You’re getting great advice, Josh, and I have more suggestions.
This is based on the dozen or so vets I’ve seen pursuing any kind of financial career.
First, don’t lock yourself into a mindset of full CFP (or full ChFC). If you haven’t already, visit your military base’s family financial center and ask the Accredited Financial Counselors how they got their certification, how they spend their time, and likes/dislikes. The office might also have a CFP supervising the program.
Talk with paraplanners. I know the staff at Redeployment Wealth Strategies pretty well, and their feedback can help you decide whether you want to work for the CFP (bringing order out of chaos) or use it to earn while you learn for your chosen certification. Maybe you want a Series 65 license to help your CFP supervisor by doing Roth IRA conversions for clients, or maybe you’d rather simply help clients get organized and focus on their ToDo list. I’d start with contacting Carol Pittner, who’s been happily paraplanning for several years now. She's also my daughter, so I might be biased.
If you can’t do a SkillBridge (that’s mainly an issue of your command, not the program) then keep talking with MFAA advisors about internships or externships regardless of your command. I know Omen Quelvog got tremendous mentoring out of his (not that he needed mentoring), and now he’s running a podcast on the side of his CFP business to help future clients get to know him.
Take a look at Dave Jacobson's Coach Connections. He coaches… coaches… in building their businesses of counseling clients on debt, budgeting, basic financial literacy, and reaching financial goals. Look at his free content and decide whether you'd rather help at that level instead of running an advisory firm. This is closest to what I've been doing for the last 24 years, and I do it for free, but it only supports your budget if you ask people to pay you money.
Cody Garrett has a ton of free content at Measure Twice Planners. Watch the videos to get a feel for what type of client you’d like to serve (yes, military families, but what types of military families?) and what you’d like to do. Note that this link has a free scholarship for servicemembers:
CFP® 90-Day Financial Planning Experience 2026
(That’s not a public link. You have to know to search his site for the military keyword. Contact him to apply, and feel free to tell him Nords says it’s awesome.)
Or just go with the seven-day free experience:
Measure Twice Planners
If you’re not already doing so, subscribe to Michael Kitces’ site. Consume his content however you care-- reading, listening, any videos he puts out. Don’t feel obligated to learn anything as much as get a feel for the topics which resonate with you. Then you’ll know whether you want to be a full-time paraplanner, or a solo CFP, or part of a firm of CFPs, or an educator who’s hired by corporations to help their employees, or… you get the idea. You might be happiest with a lifestyle business.
If you get a job with a big firm, then your experience will focus on sales. Maybe it’ll be services instead of products, but there will be sales. If you work with a small firm then you’ll be selling subscriptions (a monthly fee for regular client meetings) or projects (‘help us plan our Roth IRA conversions’) or add-ons like having another partner doing income-tax returns.
Sales is good if you’re helping your clients figure out the things that will help them solve their problems. Sales is not good if you’re persuading them to buy what you’re paid to sell.
