Are you in the US or UK? We have found in the US that getting insurance for design/build if the owners both have licenses can be a real problem (I assume it's the same for a single person). If you were planning on going this route, I would recommend getting the contractor's license first and then the architecture license (but we ended up having to separate into two different companies for insurance opurposes). I also know of a friend's dad in the UK who is an architect but never officially got licensed becuase he started a construction company and he wouldn't have been able to get insurance. He has done very well for himself - I don't know that it makes much difference to the clients if you are licensed for architecture or not if you have a decent body of work. If you plan on working in an office as an architect, the contractor's license would not be of much use...

Why is getting insurance a problem? What's the problem with having both an architectural license and contractors license? Would there be an issue if you didn't intend to do design build work?

R.A. Rudolph:

I'd like to know more. How come it matters what order you get your licenses? Maybe I should hold off on taking my last ARE test and go to contractor school if I'm planning to do design-build?

There are a couple of things in play here, but basically insurance companies do not want to insure you if you do both design and construction, because they feel they are exposed to all claims, even if you have two policies, one covering E&O and the other commercial general liability. The AIA is doing a real disservice when they distribute information that says it is not uncommon for design/build companies to be able to get insurance. This may be true for very large companies (with maybe 100,000 in premiums for a year, for example), but not for small companies, and especially not for newly licensed people.
What happened to us is that we formed a general partnership with three partners. Myself (licensed architect), my husband (licensed contractor), and a third partner who is not licensed. When my husband registered for his license, he had to give them the company he was going to use the license with, and he listed the partnership.
When we went to apply for general liability insurance (which we want for the construction side, because that is where the claims are more likely to come from, specifically relating to accidents on the job - though it is not mandatory in the state of california), we were told there were two problems. The first is that because the contractors license was less than 2 years old, very few comapnies would be willing to cover us (even though my husband has several years experience working for other contractors). The second was because he had registered under the partnership, the companies would know we did design and not want to cover us. One reason is because our company is named RST Design, the other is that my architecture license shows up when they do the research to see who the company owners are.
I spoke with three insurance brokers at length, one who specializes in contractors general liability and one who specializes in professional liability. They were all unsure how to proceed and had not encountered this issue before, which surprised me.
I also contacted three other brokers listed on the AIA Trust insurance website. Two never called me back, I spoke to the third and she said she would get back to me and never did.
I have concluded that either most small design-build companies do not include a licensed architect, or if people are doing both they have two separate companies. We did try to get the insurance as a single company, however it turned out to be impossible because although there was a large general liability firm who would cover us if we had E&O insurance, we could not get the E&O insurance as a design-build company. We now have two companies (a partnership & corporation), and I am not an officer of the construction company because we did not want my name to show up anywhere.
We now know that most people who get licensed for construction start out as sole proprietors. In our case it would have been much better for us if my husband had a construction company as a sole proprietor, and I had a design company as a sole proprietor.
My experience with the insurance leads me to believe that it would be impossible for a single person who is newly licensed as both a contractor and architect to get liability insurance in the state of California.
We know of another company that does design-build and has no problem with insurance - neither of the partners are licensed. They have also been doing construction for many years, and their company name is officially "xx" construction, but they do business as "xx" design/build. I know they were going to look into getting E&O for the design side, but I don't know if they were successful.
A - I think if you had a contractors license but weren't planning to do design-build and wanted E&O insurance, you would just not tell the insurance company that you had a contractors license. However, if you are working for yourself I don't see the point of having both licenses unless you are planning to work as a general contractor. The test isn't that hard, even easier than the architecture exams, and I don't know that it would mean that much to a potential employer (could be wrong though). If you are planning to do design build, my advice would be to go for the contractor's license and forget about the architecture license - you don't need it for most residential work or the types of things you would be doing as a small design/build company. And if you are planning to partner with someone who has a different license, keep the companies separate!