Steve Grasso
If you grew up smack in the heart of working-class America like I did, the word wealth is something akin to a mirage in the Sahara Desert. You know it's out there, but you have no idea what it looks, feels and smells like. Word association brings you images from a scandolous bunch of teens living the good life on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, old dudes in monocles at swanky art galas looking at a bizarre piece of art which looks like something from my five-year old son's room and Scrooge McDuck diving into a pile of gold coins (how does he not break his wings and beak by the way?). If you're like me, your take on the wealth is pretty simple: it just isn't for us. Sure, we can work hard, earn a decent living and make sure there's food on the table for our families. We can even save up and take a vacation or get dressed to the nines and attend one of these ridiculously over-priced and weird art balls. The bottom line is there's no way we could ever be them, amirite?
So why, you might be thinking to yourself, are you writing a blog about wealth, with it being such a foreign topic to you, Mr. Blog-writer-guy? Well, thank you for asking, blog-reader-person; allow me to explain.
Three summers ago, my life changed. I was a teacher at a great school in a very solidly achieving school district. Within this school district, there are a portion of the students who come from very low income households and in turn struggle in school. I worked with small groups of students and taught them study habits, reading skills and most importantly gave them a "safe" place where they could work at their own pace outside of the standard classroom settting. I also provided in many cases, an adult mentor whom they could consult about events taking place beyond the school walls. It was a very rewarding job, although stressful behind the scenes in that my position was somewhat volitile being a government-funded position. Regardless of how good of a job I was doing with the kids (they always improved from year to year FYI), the funding for the position could be cut and with that, my job would be gone, Keyser Soze-style.
I was hit by Verbal Kent July of 2013, and with just over a month until the beginning of the next school year (read: all the desirable positions already filled), I landed in an inner city school in a similar job; without the successful infrastructure of the school I worked at previously and 25-32 kids per class as opposed to a max of 15. Oh, it was also an hour commute each way. I made it through the year with most of my sanity but without a few personal items stolen from inside my desk. On the bright side, a majority of the students improved, and I stepped away from that position in hopes of a new horizon. Fast forward through a year of subsitute teaching at a variety of schools, and a handful of final interviews only to get turned away in favor of someone right out of college (read: $20,000 cheaper to hire), I was approached by a good friend who was a partner in ownership of a Fee-Only Financial Planning firm called Artifex Financial Group out of Dayton, OH.
His interest in me was surprising being that my experience with finanical planning and investments was limited to "um, I've been paying into STRS since I started teaching," and "my papaw bought a bunch of Home Depot stock in the `80s when he noticed they were popping up along I-75 on trips to and from Florida". He explained to me that Fee-Only Financial Planning is actually all about educating clients and coaching people through situations, and I immediately saw the correlation. It was a leap of faith on both ends of the relationship, being that my professional career had been based on teaching stinky 12-year old boys how to spot foreshadowing and flesh out the importance of setting in a story. Given that all of Artifex's planners have been in the business for 20 years or more (they're all truly experts in case you were wondering), they could teach me the mechanics of the business. More importantly, the skills that I had honed over the last six years as a teacher are what would make me a fit in the Artifex team. My job would be to learn from and observe the masters whilst utilizing my creative-teacher gene to help grow the business from a customer relations and marketing standpoint.
To answer the initial question of what I am doing now writing I a blog about wealth, I will point you to my re-education and career transitional period. I noticed a few things about the business of financial planning and investment management as a whole:
- First, many of our clients are older and heading for or are already retired. In other words, Gen X'ers and Millenials are either not finding Fee-Only Planners or don't know really understand the value in what we do.
- Second, if people my age, myself included, were following a plan similar to what we offer, they would be in a much better place when the time comes to start thinking about retirement.
- Third, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there around my age making good money but don't have a plan for it and are therefore pissing their money into the wind.
- Lastly, we have a HUGE opportunity to help a lot of people and their families right NOW! We need to get mobile; we need a program that is available at people's fingertips; we need an online program; we need WEALTH CLUB.
Be sure to join our FREE mailing list for Part II of Who We are and Where We're Going next week.
