Wealth Insights

Empowering the Next Generation

How a Regions Wealth Advisor can help young adults meet their financial goals — today and tomorrow

By John Lynn, Midwest Area Wealth Executive

Today's 20- and 30-somethings have a broad range of financial goals — managing student loans, buying a first home, investing for retirement and starting a business, among them. Beyond these immediate concerns, they also may stand to inherit money from older generations in their family, whether that is expected to happen soon or decades from now. To ensure that younger generations become able stewards of the family's money, affluent families are wise to start planning sooner than later for that wealth transfer. Whatever the need, Regions Wealth Advisors can help young adults manage their financial goals today while also becoming more involved in preserving their family's legacy and building their own legacy. Here are three ways that a Wealth Advisor can help:

1. Building a Strong Plan

A solid starting point for young adults is getting a good understanding of their current financial situation. A Wealth Advisor can review their current assets and debts and help them create a customized financial plan.

As clients' financial needs become more complex or as they inherit family assets, a Wealth Advisor can help them evaluate strategies for preserving that wealth and building a more holistic plan. This may include helping them determine how philanthropy fits into their long-term goals, diversify their investment portfolio appropriately and/or assume a larger role in a family business.

2. Starting Family Conversations

It's important for older and younger generations in affluent families to start discussing the wealth transfer before it actually happens to ensure everyone is on the same page. But those can be challenging conversations to manage informally over the dinner table — and many times different family members have different financial priorities.

A Wealth Advisor can facilitate these family meetings — leading discussions, identifying common goals and helping to build consensus.

Multi-generational meetings are especially valuable to younger family members. It's a chance to engage senior family members in a conversation about their wishes for family assets and the legacy they want to leave. At the same time, it's a chance for younger family members to discuss their own goals and how they envision carrying on the torch.

Having a professional intermediary can reduce the emotional toll of such conversations and encourage more understanding among family members.

3. Coordinating a Support Team

Today's young adults have a broad array of financial concerns. Wealth Advisors can bring together a team of experts — including trust advisors, lending advisors, portfolio managers, mortgage loan officers, insurance specialists and commercial banking officers — tailored to each client's unique goals.

Starting to build this advisory team when a client is in their 20s, 30s or 40s helps ensure he or she has a solid financial resource that can evolve and ultimately produce the strongest wealth management plan for the years and decades ahead.