CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Certification Education Program
Program Courses
On-Campus Program Courses and Class Schedule
Complete the certificate in 14 to 18 months by:
Taking more than one course at a time at least once during the program such as Income Tax, Estate or Retirement Planning. (Taking more than two courses per term is not recommended.)
Taking the Introduction and Investment course by themselves (i.e. do not double up).
Taking the Financial Plan Development and Presentation course by itself at the end of the program. (Per CFP Board no exceptions will be made.)
Program Schedule: Courses are held according to the schedule below, but may be subject to change.
Registration tips:
Click on a course link to register.
To see the dates and prices for multiple courses, filter by term.
320-0 Financial Plan Development and Presentation (Capstone) *Only offered during the Fall and Spring terms. Please plan your schedule with this in mind.
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Sample Course Plans
.
Standard
Fall Start
YEAR 1
YEAR 2
FALL
Intro
Estate
WINTER
Insurance
Retirement
SPRING
Income Tax
Financial Plan
SUMMER
Investment
[July Exam]
Spring Start
YEAR 1
YEAR 2
SPRING
Intro
Estate
SUMMER
Insurance
Retirement
FALL
Income Tax
Financial Plan
WINTER
Investment
[March Exam]
Accelerated
Fall Start
YEAR 1
YEAR 2
FALL
Intro
Financial Plan
WINTER
Insurance + Retirement
[March Exam]
SPRING
Income Tax + Estate
SUMMER
Investment
Spring Start
YEAR 1
YEAR 2
SPRING
Intro
Financial Plan
SUMMER
Insurance + Retirement
[July Exam]
FALL
Income Tax + Estate
WINTER
Investment
PDP courses are offered online, remotely, and on-campus. Please refer to the
Schedule Notes for course delivery information.
IMPORTANT:
The registration process for all professional development courses requires you
to register for your course and
update your emergency contact information
in CAESAR, Northwestern University's Student Enterprise System.
Registering for multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a mandatory,
integrated step to access Northwestern University systems. Northwestern
uses the DUO Mobile smartphone application for multi-factor authentication.
Steps to install the DUO Mobile App can be found
here.
Once you have
completed the MFA registration process, you will have access to systems
like CAESAR and CANVAS, Northwestern’s Learning Management System.
*It is a student’s responsibility to ensure access to Northwestern systems
after registering for a PDP course. If you do not have a smartphone capable of
downloading and using the DUO Mobile app, you may want to consider a
YubiKey
that can be purchased from several online retailers.
Planning and managing federal estate and gift taxation is one of
the most overlooked yet critical elements of a financial plan. Part
of this process involves understanding the perspectives of the many
parties involved and their related concerns; that is, the
perspectives of descendants, fiduciaries, estates, trust
beneficiaries, donors and recipients. This course examines the
important estate-planning issues from all of these perspectives.
Beginning with the fundamentals of federal estate and gift
taxation, the process of developing an estate plan is presented
through a discussion of a variety of mechanisms - such as
incapacity planning, qualified interest trusts, generation
skipping, estate planning weaknesses, property ownership forms,
intestacy and will substitutes, how to satisfy liquidity needs, and
specific exclusion and valuation techniques that reduce the size of
the gross estate. There are many facets to proper estate planning,
and this course will touch on all of the essential elements
necessary for consideration by the financial planner. Charitable,
intrafamilial, postmortem and business-transfer planning techniques
that play an important part in estate planning are addressed, and
additional focus is placed on the implications of gifts and
bequests, including lifetime gifting and coordination of the
unified credit with marital deduction. Other issues include tax
consequences of estate planning techniques, revocable and
irrevocable trusts (including bypass and marital deduction trusts),
life insurance, federal estate tax, probate and more. This
course is offered during the fall and spring terms.
Registered students can access their online
course site here. An activated NetID and
password is required for login. *Please note: It may take up to
24-hours for registered students to be added to the online course
platform.
For more information, please contact profdev@northwestern.edu.
Course Materials :
Estate Planning 13th Edition, Money-Education (Dalton-Langdon). Available in electronic or physical copy at www.money-education.com or via phone at 1-888-295-6023.
