Decker & Associates, Inc., began in the 1980s as an atypical financial planning firm. I was a CLU, ChFC, and MSFS, and I believed that individuals valued and deserved objective advice from experienced financial professionals without conflicts of interest. Another way of saying “conflicts” was that D&A did not sell products—insurance, mutual funds, REITs, limited partnerships, index funds, or annuities. We also didn’t pursue AUMs—assets under management—where we would charge a management fee, and declare our firm as “fee only.”
D&A charged clients an hourly or fixed fee to develop financial plans. Everyone in the newly emerging financial service industry thought I was crazy to give up commission sales. I would spend hours interviewing clients, gathering data, analyzing insurance, investments, balance sheets, and, most importantly, understanding their goals and the things they valued the most. I would then type a 300+ page tome using an electric typewriter and present the report to their “family board of directors.”.Most of our clients’ goals were to accumulate enough funds to be financially secure, be financially independent by age 50, and be able to send their children to college and graduate, law, or medical school. Our clients came from referrals from other clients, with many being medical school professors, entrepreneurs, doctors, and company executives. I was learning the importance of planning to achieve goals.
A few years later, my husband, Ken Decker, CPA-PFS, CFP, left a Big Eight accounting firm, as an international tax manager. He joined Decker & Associates. I asked Ken to please be President, and take care of our marketing, accounting, and admin. We added tax planning, tax preparation estate, and international planning services, and our clients asked us to do workshops for their companies – recruiting, retention, relocation, rightsizing, retirement, and specialty workshops.
Twenty years flew by as Ken and I traveled the world working together. We were in New Jersey, counseling pharmacy employees on relocating to South San Francisco. We would meet at the Newark Airport to fly home when the planes flew into the World Trade Center. On the way driving home, we decided to create a non-profit and provide workshops to help families make better financial decisions. We worked with Habitat for Humanity, TEA, HISD, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Houston, United Way, and many other NPOs. We continuously measured outcomes. Our firm was seven strong professionals, all dedicated to making a difference in the lives and the futures of the families, many of whom were single mothers.
Teens started to attend their parents’ workshops. I loved working with teens, but I didn’t want to conduct fun and game financial literacy that resulted in no change. .So after much research, I consulted with Baylor College of Medicine, where we were working with the college with Interns, I learned of research on the pre-frontal cortex and that if we could create a challenging program that required critical thinking, etc.I nto what programs were needed to change the futures of the