In the U.S. alone, a recent Pew survey revealed that almost half of all Americans don’t feel financially secure.1 Among that group, over 83% worry about a lack of savings and almost 70% worry about not having enough money to retire. The numbers make it clear — people are scared.

I also recommend figuring out a niche as early in your process as you can and try very hard to stick to it, even if that means your growth is a bit slower in the beginning. In order to help from a cash flow perspective, offer some sort of quick start program but reserve your monthly retainer clients for your niche.

Younger clients are dealing with issues like student loans, cash flow, debt management, buying houses, having babies, getting married, getting divorced, starting businesses – all things that Baby Boomer and retired clients generally don’t deal with (and certainly not all at once). Don’t work with next generation clients just because you think

AdvicePay, a payment processing company created specifically to help financial advisors running the monthly retainer model, offers a solution that is easy to use and compliant. Read more about AdvicePay in the next section of this chapter.

If you want to really connect with next-generation clients, or you want to build a pipeline of future affluent clients, that means creating an efficient, profitable way to serve less affluent clients now and grow with them.

But beyond being a strategy for long-term growth and success, serving younger clients provides you with a huge opportunity for growth right now. Financial planning for next-generation clients is such an untapped marketplace! Because Gen X and Gen Y clients have the income but not the wealth or assets to buy a lot of traditional financial planning

We suggest checking out these books and blogs to help flush out your knowledge around financial planning for the next generation and the monthly retainer model: Nerd’s Eye View (https://www.kitces.com) XYPN’s Advisor Blog (http://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/ advisor/blog) Behavior Gap (http://www.behaviorgap.com) So You Want to Be a Financial Planner

When I changed the description to an annual retainer that I bill monthly, that seemed to resonate much better.

Before you conclude your first meeting, be sure to ask if it’s okay to follow up in the future. You can say something like, “I’m going to interview several other people too, and I’d like to come back to you in a month or so to share what I’ve come up with. It would be great if you could tell me if it seems reasonable or not. Would it be okay to