has made sure that financial service providers have no meaningful legal obligation or liability, aside from the rules against breach of contract and fraud that apply anywhere.  However our society has become so litigious that I would carry liability insurance for any business I start, even if I can't imagine how it would ever attract a lawsuit. (Actually if lawsuits are unlikely then the insurance should be cheap.)

So I think you could do it.  Starting up would involve a lot of self-promotion, and I really don't care for that, so I haven't tried.  I might someday though.

[MediumTex]

Hopefully, no potential clients would learn of this website.

I've always thought that retirees would be a perect market for permanent portfolio investment consulting.

[julian]

You actually do need a series 65 license to legally charge people for investing advice.

[KevinW]

You actually do need a series 65 license to legally charge people for investing advice.

Thanks for the clarification.  None of the sites I read mentioned anything like that. 

[cabronjames]

You actually do need a series 65 license to legally charge people for investing advice.

I thought the cert, if required, was something like CFP - Certified Financial Planner?