The Domino Effect: Father and son offer different perspectives on financial planning
While millennials are set to become the largest generation in the workforce, they have already begun thinking about their retirement plans.
Anthony Domino Jr., president of Associated Benefit Consultants LLC, knows this firsthand. He”™s been in the finance industry for 35 years and now runs the second-generation family business.
Earlier this year he brought his son, Nick, into the Rye Brook-based financial planning company. When Anthony advises 20-somethings on their financial planning, he said it is something akin to a parent telling their child to clean their room. When Nick, 25, does it, they see someone who is more at their level.
“What distinguishes us is that Nick is a millennial who can work with other millennials and have the support of a culture and tradition almost 75 years in the making behind him,” said Anthony, whose father founded the company in 1952. “Him saying it is much more readily accepted than me saying it to them.”
Nick brought two years of experience as a life and disability brokerage manager as well as intern experience at The Bulfinch Group and Clarfeld Financial Advisors before joining the family business. Nick said he is using what he”™s learned in asset management and insurance brokerage along with knowledge passed down from his father to advise an expanding client base.
“There are certain people I can”™t speak to because I don”™t have enough gray hair or know enough about Frankie Valli,” he said. “And there are certain people he (Anthony) can”™t speak to because he does have gray hair and doesn”™t know enough about Lady Gaga.”
Some millennials, he said, have a surplus of disposable income to use solely on themselves, and those can be the most challenging to convince planning for their retirement. Others that are married with children, he said, can be easier to sit down with because of the greater financial implications they face.
“Those that believe they”™re poor savers are actually phenomenal savers,” he said. “And a lot of those who believe they”™re great savers aren”™t.”
- Anthony Domino Jr. and Nick Domino
The father-son duo joins its two other Associated Benefit Consultants full-time employees and 300 or so other employees next door at Strategies for Wealth, the financial planning firm it merged with 15 years ago. The firm focuses on pension, profit sharing, employee benefits and deferred compensation as well as focusing on fellow family-owned businesses and transfer of ownership between generations.
Associated Benefit Consultants has occupied its current fourth floor suite at 800 Westchester Ave. for 10 years. It serves clients throughout the tristate region and is an affiliate of National Retirement Planning Actuaries. It advises business owners in employment benefits, buy-sell agreements, business insurance and other strategies, and advises individuals in wealth accumulation, estate planning and debt elimination among other strategies.
In his more than three decades in the industry, Anthony said the biggest change he”™s noticed is the average life expectancy, which has continued to rise later into the 80s and 90s. But what has generally remained constant is the average retirement age of 65.
“You now have a huge issue around longevity planning. You now need that money to last 25 to 30 years, not 10 to 15 years,” Anthony said. “There”™s only so much golf or cribbage you can play and only so many countries you can go visit.”
With the addition of his son to the company, Anthony has now been able to focus on his fellow Baby Boomers and the changing landscape. He said he borrowed a tagline from The Wall Street Journal 35 years ago that he still applies to his line of work: “Because money doesn”™t come with operating instructions.”
Anthony said he has seen a level of eagerness in millennials, who he said want to jump as fast as possible from one position to the next. One of the toughest tasks he previously faced in advising them was to show how to balance for both retirement and the interim.
“When you don”™t follow a formulaic approach you can adjust for all differences that make us individual and unique,” he said. “Our objective is to create as much financial independence as possible.”