I have a professional designation, CLU, Chartered Life Underwriter, granted by the American College. I earned it in 1980 after four years of study while working full time. My father earned it in 1960. It was founded at Wharton in 1927 by Dr. Solomon Huebner. At tha time very few people had investment advisors brokers accountants or attorneys. Life insurance agents provided the most financial advice anyone ever received. Dr. Huebner thought those agents should have a financial education. And oh, brother, did they give us an education: income taxes, accounting, classical economics, social insurance; Ten 3 credit hour courses of upper division business subjects. It effectively added a business major to my anthropology degree.

Then as soon as I finished it they created the Chartered Financial Consultant, ChFC, designation. They did not yet have undergraduate courses available for it, so they had us take 6 courses in the Master’s degree program: two in Advanced Estate Planning, one in Employee Benefit Planning and Financial Counseling, and two in Advanced Pension Planning. I credit a huge amount of my success to the education I received from the American College.

Our professional society is dedicated towards continuing education and maintaining the ethical and educational standards of the designations. In the 1980s I spent a lot of time as a volunteer moving up the ranks and leadership nationally. In the 1990s I was elected to the national board of directors. My father was in Israel when I was nominated and when I called him up his comment was:

“That’s nice.”

What??? In the July issue of the professional journal they have a page with the pictures of the existing board of directors and executive committee and the nominees. One day I entered Mom and Dad’s house. On the wet bar entering the back of the house from the patio is a pile of photocopies of that page. I asked my mom what the heck this was about.

“No one gets in the house without your Father giving them one of those!”

He couldn’t tell ME he was proud of my nomination? Even funnier, the local chapter of our professional society had a monthly newsletter. By then I was living in Tallahassee. A friend sent me a copy. To preface this, while it WAS an election to the Board and Executive Committee, in the decades the Society had existed (now called the Society of Financial Professionals) no one had ever lost an election. What did the Miani chapter say in the article on the front cover that month?

“Let’s hope for Leons’s sake that Phil is not the first person in the history of our society to lose the election!”

Very funny. In another post I have spoken of what I consider my feminist credentials. The year I was elected a woman was the national president of our society. I later learned that in the 1950’s we had previously elected a woman as our President. You can see why I was proud of what we stood for in the financial world.

So why this post? For the humor of it. You can imagine how hard it might be to become successful in a career involving SELLING an intangible??? One day the national society’s monthly newsletter had an article profiling an agency where the grandfather, son and grandson were ALL CLU’s. Monica was still only three years old. I showed it to Janis.

“Wouldn’t that be something if Monica followed in our footsteps?”

Janis’s response?

“I’ll kill you!”