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We've had Certified Financial Planners helping us make financial decisions ever since 1985. That's when the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards began certification. They set down the kind of experience and educational background you had to have. They designed an examination that you had to pass, too. All over the world today, to anyone who wishes to practice a career helping people with their money, a certified financial planner certification is an essential.

Now it isn't just personal-finance advisors who get a certified financial planner certification. Insurance agents, estate planners, stockbrokers and tax professionals among others, all find this a useful qualification to add to their resume. Just to have a CFP on your business card can often help. But how do you become one?

There isn't any particular course of study that you need to put yourself through to gain a certified financial professional certification. You just need a four-year degree of one kind or another. However, your college program needs to include a few courses to do with investment planning, tax planning and estate planning, retirement planning, financial planning and insurance planning.

When you think “charitable organization”, chances are that you think of this wonderful place of high ideals, caring individuals and wonderful charitable work. For the most part, this wouldn't be an incorrect idea – as general impressions go. These places need money to run though. And American charity at fund raisers and other places that charities usually go to for funds, has been dropping at a catastrophic 4% rate in the years since the recession started. When one out of ten charities in the country are at risk of shutting down for want of funds, it's time to compromise on a few those principles. And that's what they're doing.

It isn't much of a secret anymore, but since regular fundraisers don't raise as much money anymore, the charities are going to the telemarketing companies to try to tap a few additional sources of funds. The problem with that of course is that telemarketers charge unconscionably high fees for their services – 60%, usually. How do the charities disclose this in their balance sheets without looking like irresponsible money wasters? They lie by calling them “educational expenses” or something like that.