On the 28th floor of a high-rise in Chicago's South Loop, Cortlon Cofield, owner and financial planner at Cofield Advisors, has to get creative with his millennial clients.
Travel, weddings and future mortgages are among the items they increasingly want to spend their money on, but they may struggle with paying off student loans, along with having little discretionary income as they start their careers.
As a millennial himself, Cofield, 27, says understanding his clients' personalities and their relationship with money helps him devise a plan to help them save without giving up what's most important to them.
Q: Finance can be boring. How do you make millennials care?
A: A really big part of my job is finding a way to make finance creative and fun. If you just tell somebody "retirement plan," they fall asleep. So you have to find really really creative ways to get them interested. I don't use "budgeting," I use "spending plans," which are like, how can you spend your money the best way to live your best life?
Q: What do you think millennials struggle with specifically when it comes to their finances?
A: The biggest thing I've seen is saving, and not because they don't want to save, but because they can't see the person they're saving for. If you're saving for retirement, for a 65-year-old, a 30- or 25-year-old, they can't see that person yet.
Q: What have you learned from this job so far?
