The aging of America: graying baby boomers, increased longevity create opportunities for CPAs.

AuthorWilder, Brent

CPAs who specialize in personal financial planning and the health care industry are realizing the benefits of an aging population. A record number of Americans require comprehensive blended retirement, long-term care, and estate planning services by a trusted, qualified professional. Simultaneously, CPAs can help long-term care providers maneuver through the myriad of shifting regulations affecting governmental compensation. As interest in financial services continues to grow among CPAs, the opportunity appears ripe to engage the baby boomer generation, and others seeking aging-related asset-planning assistance, in selecting the profession as its resource of choice. With the complexity involved in planning to ensure that retirement, long-term care and estate funding goals work in tandem, CPAs catering to one-stop financial servicing toward retirement and beyond are poised to realize a marketplace advantage. In addition, as the nation's elderly population continues to swell, there will be significant opportunities for CPAs to service the long-term care industry with the unique expertise the profession can offer.

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One CPA, Many Goals

Offering aging-related planning services is not as simple as performing a retirement needs analysis here and establishing an estate trust there. Lifetime goals require a holistic approach in which a CPA is involved in the entire process, whether as primary planner or member of a team of various professional advisers to an individual. Since individual goals in the joint areas of retirement, long-term care and estate planning vary dramatically, there is no one-size-fits-all solution a CPA can offer.

Only focusing on one area of aging-related financial planning needs is like "working in a vacuum," says Peggy Ruhlin, CPA, PFS, CFP and principal with Budros Ruhlin & Roe Inc. of Columbus. "We do comprehensive financial planning here," says Ruhlin, who has practiced as a financial planner for 20 years. Limiting focus permits the client "to dictate what kind of care he needs," she notes. "It's like a patient (with) his head cut wide open,... and he says, 'I want you to look at my finger, I think I have a splinter in it.' We don't feel it's appropriate to practice like that."

"You're trying to plan for that piece of your life that people used to consider to be a very short period of time. (But) with today's health care and longevity of life expectancies, it can equal the amount of time you've spent working," says Mary Eileen Vitale, CPA, CFP, senior principal specializing in financial planning with Howard, Wershbale & Co. of Cleveland. "Some people's goals are to reach a certain place in retirement; some people's goals are to create an estate or manage the estate they already have--and all the other considerations that go on in life," says Vitale, also a CFP, who has been involved in financial planning for about 13 years.

"For some people, estate planning takes precedence over retirement planning (because) they have sufficient assets in hand," says Steven D. Franklin, CPA (inactive), who heads his Cincinnati firm Steven D. Franklin-Financial Advisor. "They're...

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