When confronted with a wealth of choices about a topic that remains confusing despite its simple outward appearance, it helps to consult a professional who is versed in the global market. 

“The goal tonight is simply to answer your questions. I don’t want to bore you with a lot of details, so we’re going to run it off what you want to learn about wine,” sommelier-in-training Dan Palumbo tells the group. 

If there are two things young people can never know enough about, it’s money and wine. Literacy in wine is something of a luxury; literacy in finance is something of necessity, and a subject that does not receive adequate attention in high school or college, which is exactly when people should start putting their money away. 

To fill that gap is the Establishment, a comfortable small bar and dining room behind a cluster of cubicles in the Tony Walker plaza in Williamsville that offers casual and engaging financial literacy classes.

Arriving early for a “Wine and Investing” class, which has a capacity of about 12, you’re treated immediately to a glass of wine. A selection of beer, which the wine guy Palumbo got called out for drinking, is also available. The bar area with some cocktail tables around it gives the space a slight speakeasy vibe, which is reinforced by some of the design choices. At the right moment, a wall slides to the right, revealing a small dining room centered around a projection screen. 

It’s all there to demystify investing to a younger generation that grew up as the world suffered a major recession. The serious questions that continue to dog certain Wall Street tactics have made the field seem intimidating, at best, and criminal, at worst, to many young investors. 

To drive it home, just when the first glass of wine had warmed my head a bit, Establishment advisor and proud millennial John Hoffman showed the class a slide: “93 percent of millennials say that both distrust of markets and lack of investing knowledge make them less confident about investing,” and “60 percent of millennials say they distrust financial markets.”

If the money part of the program could be distilled into one fine point, it’s that the most valuable commodity in retirement planning is time. You’re far better off committing to save five percent of your income for retirement starting at age 25 than you would be if you started at age 40 by investing 15 percent of your income. And if you start at five percent, Hoffman would counsel you to “raise it one percent every year; you’re never going to feel the difference.”

In between those ages of 25 and 40 is an entire generation in danger of falling behind financially. If you’ve been paying attention to your Facebook timeline, chances are you’ve read a thing or two about the stagnation of middle-class wages over the last generation. There are fewer jobs with pensions, and the ones that still exist haven’t kept up the pace with inflation. Meanwhile, some 401Ks offer only one percent annual returns. One of the people in the class, a 27-year-old woman with an MBA who decided to take on “Wine and Investing” after taking the Establishment’s “Making Sense of Student Loans,” was soaking in the information as if hearing it for the first time.

It’s not a public service, of course, but it is an experiment by insurance giant MassMutual to reach a new market in young investors in a city that has reduced its exodus of young talent. 

“The way millennials gather information is completely different than any other generation,” Hoffman observed. “And more millennials are staying in Buffalo than before.” 

The Establishment is the only such business model working under the MassMutual umbrella, and in keeping with its mission to take the suit and tie out of financial planning, they thought to take the sterility of an office away from the equation as well. The Establishment “sounds like it could be a restaurant or a coffee shop or a cool hang-out spot,” marketing and brand specialist Marissa Dinello explained. “Most millennials are not yet truly established. The Establishment is a place to come to learn how to become a more established individual.”

And you might learn a thing or two about wine, as well. The time was evenly split between Palumbo’s wine-tasting seminar and Hoffman’s crash course on financial planning over a simple yet tasty meal brought over from the neighboring restaurant, Giancarlo’s. Putting the wine and money together, Palumbo observed, “As far as investment, my biggest point is to go for the value play. Go for Chilean cabs, which at their price point are great. Go for something from South Africa. Because your price point, if you’re not that familiar with wine, you don’t want to be spending $30 a bottle. Start light, get a feel for what you like, and then hone your skills from there.”

Most of the Establishment’s classes are free, though Wine and Investing’s usual $20 charge can be waived for readers of The Public by entering promo code FRIEND2 when booking a class through the company’s website. 

THE ESTABLISHMENT
5110 Main St. Suite 100, Williamsville
716.276.1174 / theestablishmentbuffalo.com