If you’re interested in retirement planning as a way to improve your own results you may have wondered whether you can then share your knowledge in a formal way. This is certainly possible—there are courses that help people learn about retirement, and they are led by specialists in the field.

Most of the educators who teach courses on retirement planning were once certified financial planners (CFPs). If you want to build a career in retirement planning, they can show you the way.

Retirement Educators, Planners, and Advisors

Professional advice on retirement is often provided by a retirement planner. A retirement planner is a financial planner who specializes in helping people prepare a retirement plan that will make them financially secure.

As the name implies, these professionals focus on what the client’s needs will be once they stop working. This means ensuring that retirees have enough income to live comfortably and addressing other requirements such as estate planning and insurance needs.

Some financial planners specialize in just one area of finance, such as retirement, but others are generalists. The most commonly held professional designation for planners is certified financial planner (CFP), issued by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board), the nonprofit organization that administers the CFP exam.

Financial Planner vs. Financial Advisor

A financial advisor is qualified to give advice on retirement topics. “Financial advisor” is a much broader term than financial planner and can refer to nearly any professional, including a CFP, who advises people on their finances.

This is a confusing but important distinction: Every financial planner is a financial advisor, but not every financial advisor is a financial planner. Both financial planners and advisors are, in a sense, educators as well. They help individuals understand their retirement needs and how they can achieve them.

Many CFPs teach courses on retirement planning—delivering the same advice in a classroom as they would to individuals.

Sharing Your Retirement Expertise

There are a number of ways in which to become a retirement educator.

• Apply for a position at a company that offers this service. This could be a huge financial company like Fidelity or Vanguard or a smaller local firm that specializes in retirement advice. You’ll probably need a college degree to get the job but the company might pay for you to get further training and even gain CFP certification.
• Pay for your own specialized education and become a freelance financial planner specializing in retirement. You can even self-fund the courses required to become a CFP, although they can be expensive. This is a fairly high-risk route—you’ll be essentially running your own business, with the usual startup hazards.
• A less advisable option is to simply start dispensing retirement advice. Nothing is stopping you from sharing your expertise on retirement planning online or with your friends and colleagues. However, you should be aware that managing other people's money without the requisite qualifications can be very risky.
  

The Bottom Line

The best courses on retirement planning are taught by educators with specialist knowledge of retirement accounts, strategies, and taxes. Most of these educators will have spent some time working as financial planners or advisors, and they may hold professional certifications like the CFP qualification. 

The best way to become a retirement educator is to become a retirement planner or advisor first. This is likely to involve landing a job with a company that provides retirement advice and is willing to train you to do the same.