Chelsea Ransom-Cooper, co-founder and chief financial planning officer of Zenith Wealth Partners, tailors the way she does business to serve an economically diverse client set.
As a result, Ransom-Cooper and her colleagues are supporting a client base that is both younger and more racially and ethnically diverse than the typical financial planning firm. This, in turn, has given her some deep insights into what it takes to persuade younger people with many competing financial goals to commit to saving for retirement.
As Ransom-Cooper shared during a recent episode of ThinkAdvisor’s Ask the Retirement Expert podcast series, Zenith offers four main planning services. One offering is traditional comprehensive wealth planning on a monthly or quarterly retainer. Next, the firm offers project-based engagements, through which the firm crafts a one-time financial plan for a client.
Next is the potential to engage an advisor for ad hoc hourly consultations, and finally, the firm offers traditional investment management services for clients who might already have a financial plan in place but need support with portfolio management.
“We set the firm up this way intentionally because we want to meet clients where they are today,” Ransom-Cooper explained. “From our founding almost five years ago, we wanted to have that flexibility. We want to be able to help people at different life stages or with different economic circumstances.”
Here are excerpts from the conversation:
THINKADVISOR: When you think across the client base and the services you're providing to a younger and more diverse set of clients, what does “retirement planning” mean to you?
CHELSEA RANSOM-COOPER: It’s kind of a funny question actually since our core client demographic is people in their early 30s to early 50s. So, we’re really on this long and winding journey with them as they’re planning for retirement.
But, that said, every time I mention the word “retirement” to a younger client, I see the snooze. I see their eyes glaze over and the lack of connection to the question.
So then, I always ask them, “Do you want to eventually retire?” Everyone says that, yes, of course they do, but it’s just too far away to worry about right now. The other thing they do is push back on the old-school concept of retirement as just a hard stop and a clean break.
People are almost unanimous in saying they see “retirement” more as achieving a work-optional lifestyle where they are doing work that really motivates and inspires them. It’s not work that they have to do to cover the bills. It’s work that brings joy. That has consistently been the message.
So they don't want to, you know, kind of just kick their feet up and then move to Florida and spend every day on the beach. That may be a component of “retirement,” but that's not all of it. They really want us to help them figure out how they can continuously have meaning and impact and live intentionally.
Do they struggle with making sacrifices today to pursue that long-term vision?
It can be, especially when a person has that mentality that retirement is something to worry about in your 50s and 60s.
As the advisor, we have to help them understand how important it is to start saving early and to stay invested over the long term to reach the point where a work-optional lifestyle is a reality. We need to be making smart decisions all along the way to get to that threshold.
