Jonathan Kolmetz holds licenses to provide both financial advice and mental health therapy. But the group of adults that could most benefit from his advice -- young adults just forming their own households -- often don't seek it out. That may be because they can't afford advice, but it could also be because they hadn't met a financial advisor who wanted to work with them.
"Between 18 and 30, you're going to make more significant financial planning decisions than you will make from 30 to 60, but you generally aren't showing up in the financial planning practice until you're 30," says Kolmetz, the owner of both Oaks Wealth Management and Oaks Counseling Associates in Houston.
Handling student loans, getting married, buying a home, and deciding how many children to have are among the major financial planning decisions young parents or those considering becoming parents may need to make -- often almost simultaneously. But at the same time people face such significant decisions they are unlikely to encounter wealth management firms that want to talk with them, says Kolmetz.
"All of these things happen in a very compressed way and at the exact time," he says. But at that point, the traditional wealth management industry wouldn't provide access to financial planning, "because you did not have investible net worth."
That's changing. Now, some boutique, fee-only firms are now building practices around clients at this phase of life and confronting years characterized by expensive child care and life insurance needs.
Cole Williams, of Vessel Financial Planning, runs a Texas practice "focused on high earners in their 30s and 40s," and says new parents now make up about 30% of his clients.
Many arrive with sticker shock at the cost of child-care, plus a fear that if they don't start saving "from day one," they'll fall too far behind to fund college. He says some others worry that college "as we know it today won't exist by the time their kid graduates." That can paralyze them from saving at all. He also says young parents walk into his office with wildly different advice on life insurance.
Nev Kraguljevic, principal at Elephant Corner Financial in Burlington, Vt., says the typical arc is that expecting parents experience excitement about the baby, quickly followed by overwhelm as they try to get their arms around their new responsibilities. Financial planning can play an important role in reducing anxiety in such cases.
The most immediate concern, he says, tends to be daycare costs. Some parents weigh daycare against one parent pausing work for a while, given the expense. Next up, they worry about the cost of education. Estate planning, by contrast, is "one piece very few think about" until someone raises it.
Kraguljevic says practices targeting young families like his aren't the norm: "The space as a whole tends to focus more on the older population that is nearing or in retirement, leaving younger individuals and growing families grossly underserved."
Kolmetz, the Texas-based financial advisor and mental health counselor, warns that many new parents still rely on someone selling something or an emotionally charged relationship for advice on babies and money.
"Mom, Dad, peers, and Instagram, tell you what to do, why to do it, and how to do it, but their advice is not rooted in financial planning," he says.
To help such clients, Kolmetz set up an hourly rate -- $250 -- as well as a separate tier priced at 1.5 times gross household income, with no minimum net worth and no investible assets required. He says that group remains a small set of his clients.
Grandparents' role. Some larger firms are finding success at helping new parents plan for the future by serving the grandparents.
Deana Healy, Ameriprise Financial's vice president of financial planning and advice, says clients often introduce their advisor to their adult children. One reason parents do this is to pass along their financial values.
For the next generation, their motivation for engaging their parents' advisor may be to learn more about family assets they may inherit in the future, or be able to tap sooner if needed for a child's education or a down payment on a home.
Healy says some millennials don't want to wait for an inheritance to find out what's actually coming to them. "What we do see is that boomer parents are a little more guarded about the assets that they do have," she says.
For firms, creating a relationship with an existing client's children can be useful to avoid future client defections.
Cerulli Associates' research on high-net-worth practices found that family meetings and regular communication are the next-gen retention strategy firms rate most effective -- used by 81% of top firms. Structured next-gen educational support is close behind at 59%.
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 25, 2026 15:56 ET (19:56 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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