As a child of immigrant parents, growing up Ronya Corey was told she had to be a doctor or a lawyer. “As the oldest, obedient daughter, I actually believed those were my two options!” she says, incredulously.

She began her college years as a pre-med major, but after her first semester, she knew she wasn’t following her heart — and, to top it off, she hated the sight of blood. After changing her major to economics, she interned at several organizations over the course of her four years of college, but it was while she was interning at Merrill Lynch that she realized what she wanted to do for her career.

“Watching my father’s financial choices made me realize that I wanted to educate and help families not only live for today, but save for tomorrow. My dad was an amazingly loving father, but he was also far too generous and short sighted with his money,” Corey said. “If you needed $5 dollars and that was all he had in his pocket, he would give it to you. That mindset of only living for today made him literally have to work until the day he died.”

Guiding Clients to Find Their “Red Mercedes”

Corey says that her work is satisfying every day, as she guides clients to make smart decisions about their money. She says that among the types of retirees — those who spend too much in retirement on an annual basis and those who spend what they should — the most fun are those who don’t spend enough.

“I love working with them to help them define and envision new goals that on their own, they wouldn’t have conceived.”

She cites a client, Jane, who is in her 90s and still teaches online courses for senior citizens at a community college. Though she and her husband never made exorbitant amounts of money as educators, fortunately they were great savers. As Corey tells it, Jane is now widowed with more money than she needs for her life expectancy, and her son and his wife are spendthrifts so she has been pondering how to best utilize her money when she is gone.

After working with her estate attorney to create a trust for her son and establishing various charitable gifting options, Corey returned to a thread that had run through their past conversations – Jane had always wanted a red Mercedes.

“So every call thereafter, I asked her if she had bought her red Mercedes and encouraged her to do so. About a year later, she called to tell me she actually went out and purchased a red Mercedes. She couldn’t be happier — she mentions it on almost every call we have had since. So now, it’s a story I retell to allow people to envision to buy or do whatever their red Mercedes means to them.”

Of course, Corey also counsels clients through the more mundane challenges their retirement may provide, such as rising health care costs. And, prolonged life expectancy poses a number of financial hurdles for many clients – whether it’s saving enough to meet their retirement objectives or being cognizant not to spend too much in retirement.

A Role Model for Younger Women

As the highest-ranking woman in the DC office – both past and present – Corey wants to be a role model for the young women in her industry, where the message she had always received were that only men were considered “the large producers.”

“I want them to know that if the daughter of two immigrant parents who was born in West Virginia and went to a state school can do it, so can they if they put their mind to it,” Corey says.

She is currently building a team of women to service her clients. “It isn’t unusual to see an all-male advisor team, but it is unusual to see it the other way around.”

“It isn’t unusual to see an all-male advisor team, but it is unusual to see it the other way around.”

Since many men in the household still handle the investments for their families, she finds that working with a woman can bring some vulnerability and can be a culture shift. “As a young woman in the business, I strive to know to know more than my male counterparts in order to win new business.”

As part of her role model commitment, Corey also started the local chapter of Merrill Lynch’s Women’s Exchange in 2009 to reach women at all levels throughout Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland. Participation in the organization, which fosters mentorship and growth for women in the firm, has allowed her to meet and learn from the most successful women in the industry.

Her advice to young women? “Learn something new every day. Knowledge is power.”

On the Family Font

Corey and her husband, Devon, took advantage of their pre-children years to travel the world. “Now my hobby and love is my family – my husband and my two bundles of joy – Naill, age two, and Kaia, age one.”

By Cathie Ericson