Boulder adviser aids young inheritors.

• Author: Guettler, Amy
• Position: Attitude at Altitude - Myra Salzer - The Wealth Conservancy

Young inheritors of tremendous wealth struggle like anyone else. They just don't get much sympathy from the unwealthy who consider money a cure-all.

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A Boulder-based financial adviser who has built a 50-client practice out of servicing rich, young clients for the past 23 years, knows better.

Myra Salzer founded The Wealth Conservancy while working as a chemical engineer, when, out of nothing more than curiosity, she enrolled in the Greenwood Village-based College of Financial Planning. Once she earned her certified financial planner designation, Salzer began moonlighting as an adviser, but after juggling two careers and a family for some time, she started The Wealth Conservancy full-time in 1983.

Salzer says the niche opportunity literally walked into her office. "A couple came to my office in the '80s, and at that point I was starving for clients," she says. "They made an appointment to see me, but I didn't really know why."

The 35-year-old husband told her the trust fund whose income he had been living on for most of his young adulthood had now expired and he was getting an $18 million lump sum from the fund. He didn't know what to do with the money to support him and his wife through their future.

"It was just overwhelming and scary for them, and they were frozen, immobilized," Salzer said. "I thought that if I can just get these people together, and they can support each other, I can do my job."

She started a workshop, "Inherited Wealth and You" in 1989, "and that begot my specialty or niche," she said.

As referrals increased and Salzer's client base grew, she fast learned that young people who suddenly find themselves flush with cash face significant challenges, and, yes, challenges that are different from the rest us, to...