Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (March 28–29)

CFP Board To Consider Waiving Bachelor's Degree Requirement

(Alec Rich | CityWire)

The CFP Certification is a strenuous undertaking for many entrants to the financial planning profession. For some, earning the CFP Mark is a culmination of their undergraduate education, while other career changers go "back to school" through an approved postsecondary CFP educational provider as a part of their entry to the profession.

Wherever they're starting from, however, practitioners must achieve four competency standards in order to earn their CFP Certification:

1. Education: Obtain a bachelor's degree or higher (in any field), and complete the coursework required by the CFP Board;
2. Exam: Pass a 170-question exam demonstrating comprehensive knowledge and competency;
3. Experience: Gain demonstrable financial planning experience (the number of required hours varies based on the certificant's pathway of choice); and
4. Ethics: Agree to adhere to high ethical and professional standards

Last year, a record-breaking number of candidates took the CFP exam. Given the continual years of increased interest in CFP Certification, the CFP Board formed a Competency Standards Commission to review and assess these standards, in 2023. This has led to some piecemeal changes – such as the recent adjustments to the competency standards requiring that candidates for certification must have experience in at least three of the seven steps of the financial planning process. Most recently, the Board has indicated that it will revisit the requirement that CFP Certificants have a bachelor's degree (which was added as a competency standard in 2001).

The degree requirement has been met with some criticism over the years. On the one hand, some argue that the degree requirement poses an unnecessary barrier to entry, especially for those with many decades of experience, but no degree. On the other hand, others argue that the completion of a bachelor's degree ensures a foundational, well-rounded knowledge and established critical thinking skills – skills which are invaluable to the act of financial planning, even if their original degree is not imminently correlated to their financial planning career.

Ultimately, the reality is that as a profession grows, there is always a tension between ensuring entry for new talent while also evaluating competency and dedication of potential career entrants. And given that the number of financial professionals continues to grow, with more advisors looking to earn their marks or other designations each year, these decisions could heavily impact who is able to enter the profession as the "next generation"!

Advisor Movement Increased By 16% In 2025

(Diana Britton | Wealth Management)

Attracting and retaining great advisor talent is a perpetual priority for growing advisory firms. In particular, there is always a need for experienced financial advisors who can readily manage client relationships and execute complex tasks. And while some firms may develop and train advisors from day one and have them work their way up, many firms also recruit from other firms – differentiating themselves with different compensation, autonomy, and other offerings.

This is reflected in Diamond Consultants' Advisor Transition Report, which reported that firm movement amongst experienced advisors reached a record high in 2025. It estimates that over 11,000 experienced advisors (those with over 3 years of experience) changed firms – a 16.2% increase from the previous year! Notably, the majority of the headcount movement was within independent firm channels, and while independent firms experienced net growth, wirehouses and boutique channels (such as bank advisors) had net losses.

While merger and acquisition activity likely drove some of this attrition, there are other data points which indicate action items for advisory firms looking to attract and retain experienced advisors. According to Kitces Research on Advisor Wellbeing, 5 components in particular can increase senior advisor satisfaction: having access to (at least some degree of) variable compensation; opportunities for equity; a workload that minimizes administrative work and maximizes client-facing time; work/life balance; and a firm culture that aligns with the advisor's values. In short, advisory firms that continually invest in individual advisor's long-term growth in tactile, consistent ways yield great results. Each of these components can work in harmony to encourage good-fit advisors to stay in the long-term.

Yet at the end of the day, firms' resources are limited, so the question posed to them is: which components are most important to ensure alignment with the firm's values and retention goals? Every measurement and reward is an incentive for different behaviors. Advisory firms that can align their goals with the rewards they give their team can yield the growth benefits of having a motivated team… which then allows them to reinvest in the team, further boosting satisfaction!

Advisors Race To Comply With SEC Data Rule As Clock Ticks

(Tracey Longo | Financial Advisor)

Cybersecurity and data protection are essential in advisory firms, given the amount of sensitive client information they house. Cyberattacks and cybersecurity are often a game of cat and mouse, with ever-evolving technology on both sides. In light of this evergreen risk, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued Regulation S-P in May 2024, which requires advisory firms "to adopt written policies and procedures … to address unauthorized access to or use of customer information". Regulation S-P covers both Nonpublic Personal Information (NPI), such as client account numbers or notes from client meetings, and Personally Identifiable Financial Information, such as purchased investment products. (Crucially, even a person's status as a client is categorized as NPI – in other words, telling an unaffiliated third party that a client even is a client without their consent could be considered an unauthorized disclosure of NPI.)

The deadline for large advisory firms (i.e., those with at least $1.5 billion in AUM) to implement this change was December 3, 2025, and the deadline for all other financial institutions under the SEC's purview (generally those with at least $100 million in AUM) will be June 3, 2026. Among the requirements of Regulation S-P is that the firm have procedures to identify breaches in real time, alert their impacted clients in a timely manner, and have a written policy outlining their procedures in response to a potential breach. It is important that the procedures are practical and reflective of actions that the advisory firm can actually take if a data breach actually happened. Additionally, firms need to document their efforts to safeguard client data over time, including vetting third-party providers ahead of time.

In short, while the SEC has emphasized that their core concern is practical safeguards, there is still a considerable onus on advisors to determine what is truly 'practical'. As a starting point, firms can continually update signed advisory agreements which reflect the use of various third-party software. Firms using outsourced support (such as outsourced paraplanners, client support staff, and virtual assistants) will also need policies addressing how client data may be disclosed to and handled by outside contractors. And advisory firms hiring multiple advisors may want to consider which procedures to put in place in the event of an advisor's departure. Ultimately, given the many different types of firm structures and service models there's no cookie-cutter approach to Regulation S-P compliance, so for firms scrambling to get a handle on their data practice, it could be a good time to engage with a compliance consultant – many of which can be found on our new Kitces Advisor Services Map!

Top 5 Tax Strategies Advisors Use With Wealthy Clients

(Cheryl Winokur Munk | Barron's Advisor)

Tax planning can be an effective way for financial advisors to add value for clients, but the particular tax planning issues that clients have – and the methods that advisors adopt to address them – can vary depending on where the client falls on the income and net worth spectrum. Although basic strategies like tax location, tax-loss harvesting, and Roth conversions can be effective no matter the client, others really only make sense once a client reaches a certain level of wealth.

For example, certain investment strategies can be used to generate paper losses that are able to offset a client's other taxable income. One popular strategy in this area is tax-aware long-short investing, which involves borrowing against one's portfolio to add long and short positions. These additional positions have the potential to greatly increase the amount of taxable losses that can be harvested (especially since unlike "long" investments, short positions have a theoretically unlimited potential for loss) while still generating positive returns overall, which can make tax-aware long-short an effective tool for offsetting income from the sale of a business, real estate property, or a highly appreciated security – but it's also generally restricted to accredited investors or qualified purchasers who meet minimum net worth requirements.

High-net-worth clients may also benefit from investing in private placement life insurance or annuity contracts. These are among the few vehicles for tax-deferred growth for individuals who have already maxed out contributions to other tax-deferred plans like IRAs and 401(k)s, which can make them helpful for tax location purchases when a client has investments in, for instance, private debt or non-traded REITs which generate significant taxable income.

There are also many ways that advisors can add value with tax planning for clients who own businesses. Which can include retirement plan considerations (e.g., setting up a cash balance pension plan that can be used to make large tax-deductible retirement contributions for older business owners), business structure decisions (e.g., converting to a C corporation to take advantage of Qualified Small Business Stock rules allowing up to $15 million of gain to be excluded upon sale of the shares), and other ways to minimize gains on the sale of the company (like gifting part of the business the to a Charitable Remainder Trust prior to selling or gifting proceeds to a Donor Advised Fund after the sale).

The key point is that for higher-net-worth clients, tax considerations drive a large variety of financial decisions, from investment strategies to business planning to charitable giving. And although some advisors may be wary of giving "tax advice" (which in most cases is more about being accountable for any liability resulting from the advisor's tax recommendations, not about being disallowed due to the lack of a CPA or EA credential), there's still ample opportunity for advisors to highlight potential strategies and collaborate with their clients' tax professionals to ensure that they're carried out correctly.

QSBS: A Valuable Tax Break For Business Owners Just Got Better

(Bill Cass | Advisor Perspectives)

One of the many provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) of 2025 was the expansion of a significant tax break for owners of Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS). Under IRC Sec. 1202, investors in C corporations who acquire their stock when the corporation is under a certain size and who hold their stock for a certain period of time can exclude a portion of their gain on the stock when they eventually sell it. The various thresholds for company size, holding period length, and the amount of gain that can be excluded have all evolved over time since Sec. 1202 was created in 1993, but the changes under OBBBA represented a significant enhancement.

In a nutshell, OBBBA's changes to the QSBS rules include the following for QSBS shares issued after July 4, 2025:

• The size of C corporations qualifying for QSBS treatment was increased from $50 million of gross assets to $75 million;
• QSBS shareholders are eligible for a 50% gain exclusion after holding their stock for 3 years, a 75% exclusion after 4 years, and a 100% exclusion after 5 years (after the previous rules only allowed the 100% exclusion after 5 years with no partial exclusion for shorter time periods); and
• The maximum amount of capital gain that can be excluded was increased from $10 million to $15 million (or up to 10x the original cost basis of the shares)

From a planning perspective, advisors can help their clients plan for when it's worth it to structure a company as a C corporation rather than a pass-through entity like an LLC or S corporation (which aren't eligible for QSBS treatment), e.g., for a lower-growth, more-profitable company, the pass-through structure might make more sense to avoid double taxation on the company's profits whereas a higher-growth, less-profitable company might make more sense as a C corporation to benefit from the QSBS gain exclusion. And gifting QSBS shares to family members can be a powerful way to extend the benefits of QSBS treatment, since the $15 million gain exclusion limit applies to each individual shareholder.

Ultimately, the high complexity of the QSBS rules make it essential to involve tax and legal professionals in the decision of whether or not to pursue QSBS treatment (and additionally, not all states recognize the Sec. 1202 gain exclusion, including most notably California where many QSBS holders reside). But there's a huge opportunity for advisors who can spot potential QSBS opportunities and at least start the conversation – and help clients connect with other professionals who can move it along – since even though QSBS status only applies to a small number of companies, it can create a massive tax windfall for the founders and investors who qualify for it.

Using Section 351 Exchanges To Tax-Efficiently Reallocate Portfolios With Embedded Gains

(Ben Henry-Moreland and Brent Sullivan | Nerd's Eye View Blog)

Following the long run-up in the US equity markets since the bottom of the 2008–2009 financial crisis, many investors with taxable investment accounts have likely found themselves with high embedded gains in their portfolios. While the gains signal portfolio growth, they also create challenges for ongoing management. Because when it comes time to rebalance the portfolio to its asset allocation targets – or to reallocate the portfolio to a new strategy – any trades made to implement those changes can generate capital gains, resulting in tax consequences for the investor.

Once a portfolio becomes 'locked up' (i.e., unable to be managed without triggering capital gains), investors' options become limited. Charitably inclined investors can donate their appreciated securities, or if the investor doesn't plan to use the portfolio funds in their lifetime, they could simply hold onto the assets for their heirs to benefit from a stepped-up basis after their death. Otherwise, investors would generally just need to accept the drag that taxes will impose on their portfolio performance going forward.

However, one relatively new strategy, the Section 351 exchange (named after IRC Sec. 351), allows some investors to reallocate assets to a more tax-efficient investment vehicle without triggering capital gains tax. The strategy works by pooling the portfolios of multiple investors in a newly created ETF, with the investors receiving ETF shares in return for the assets that they contributed. If the exchange meets the requirements of Section 351, the investors can avoid recognizing any gain on the transaction. And once inside the ETF 'wrapper', assets can be reallocated with no tax impact for the investors via the tax-efficient ETF structure, which makes use of in-kind creation and redemption of shares that also receive tax-deferred treatment. In other words, investors can effectively trade a locked up portfolio for an ETF that can be managed with little or no tax impact at all!

However, to meet the requirements for tax-deferred treatment under Section 351, each investor's portfolio must meet a diversification test, where no single asset can exceed 25% of the portfolio's value and the top five holdings cannot exceed 50% of the overall value. Meaning that while Section 351 exchanges can be helpful for investors who have embedded gains throughout their whole portfolio, they're less useful when most of those gains are concentrated in just one or a handful of individual securities.

There are two main options for advisors who want to use Section 351 exchanges for their own clients. First, a small but steadily growing number of ETF sponsors have launched ETFs that are seeded in-kind by individual investors (which has the benefits of having a professional handle the tax and legal logistics of the exchange but also leaves little choice over how the ETF itself is managed). Alternatively, some advisors take it upon themselves to launch their own ETFs seeded by client funds (which gives them more flexibility over timing and management of the ETFs but also introduces significant complexity in ensuring the exchange is done correctly and recognized by the IRS).

While the options for Section 351 exchanges remain limited today (and some advisors may not yet be comfortable recommending them due to their short track record and the complexity), in time the strategy could become a helpful tool for advisors to shift their clients into more tax-efficient investment strategies – while overcoming the inconvenient tax friction of implementing the strategy to begin with!

From Advisor To Architect: How An RIA Founder's Role Changes As Their Firm Grows

(Ryann Thomas | XYPN)

Advisory firm founders wear many hats at once, especially in a firm's early days. In any given day, an advisory firm founder may be a marketer, compliance officer, technology specialist, and lead financial planner all at once! When a firm is new, this is typically manageable, since the advisor's core challenge is that there are relatively few demands on their time beyond prospecting. However, as the firm grows, it doesn't take long for an advisor's capacity to shrink – and for their role to shift. Ideally, this shift allows the advisor to do more fulfilling work – but ensuring that outcome requires conscious work on the advisor's part as a firm grows. It requires continual discernment over which tasks are worth the advisor's individual efforts, and which can be delegated, simplified, and/or outsourced.

As a starting point, advisors may opt to use personality or work styles assessments. Some assessments, like Working Genius or Kolbe A™ Index, are designed to specifically create language about which types of work energize different individuals. For example, some people enjoy brainstorming, high level work; others enjoy creating processes; others enjoy gritty, detail-oriented tasks. Doing work that plays to an advisor's strengths can create positive momentum over time. And while the advisor 'can' do work that doesn't play to their strengths, it can become draining if that becomes the majority of the advisor's work.

As the advisory firm grows, this becomes a bit of a moving target because of how dramatically the founder's role can shift. However, if founders can keep a discerning eye towards the work they find energizing, they can continually re-optimize their role to focus on more of those tasks. Alternatively, they may need to block time to work through their less exciting tasks – while keeping strong guardrails to ensure that the work gets done without creeping too far into an advisor's personal time. If an advisor can work through less exciting work on a measured, regular basis, it can also help to prevent long-term fatigue – for example, many advisors put off creating and documenting workflows for as long as possible, which then risks more stress and fragmentation in the long-term!

Ultimately, with the higher autonomy of founding a firm also comes more opportunities and challenges. As the firm grows, founders usually become less of an individual contributor and more of a project manager and architect. Sometimes, the advisor may find themselves holding roles that they may enjoy less. But if they keep an eye towards growing the firm and founder role to reflect the founder's unique strengths, while delegating the rest, then they can ultimately create a role and business that is sustainable, energizing, and interesting!

Leadership Capacity Is The Silent Force Determining Your Firm's Future

(Angie Herbers | CityWire)

The issue that "good talent is hard to find" is evergreen. It can be a struggle to create a job description that 'truly' reflects the advisory firm culture, screen for competence and cultural fit, hire and onboard them smoothly, and ultimately delegate their work. All of this, combined with the reality that training good advisors is a multi-year effort, culminates in the oft-discussed "advisor shortage" of next-gen talent. Yet what if the issue was less finding and training the next generation talent… and was more about the capacity of leadership?

Capacity in general – but perhaps especially leadership capacity – is multi-dimensional. Some measurements of capacity are quantitative, like workload capacity. Yet mental and financial capacities are real – and restrictive. Put another way, if leadership lacks the capacity to determine the firm's long-term direction, set the route to get there, and execute on the initiatives needed… then they won't be able to create the growth needed to ensure that the advisors get the structural and strategic support that they need. Or they may be overwhelmed and simply unable to delegate. All of this can manifest as a "talent" problem as firms struggle to retain their new hires, when it's perhaps more accurately a manifestation of a strategic shortfall.

For firms in this quagmire, finding a solution may not be easy, but it is attainable. As a starting point, leaders can evaluate their own capacity – quantitative and qualitative – and where there may be gaps. Quantitative gaps may be solved in the short-term by fractional hires, and qualitative gap may signal a need for coaching or other strategic support. Once leaders have a clear 'north star' of firm culture and vision to aspire towards, then the other pieces of team support, hiring, and growth opportunities begin to fall into place.

Altogether, leadership capacity is often as much about emotional, mental, and financial capacity as it is about pragmatic constraints like time. And the advisory firm with a sense of direction can be appealing to the next generation of talent. By broadcasting and delivering on the firm's long-term vision, firms are more likely to not only attract, but also retain, like-minded and talented advisors!

Unlocking The Untapped Potential Of Support Teams In The Age Of AI

(Matthew Schlueter | Wealth Management)

Historically, financial advisors acted as go-betweens for clients and access to financial markets and products. As technology expanded, public access to products and markets increased, and advisory firms were able to do more. In turn, advisory firms needed to do more to remain competitive, and the expectations for financial planning increased. As technology evolves, the expectation for what constitutes 'great' financial services continues to grow. Today, financial planning is part services, part strategy and execution, and part psychological – and technology plays an even larger role in ensuring that it all gets done. This can create a strain on financial advisors as they strive to deliver better – and more comprehensive – financial advice to their clients.

Yet a core component of achieving all of this complex work on time and up to standard isn't the advisor themselves: it's the support team around them. Client service associates (CSAs), operational staff, and other support staff are key to giving clients faster service, keep processes moving smoothly, and allowing advisors to focus on the unique tasks that they do best. This can have profound impacts on advisors' well-being. According to Kitces Research on What Actually Contributes To Advisor Wellbeing, advisors find administrative, office, and compliance work to be among the least satisfying of work. Advisors see a decline in their satisfaction for every additional hour of administrative work they do, on average, and are more likely to consider leaving their advisory firm altogether.

At the same time, it can be easy to focus 'just' on advisor satisfaction… but in looking to create a top-tier firm, it is important to uniquely recognize and encourage growth within the support staff members themselves. Support staff members who go above and beyond at their role need recognition and opportunities that correlate with the growth they enable in the firm.

In sum, holding proactive growth conversations, continually delegating work (which the advisor dislikes, and the staff member enjoys), and encouraging long-term autonomy within the support team can make a tremendous difference for the team and client experience. This ultimately encourages long-term team retention and incentivizes support staff to master their craft – which creates a positively reinforcing cycle!

The Absurd Odds Of A Perfect NCAA Bracket

(Daniel Wilco | NCAA.com)

Millions of people fill out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket every year, and all too often they find it in shambles by the middle of the first weekend of the tournament. That's understandable for people who don't follow college basketball during the rest of the season and for casual fans who don't follow the ins and outs of 64 different teams. But even obsessive college basketball fans aren't able to get every pick correct. And that's true in the literal sense: In the decades long history of competitive NCAA bracket picking, no one has ever produced a verifiably 100% correct bracket.

Why is this the case? In part, it's due to the randomness of sports. In terms of talent, across the 64 teams in the main tournament field there are a few outliers that put them at the very top, and a few outliers who are "just happy to be invited", but most teams are somewhere in the middle. For most of the matchups of 8-9 and 7-10 seeded teams the odds of either team winning are close to a coin flip, and picking all 8 of those matchups correctly in the first round (plus any similar matchups in each subsequent round) is hard enough. But even in the more lopsided matchups of 11-6, 12-5, and 13-4 teams, the more talented team might win most of the time, but in a single-game elimination format, random factors such as injuries or just a key player having an off night can lead to a major upset.

But the other reason why nobody has yet achieved a perfect NCAA bracket is a matter of sheer probability given the number of games played over the course of the tournament. There are a total of 63 games played (not including the "first four" games that are usually ignored for bracket purposes). If the odds of picking each individual game correctly are 50%, then the odds of picking every game correctly is 0.5⁶³ or 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (i.e., 1 in 9.2 quintillion). On average, people do a little better than 50%, picking around 2/3 of games correctly, which puts the odds closer to 0.67⁶³ or 1 in 124 billion. And the best pickers who pick about 75% of games correctly improve their odds to 0.75⁶³ = 1 in 74.3 billion.

In other words, even with close to 100 million NCAA brackets being created each year, it would still be an anomaly to see a perfect bracket created any time during our lives. But ultimately that's just a reflection of what makes the NCAA basketball tournaments (both men's and women's) so enjoyable: If it were easy enough to predict the winners that a perfect bracket were viable, it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable. It's the randomness – the "madness" in March Madness – that makes it a landmark even on casual sports fans' calendars every year.

What's March Without The Madness? Good For NCAA Business

(Adam Minter | Advisor Perspectives)

People who have been watching NCAA basketball tournaments for many years have likely noticed a shift occurring over that time. Many people can remember some of the exciting "Cinderella" runs of higher-seeded teams into the late rounds of the tournament over the years: #11 seeded George Mason reaching the Final Four in 2006, #10 seeded Davidson reaching the Elite Eight in 2008, and #15 seeded Florida Gulf Coast reaching the Sweet Sixteen in 2013 stand out in my personal memory.

But as many fans have noticed, not as many of those late-round Cinderella runs have occurred in the last few years. Fewer underdog teams are winning, and those that do aren't able to advance as far in the tournament. In large part, this has to do with two major changes that have impacted the sport in recent years: The ability for college athletes to earn money by licensing their "name, image, and likeness" (NIL), and the loosening of the rules governing transfers between schools. Top-performing college athletes are able to maximize their NIL revenue by performing at the top levels with name-brand teams like Duke, Michigan, and Kansas. So when they have a great year playing for a less well-known school, there's an incentive to make a transfer to a school that will increase their visibility and likelihood of earning NIL revenue. As a result, more talent becomes concentrated at the top levels of college basketball, and where a relatively unknown team could once ride a breakout star player to a long NCAA tournament run (like Davidson did with its star Stephen Curry in 2008), in today's game that star is more likely to be playing for one of the name-brand, top-seeded schools.

There's a sense of disappointment from college basketball fans who grew up rooting for the underdog teams to achieve improbable NCAA tournament success (and were occasionally rewarded by a rare Cinderella run), who don't find it as exciting when the only teams that make it to the Final Four are the #1 seeds – i.e., the teams that were favored to win all along. But at the same time it's hard to blame players for maximizing the economic benefits from the talent and hard work that they've put into their collegiate athletic careers – and the reality is that college athletics in the modern era really is a full-time job, and one where some of the most talented athletes in the world weren't allowed to be paid for their labor for many years – especially when very few of those athletes have any certainty of a long professional career. The small handful of years they spend in college might be their biggest chance to earn a life-changing sum of money and set themselves up for future financial security.

The silver lining for college basketball fans, however, is that there's more talent in college basketball today than there ever has been, even if that talent is distributed more towards the top schools. While there may not be as many high-profile underdog upsets, people who appreciate watching great basketball can enjoy some of the best talent that has ever been on an NCAA tournament court. While it's fine to miss the Cinderella runs that were once a fixture of the tournament and are now starting to fade out, the reality is that college basketball is a business, and as with any business, much of that change involves more of those dollars consolidating at the top.

March Madness Is Back! Financial Advisors Discuss How Clients Can Navigate Their NIL Deals

(Gregg Greenberg | InvestmentNews)

Historically, college athletes were treated strictly as amateurs by the NCAA, and as such were forbidden to take any payment in relation to the sports they played – either directly as compensation for playing for a team, or in exchange for lending their name and image to endorse products. Over time, however, as college sports (particularly big-time sports like football and basketball) became moneymaking machines for colleges, TV networks, and their corporate sponsors, the uncomfortable reality became increasingly obvious that all of those dollars were being generated based off the work of student athletes who weren't allowed to be compensated for any of it. And so in 2021, after a Supreme Court ruling against the NCAA's restrictions on non-cash compensation and in the face of numerous states working to enact legislation recognizing students' right to be paid, the NCAA adopted new policies allowing athletes to engage in deals for their name, image, and likeness (NIL) and be compensated for their sponsorships and endorsements.

Today, then, an athlete who achieves success and fame in college sports can earn anywhere from a few thousand to millions of dollars in NIL earnings. Which, given that the athlete is still somewhere between 18 and 22 years old, can be a double-edged sword. In most states, that age is old enough where the student can open and manage their own financial accounts which makes them an "adult" for legal purposes, but at the same time it's unlikely that they've had much real-world experience with money yet – especially the amount of money involved in a major NIL deal. They'll need to pay income and self-employment taxes on those dollars and decide how to save and/or invest it – and figure out the type of lifestyle that they can live in the meantime that doesn't risk blowing through all of the money within a few years (at which point they may be out of college and, unless they're one of the few who are lucky enough to turn pro, unlikely to be able to earn anything else for their athletic talent).

The key point is that, much like a winning lottery ticket, an NIL deal can have the effect of dropping a sizeable amount of money on someone who may or may not be prepared to handle it. It's important for athletes who earn NIL money to have access to a trustworthy resource who can advise them on how to use those funds in a meaningful way, such as funding graduate school education or getting started on retirement savings. Because ultimately, few college athletes (even those who earn NIL money) are likely to turn professional after college, meaning that an NIL deal might be a literal once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – which, if treated with care, can be life-changing by providing a stable financial foundation for the rest of the athlete's (post-college) life.

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We hope you enjoyed the reading! Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts, or send an email to [email protected] to suggest any articles you think would be a good fit for a future column!

In the meantime, if you're interested in more news and information regarding advisor technology, we'd highly recommend checking out Craig Iskowitz's "WealthTech Today" blog.