About CFP

Welcome to the Florida State University Certificate in Financial Planning

Professional education – where and when you want it – in an interactive online environment. In addition to having access to the best instructors and the highest quality course content, our program will provide you with the skills you need to tap the wealth of resources available to financial planners on the Internet. All students of CFP Board-Registered Program whose initial dates of matriculation (initial enrollment) occur on or after January 1, 2012 are required to take the Capstone Course.

Great Careers Begin With CFP Certification

This program is registered with Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. (CFP Board).

Online Financial Planning Program Goals:

Frequently Asked Questions

Click on the topics below for answers to your frequently asked questions.

Assignments

Q. How long are the courses?

A. Three of the courses are 10 weeks in length (Intro. to Financial Planning, Retirement Planning, and Estate Planning) and the remaining three are 11 weeks in length (Insurance Planning, Investment Planning, and Income Tax Planning). An extra week is added to the courses which fall during the Christmas holiday because no lecture or material is assigned during that week.

Q. I have a thriving business and family obligations. Will I be able to keep up with all the homework and reading assignments?

A. Balancing family and work is always a challenge! The online environment, however, is especially convenient for working professionals. All course requirements can be completed without travel expenses or disruption of work/study schedules — learn in the privacy of your own home at hours most convenient for you. The study requirements are those of any other college level course: the general rule is that you should plan to spend a minimum of two hours of study per week for every one hour of class. Our courses are the equivalent of a three hour course and so you should expect to devote about 10-12 hours of study per week, more or less depending on your experience and desire to make use of all the resources provided.

Q. Will classes be taught at a set time, or will students be able to log on when they have the time to do so?

A. Classes are not taught at a set time of the day. Rather, students work at their own speed and at their own convenience within a structured framework. For example, students should complete the first lecture within the first week, but the lectures will remain up and running so that students can catch up if they are unable to work on a lecture within the prescribed time period.

The only constraints are the two exams, both of which are given electronically over the Internet. Exam #1 must be completed and answers posted anytime within the fifth week and Exam #2 must be completed and answers posted anytime within the tenth week. (Eleventh week for Insurance, Income Tax, and Investments.) Therefore, if a student gets behind, he or she must (at some point) catch up. Keeping students within the synchronized weeks” will help both the students (benefitting from others questions), and the instructor (more uniformity in topics and timing of questions).

Requiring the exams to be taken within specific weeks also provides closure for the course and prevents a student from letting the course become never-ending (and also helps, in some cases, in satisfying an employers requirements for funded/compensated courses).

What are the prices and sources of required textbooks?