A personal note from Thomas Fee

I'd like to share the evolution of My Money Color, why it is important to Vector Wealth Management and why it could improve your relationship to money.

About two years ago, our staff member Kristen Mueller approached me about developing a program to help young adults get started with managing their finances. My answer at the time was that I would love to, but our clients usually are middle-aged and that is our focus.

At first, I had to say "No"
The reason we focus on people who have been working and accumulating wealth is because we are not a transaction-based company, but rather a fee-based money management firm. This means that we are compensated based on a percentage of our clients' assets, not transactions, so that client needs, not buying and selling, motivate investment decisions. Because we operate under this model, the minimum account size we manage is $500,000 in assets. Since young adults generally do not have a large amount of investment funds, we couldn't focus time on young adult issues.

A few months later, I was being interviewed by Kara McGuire of the Star Tribune for a financial management article. Her story was geared towards adults in their late 20's and early 30's. Sensing my passion around the topic of financial management, she asked why I did not do more pro-bono work with this age group. My reply again was that we could not afford to do too much.

I thought that would be the end, but of course it was not
The seed was planted.

Often when we are hired, our first job is to repair the trust that has been broken by a prior financial relationship, often going back to the early years of our clients' financial lives. As we thought about how to solve this problem, we decided that the only way to do so was to try and develop a program for adults that would help them understand their actions in regard to money management and give suggestions as to how to get started – information that our clients never received at a younger age.

And so, My Money Color was created
We created My Money Color to help people better understand their attitudes toward money by tying behaviors to colors. We believe that if you are clear about your attitudes toward financial matters, you will be better prepared to manage your money in a way that is comfortable while enabling you to achieve your goals.

In the process of developing the concept, we conducted focus groups with young adults to find out their issues around money and investing. Here is what they told us:

1. Whatever program we developed, it had to be clear that there was not an ulterior motive. No trying to sell you something!
2. For the program to be successful we could not take the traditional approach. In other words, rather than discussing financial products, we needed to help young adults develop a healthy understanding about their relationship with money.
3. Socializing is important to young adults. You wanted the concept to be connected to an event that was both fun and informative.

My Money Color is an event for you, not us. What has evolved over a year of planning, focus groups, surveys and investment, is a program that we hope will help direct you down a path towards financial success. Even better, our middle-aged clients like it, too.

Sincerely,

Thomas Fee
Principal, managing partner and founder of Vector Wealth Management, Minneapolis