"'Bryan Sims finds it amusing when credit unions target youth marketing programs to members aged 13 to 21. "if you're marketing to 13-to 21-year-olds, the 13-year old is in middle school and the 21-year –old is in a bar.'

Sims, the 21-year-old founder of brass|CU, a money magazine for youg adult credit union members and the founder of brass|MEDIA Inc., Corvallis, Ore., says, ‘The first and most important thing for credit unions to do before deciding "We're going to target youth" is to define what youth is.'

Sims suggest breaking youth markets into ages 13 to 17 and 17 to 25 segments. "When teenagers turn 18, they become classified as adults," he explains. "When they become classified as adults, they get put into a whole new marketing segment and credit unions forget about them. They don't start getting marketed to until they're 24 or 25, maybe even a little bit older.

"Problem is," he continues, "between those two points is when they're getting their first credit card, auto loan, trident loan-all the things that will keep them at the financial institution for the rest of their lives.

"Make sure you capture them in that transition from 17 to 18, when they're graduation from high school, getting their first job, moving out of the house, going to college, and doing those kids of things," Sims adds. "The second they hit 18, they're on every kind of mailing list, from credit cards, to tobacco companies, to the Army Reserve."

It's not that young adults aren't interested in money. On the contrary, says Sims. A 2003 Gallup survey showed 51% of 18- to 29-yar-olds thought they'd have a million dollars in assets sometime in their life. "The generation is very much in tune with money. It's just a matter of speaking our language."

Speaking the financial language to youth-from childhood on-is essential for credit union survival. And the traditional emphasis on waiting until people are "profitable" is the hard, expensive way to build membership and market share, CUNA's Heckman maintains. Easier and less expensive is having a program for introducing children to a progressive series of services that they're educated to use responsibly and "raising them to profitability."