‘I wanted to assist people like me’

How industry professional found his calling away from traditional retirement planning.

Justin Green’s passion for financial planning manifests in one major way – helping younger generations build their wealth.

Green, the founder of Assist Financial Planning, which is based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, says that while working at a fee-only planning firm, he discovered his true calling.

“I wanted to assist people like me, who didn’t resonate with traditional retirement planning,” he says. “I lost my mom in college, and my dad has been disabled for years. They never did traditional retirement planning, and I wanted to help those facing similar situations.”

In his practice, Green encounters a diverse range of challenges, especially when working with multiple generations. However, it’s the unique circumstances millennials face that result in a plethora of questions – from buying a house to starting a family or venturing into rental properties and entrepreneurship.

“Our generation is fully responsible for our retirement,” Green explains. “There’s not a lot of pensions out there anymore. A lot of millennials don’t have confidence in the Social Security system. I truthfully don’t think that’s going to go anywhere – but there’s a lack of confidence in our generation. They face a lot of student loan debt.”

However, as Green explains, the younger generation have also discovered the booming world of online commerce – with a lot of people launching successful online coaching, marketing, or social media businesses.

“They’ve started to accumulate quite a lot of money,” he said. “But they have no clue what to do with it because they’ve never been taught that in school. And so, some of the challenges are just about navigating life – how to combine finances with a significant other, how to get into rental properties, how to start another business.”

Green is capable of answering these concerns – more so than rogue online influencers who seem to have emerged over the past few years. The unregulated nature of online platforms creates a Wild West scenario, making it harder for him and his fellow advisors to navigate the influx of potentially misleading information.

“I’m not just competing with advisors for attention. There are financial coaches and insurance salesmen on social media pitching advice that I wouldn’t necessarily call good advice,” Green says.
He acknowledges that the technology for investment management is excellent but says younger individuals want more one-on-one access.

“I’m trying a barbell approach with lower- and higher-tier services to make financial planning accessible to those who don’t have a lot of assets but still deserve guidance,” Green says. “That’s the constant battle that I’m trying to figure out – being able to help more individuals who grew up similar to me, maybe come from lower-income backgrounds and are trying to build wealth.”