FMA was formed in the wake of 9/11. As fear, financial crisis, and personal loss swept across our country, Ken and Lorraine Decker believed that this was the best time to focus on the families who needed a plan for the future.
Since 1980, the Deckers worked in the United States and in 47 countries, providing objective, employer-sponsored financial, career, and estate planning workshops. Following 9/11, the Deckers launched two non-profits with a mission of teaching families “how to fish.”
Skills For Living focused on adult financial education, and Financial Mentors of America worked with young adults, helping them develop and execute plans for a challenging future. Both provided mentoring and educational courses on critical thinking, planning, problem-solving, goal setting, career selection, and post-secondary funding and selection.
FMA Co-Founder Kenneth Lee Decker
Ken Decker and Lorraine Decker co-founded two non-profits in 2003: Financial Mentors of America and Skills For Living. Both organizations were dedicated to teaching families how to plan and create successful futures.
Every summer, the Deckers would organize, with Ken as emcee, the Game of Real Life, a three-week intense learning experience held at Rice University, the University of Houston, and the George R. Brown Convention Center. The Game was designed to help under-served high school students visualize and achieve a dynamic future. Thousands of students and hundreds of volunteers from Houston’s major companies joined the Deckers to play the Game.
The OUTCOMES – in a ten-year longitudinal research study – 97% of the first 358 students in the Game completed high school and attended post-secondary education. Six years later, 91.7% had graduated from PSE and joined were successfully employed.
D&A was asked by the Texas Education Agency to replicate this curriculum across the State of Texas. Starting in 2017, Decker & Associates licensed the TEA-approved online Real Life Financial Mathematics to 50+ Texas school districts, with more than 28,000 Texas high school students graduating from this one-year, critical-thinking, problem-solving, and life-changing financial planning course.
In September 2024, D&A launched Personal Financial Literacy & Economics for Real Life. What makes this course special? It is designed by financial professionals to produce life-changing outcomes. We all know that the future will be challenging with shrinking employer benefits, rising taxes, and the expectation that AI will eliminate employment for those unable to manage this new technology. This course integrates personal finance, career, and educational planning with critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and communication. We think this combination is what will be needed to prepare students for a dynamic future.
More Than Wishful Thinking and Public Relations
The Deckers have been recognized by numerous organizations and have been the recipients of national awards recognizing their experience and achievements in designing financial education to achieve measurable and meaningful outcomes:
- Virginia Tech University Award for Life Cycle Models for Financial Planning
- World at Work, author of Financial Education, Its Role as a Company Benefit
- The Purpose Prize of $100,000 for Outcomes in Financial Education Programs
- FDIC Chairman’s Award for Financial Education
- Profit Sharing/401(k) Society of America – First Place in Financial Education
The Next Step
It takes more than a course to execute a plan and change a future. It doesn’t take a PhD in Economics to realize that our nation and the world face major challenges. Our students need understanding and wisdom beyond their age. FMA encourages you to volunteer as a mentor to encourage students to be the positive change we need.