The financial advice industry has recently made advice for younger clients a hot topic. Almost every day someone writes an article about how to serve a younger demographic of client. However, almost all of these articles give a flawed reasoning for why this is an important focus point for a financial advisory firm. A typical line of reasoning in an article along these lines is as follows: “Baby boomers have started to pass along their life savings to their heirs, and this process will continue over the next few decades. When done, some $30 trillion will be transferred from one generation to the next. The key for financial advisors is finding a way to capture that wealth-and the loyalty of those soon-to-be-enriched Generation X and Generation Y investors.”
Anyone see a problem with this reasoning? The conclusion to be reached is that younger generations don’t need financial advice right now, but advisors should try to ‘help them along’ until they have more assets for the advisor to manage. This is a common flaw inherent in the financial advice industry: the only people who need financial advice are those with assets, especially those with significant assets!
At Master’s Advisors, we disagree with this assertion. We believe that many young people are starving for pertinent financial planning advice for their stage of life. Unfortunately, the industry still has not found a good way to serve younger generations, because salesmen are too focused on asset management or the sale of financial products. Younger generations need advice rooted in financial planning relevant to them, what we would call financial life planning or financial decision making. Instead, they are bombarded with robo-advisors, insurance salesmen or their parents’ advisors who tell them, “Give me a call when you have $500,000!”
As a client of Master’s, you enter into an ongoing financial planning relationship, rooted in your long-term goals and financial decisions. Instead of talking about the latest and greatest insurance product or predicting where the price of oil will go tomorrow, we will talk about the everyday decisions that you actually face. We will answer the questions you are asking today so that you can be prepared for what comes tomorrow and we will help you manage your wealth so you can live a life of purpose.
