Personal Bookkeeper or Daily Money Manager

These are two terms that I use almost interchangeably and as the DMM industry matures, it is beginning to seem that they mean different things. I wanted to talk about the differences as I see them to and hopefully move the discussion in a positive direction.

Personal Bookkeeper:
This is a term that is not used too much but seems to go along with the high net worth individual and their need for someone to manage their daily finances. The average high net worth client has much more complex demands obviously than most individual clients. At PPS, our clients that fall in the high net worth category typically have mutliple homes, numerous invesment accounts, rental or investment properties, they care for and pay bills for family members, they have extremely detailed reporting needs and often have more complex tax payment and preparation requirements. The reason why personal bookkeeper applies well here is because the complexity of their finances is not too much unlike a small to medium business. Though the tasks are not too dissimilar from what the typical daily money manager can provide I feel that a personal bookkeeper is going to be providing much more in depth services across a more complex range of possible entities with the client.

Daily Money Manager:
If you go to www.aadmm.org and search for members of the main DMM association, you might notice a trend towards servicing mainly seniors. This is what I noticed in the early years of the association. While many DMM firms do work primarily with seniors the services offered I believe are more clearly defined by their simplicity and also by their consultative nature. Besides assisting with the basics of managing an individuals daily finances (bill payment, expense tracking, account reconciliation, mail sorting, etc) the average daily money manager is typically assisting the client with making daily financial decisions or creating a better process the client can follow for managing their own finances.

These are just some thoughts off the top of my head (heh, its a blog after all!) but I hope the conversation can be continued. At PPS, our team members are strong believers in the idea that by helping our clients better manage their daily finances, we can help them achieve greater long term financial success. This is a simple belief but it seems many Americans overlook this idea. Our services are tailored towards helping clients better manage their daily finances themselves and in many cases managing aspects of it for them. A key area however for the daily money management industry is education and that starts with the term itself. How do we educate on our services better and mainly the importance of having some sort of daily money management plan?

I look forward to some posts on this to get a conversation started, for the benefit of the industry and the consumers. I can't imagine I am the only DMM struggling with educating their clients with what it is we do and how it differs from other financial services.

Thanks for the help!