6 Ways To Make The Most Of Your Workplace Financial Wellness Benefit

April 17, 2018

As an unbiased financial wellness coach, one of my personal missions is to help people realize that much of what they need to make the most of their finances is available through work by using their financial wellness benefit. Many of the employees I talk with via the Financial Helpline aren’t even aware of the full suite of benefits they have. Even if you don’t work for a company that offers our programs, chances are you have some type of benefit that can help.

What can you do with a workplace financial wellness benefit? A lot – and it doesn’t cost you a dime to get help tackling your debt, getting ready to buy your first home, running a retirement projection or understanding the difference between a Roth and Traditional 401(k). You may have access to a wide range of resources, including financial coaching, workshops, webcasts, peer-to-peer groups and online learning tools, all paid for by your employer.

Even just using your benefit may put you in better financial shape

What’s the upside of participating over time? Our research found that those employees who were repeat users of their workplace financial wellness programs had higher overall financial wellness, were better prepared for retirement, managed their cash flow more effectively and were more comfortable with their debt levels. Here’s a summary of the progress participants made between taking their first financial wellness assessment and their most recent one:

	1st assessment	Last assessment
I have a handle on my cash flow.	67%	77%
I have an emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses.	51%	59%
I check my credit report on an annual basis.	54%	71%
I am on track to reach my income goal in retirement.	18%	39%
I feel confident that my investments are allocated appropriately.	31%	51%
I have taken an investment risk tolerance assessment.	43%	65%
I rebalance my investment accounts to keep my asset allocation plans on track.	33%	58%
I carry enough life insurance to replace my income.	46%	60%
Average overall Financial Wellness score	4.85	5.96

6 ways you can take advantage of the benefit

1. Find a financial mentor

Navigating financial issues has become increasingly challenging, with employees facing more and more complex decisions about health insurance, tackling debt and student loans, saving for retirement and balancing competing priorities. A workplace financial wellness coach can help guide you through all that “life stuff,” helping you understand your options, weigh the pros and cons of each and assess the impact on your financial trajectory.

Depending on your company’s financial wellness program, you may be able to talk to someone on the phone and/or in person. That coach becomes your financial mentor – someone to cut through all the jargon and help you clarify the actions needed to move you towards your most important goals.

Mentoring from a financial coach is different from advice. A financial mentor empowers you to make wiser, more confident financial decisions for yourself. Questions to ask your financial coach/mentor include:

Can I speak to you on the telephone, in person, or both?
Can I email you my questions?
Is there any limit to how many times we can work together?
Do you have a professional designation, such as the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation or CPA credential?
Is this completely unbiased with no sales pitch?

Heads up: make sure that your financial coach is truly unbiased and isn’t just trying to use the phrase “financial wellness” to sell you investments, insurance or anything else. A real financial wellness program won’t sell you anything.

2. Grab a life line

If you are living paycheck to paycheck or feeling overwhelmed by bills, your financial wellness program can help. Debt and cash flow issues are primary drivers of financial stress. Reach out to a financial coach, who can brainstorm with you on ways to get a handle on your cash flow to free up resources to tackle debt and save for emergencies.

Many companies who offer workplace financial wellness programs encourage employees seeking retirement plan loans and hardship withdrawals to talk through the advantages and disadvantages with a financial coach and work through alternatives, if there are any. You’ll find that your financial coach or credit counselor listens without judgment, offers a practical process for coping with financial stress and anxiety as well as achievable action steps. That can be a lifeline when financial stress has become unmanageable.

3. Maximize your benefits choices

If you aren’t taking full advantage of your employer-sponsored benefits, you could be leaving as much as $1 million on the table over the course of your career. Before you make your benefits elections during open enrollment this year, schedule some time with one of your workplace financial wellness program’s financial coaches to do a complete benefits review with you, asking these kinds of questions:

Am I earning the full employer match in my 401(k) or 403(b) plan? How can I contribute more? Should I sign up for the automatic rate escalator?
What health insurance plan makes the most sense for me? How can I get the most out of it?
Am I leaving any money on the table in benefits I could be using?
Am I taking full advantage of all the ways to minimize my taxes?
Am I making the best use of the insurance benefits my employer offers?
Should I put more in a health savings account and/or a flexible spending account?
Can you help me understand all my voluntary benefits (e.g., legal, commuter, tuition, etc.)?
Can you help me calculate the value of my benefits as part of my overall compensation?

4. Run a retirement projection

Have you run a retirement projection yet? If not, you’re not alone. Half of all employees (51 percent) in 2016 didn’t know if they were on track or not for a comfortable retirement and only about one in four (27 percent) knew they were on track to reach their goals. Those who interacted with their financial wellness program over time, however, were nine percentage points more likely (58%) to have run a retirement projection and 11 percentage points more likely to be on track (38 percent).

The single most important step

The simple act of running a retirement projection may be the single most important step you can take to reach your retirement goals, per our research. If you find out you’re on track, this will reduce your financial stress and increase your confidence that you can meet your retirement goals on time or sooner. If you find out you’re not on track, you have the opportunity to change your saving or investing or adjust your assumptions, such as your target retirement date and how much you’ll need for expenses.

5. Get an unbiased second opinion on your investments

There are lots of great financial advisors out there, but there is also a small percentage that just wants to charge you high fees or worse, make off with your money. An unbiased financial wellness benefit – where there is zero selling of products or services – offers you the opportunity for a second opinion on your financial plan or investment proposal.

A financial coach can help you work through questions to ask your financial advisor and help you evaluate if your advisor’s recommendations fit your risk tolerance, time horizon and financial circumstances. They can help you check the credentials of any financial advisor you are considering hiring. Plus they should be able to help you understand the investment choices in your retirement plan in light of your financial goals and situation.

Remember, most financial wellness providers cannot offer you investment advice. They can’t tell you what to do. Rather, they can assist you in understanding your options and empower you to make the wisest choice for your situation.

6. Measure your progress

Making financial progress is a lot like losing weight. Getting physically or financially fit are both about making small changes in your behavior which you can sustain over a long period of time – preferably for life. The people who are the most successful are those who set a benchmark and track their progress.

If your financial wellness program offers you a tool for assessing where you start and a mechanism for tracking your progress, make sure to use it at least once per year. Check if your employer offers peer-to-peer learning opportunities (e.g., women and money, new employees group, etc). These offer accountability and encouragement. Having the support of a group of like-minded people is like having your personal cheerleading squad, and you’ll be more likely to “weigh in” on a regular basis.

Not every workplace financial wellness program is a true workplace financial wellness benefit, but it still may be able to help. Some companies only offer online tools, while others offer comprehensive programs which include unlimited 1 x 1 coaching. Check with your HR department on what’s available to you and how you can take advantage of it.

8 Ways To Make The Most Of A Big Raise

March 05, 2018

“I’m so tired of driving this old beat up car. As soon as I make some more money, I’m getting my dream car. I deserve it.”

“We have so outgrown this house. There just isn’t enough space for us, to entertain, or for anything really. As soon as I make some more money, I’m getting my dream house. It’s about time I get something I really want.”

“I can’t even remember the last time I had extra money to just splurge with. As soon as I get a raise, that’s the first thing I’m putting money aside for.”

Have you ever found yourself saying some version of these things to yourself? I can definitely relate — early on in my career, I often found myself daydreaming about the ways I would spend additional income.

Hitting the pause button

Depending on your line of work, big bumps in income may come along often or only rarely, but regardless, when they do, it’s easy to quickly start dreaming of a bigger home, nicer car or even just a fancier wardrobe. At the extreme, many of us think that having a higher income will make our lives easier, only to find that when we look back over the years of small increases, nothing’s really changed in the way we feel about our financial situations.

The next time you find yourself with a bump in income, before you start bookmarking properties or loading up your shopping cart, PAUSE. This is the perfect time to consider how to make the most of your new pay rate and to ultimately make sure that you never have to revisit these thoughts again.

Here are eight suggestions that may not sound very exciting, but when taken seriously, can get you to the point of NOT needing a big raise in order to have the life you want.

Accelerate debt payoff – Use the Debt Blaster calculator to find out just how much sooner you can get those lingering student loans or credit cards paid off by adding a bit more to your monthly payments.
Bump up your emergency fund – More income means you’d miss it more if it went away, so use this time to add to your savings BEFORE taking on more financial responsibilities (like a new car or a bigger house) that make it harder to do so.
Max out your Health Savings Account (HSA) – Maybe you haven’t elected the High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) before because you didn’t want the risk of having a big out of pocket hit, which often makes sense for situations where money is tight. Now that you make more money, the risk may be outweighed by the opportunity to save more tax-free for future expenses, like starting a family.
Contribute more to your 401k – Retirement may seem way off (especially if it literally is), but saving more in your earlier years will give you more options for later years. Use the Retirement Estimator calculator as a way to gauge how even just one percent more saved at a young age could mean retiring a year or more earlier than you expect.
Save for short and long-term goals in a Roth IRA – You can put an extra $5,500 into a Roth IRA for 2018, and even more if you’re 50 or older. When just starting out, a lot of people actually use a Roth IRA as savings account. Since whatever you contribute you can always take out tax-free and penalty-free, it can be a way to build up an emergency fund, while also boosting your long-term savings. Check out these 12 benefits of a Roth IRA on top of that. (By the way, you can still make a 2017 contribution to a Roth IRA by the tax filing deadline of April 17, 2018.)
Purchase some stock through your Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) at work – If your employer offers an ESPP, it’s a great way to get more bang for your buck because you purchase shares of your employer’s stock at a discounted price. You can leave that money alone until retirement or some people prefer to sell right away to take the earnings from the discount, then put that money toward their next big vacation.
Think bigger – Is there something really cool that you’d love to have, but always figured you could never afford, like a vacation property, or a cleaning person? Depending on how big your income jump is, and assuming you have the Big 3 (emergency fund, no high interest debt and saving enough for retirement) in place, perhaps it’s time to shift your money mindset to something you never considered a possibility before, rather that using the additional money to just upgrade to a bigger house or fancier car.
But not too big — Beware of lifestyle inflation: our “needs” tend to grow as our income grows. I’m not suggesting that you continue to live like a college student, but living below your means is the key difference between most “everyday” millionaires and those who may earn the same salary, but spend every dime they have.

At the end of the day, the point is to enjoy life and a part of enjoying life is having enough money to pay the bills and save for the future while still living in the moment! You put in the hard work needed to get to this new income level. Now, make the most of it by putting some of that extra money towards living life now and making sure you are financially stable in the future.

How I Finally Found My Dream Job As A Financial Planner

October 06, 2017

For the past decade plus, I have been helping people with their finances. It’s what I love to do. But getting to my dream job was a different journey than what I thought it would be. I started in the financial planning business to help people and scratch an entrepreneurial itch I’d had for some time.

The challenge of getting started as a financial advisor

At my first firm, I quickly learned that being an advisor meant selling life insurance and annuities. Success was measured by how many prospects I could get in front of and how much commission revenue I could generate through product sells. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing — I knew I was helping my clients, but also knew I needed to expand my training to be able to provide help in all aspects of their financial lives.

So I completed the gauntlet that is CFP® certification, and landed at a large wealth planning firm in a consulting role working with affluent clients. I was delivering financial planning for my clients and helping them manage their assets – my dream job (or so I thought).

Something’s missing

I was loving my work with clients and I was a good financial planner. I especially enjoyed building relationships and managing investment portfolios. I was making a nice living, working with a team of incredibly smart and honest professionals, and delivering on comprehensive wealth management for my clients. But it always felt like something was missing.

Measuring my impact

I started asking myself how much of an impact I was really having for my clients who were already in great financial shape before I ever met them? I was left unfulfilled by helping wealthy clients become marginally wealthier. To be honest, I knew they would be fine regardless if their portfolios had a good quarter or not. What about the people who don’t have a lot of assets for an advisor to manage? Who is helping them?

Following the money

In order for most advisors or financial planners to make a living, they have to sell a product or service. That means they have to find clients that:

Need/want that product or service; and
Can afford to pay for said product or service.

There is nothing wrong with an advisor expecting to be compensated — most are honest and hardworking and should expect to be paid for their services. But there is a disconnect. Those people struggling with debt or cash flow problems would benefit tremendously from working with a financial professional, but the compensation structure in the financial services industry essentially denies them access to the help they need.

Where financial wellness benefits come in

Luckily for me, I found Financial Finesse a couple of years ago, a company dedicated to unbiased financial planning guidance delivered by experienced, qualified professionals available to people in any financial situation. I had to bide my time to meet the 10 year experience requirement, but I am so glad I did.

Being with the company that pioneered the idea of employers providing financial wellness to their employees as part of their benefits is amazing. We help employers provide an important benefit to their employers that is shown to improve absenteeism, increase productivity, and save on health care costs as financial stress is reduced. We help employees find actionable solutions to their pressing financial issues through a coaching model with no hidden agendas.

Living my purpose

And I get to live my purpose by helping people make good financial choices and reach their financial goals — now that is my dream job.

Want more helpful financial guidance, delivered every day? Sign up to receive the Financial Finesse Tip of the Day, written by financial planners who work with people like you every day. No sales pitch EVER (being unbiased is the foundation of what we do), just the best our awesome planners have to offer. Click here to join.

Are You Embarrassed To Talk About Money?

July 20, 2017

When I first heard about Financial Finesse’s workplace financial wellness programs, which are offered free to employees of client companies, I assumed that almost all of the employees would want to take advantage of it. After all, how often do you have the opportunity to speak with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional with at least 10 years of experience who won’t charge you or try to sell you anything? At best, it could change your life, but even if you decide not to do anything, what’s the harm in talking?

But what I’ve learned over my years here is that people find all kinds of reasons not to take advantage. Don’t get me wrong, we are busier than we’ve ever been working with employees to improve their financial lives, but I often wonder what keeps everyone from making the most of this amazing benefit. I find one of the obstacles is people feeling embarrassed to talk about their financial situation. Which I hate, because there really isn’t anything to be embarrassed about — we’ve heard it all and we are a judgement-free zone.

Here are 3 of the most common things I hear people say and why they shouldn’t feel that way:

I feel stupid about money. People tell me this ALL the time. The funny thing is that these people are far from stupid. Many of them are lawyers, doctors, scientists, etc. However, we have an education system that doesn’t really teach personal finance, a financial system packed with unnecessarily (and some would even say purposefully) complicated jargon, and busy lives that leave us without much time to learn this on your own.

Far from being “stupid,” acknowledging what you don’t know is a crucial first step in improving your financial wellness. No one knows it all and even if you did, we all have emotional biases that can prevent us from making the right decisions. It never hurts to get a second opinion (at least when it’s free and unbiased).

I feel guilty about what I spend on X. This is another one I hear constantly. Remember, there is no one right amount to spend in any given area. It all depends on your personal situation, goals, and values.

For example, many New Yorkers complain about how much they spend in rent, but they often forget how much they aren’t spending on car payments, car insurance, gas, and car maintenance. A person who is debt-free and saving enough to hit their goals can afford to spend more than someone trying to pay off credit card debt. You may decide to spend more on travel and less on shopping, while your friend does just the opposite. Neither of you are wrong, as long as that spending doesn’t lead to additional debt.

I know I should be doing X, but I’m not. Welcome to the club. Even financial planners will admit to this. Personal finance reminds me a lot of dieting and exercise. Most of the time we know what we need to do, but the hard part is actually doing it.

Just like working with a personal trainer, a good financial wellness coach can not only help you decide what to do but help motivate you to actually do it. One way is to hold you accountable. In that case, your fear of embarrassment can be your best asset.

You’re not alone.

If you’ve ever said any of the above, know that you’re definitely not alone. These feelings are also nothing to be embarrassed by. (I’m much more concerned about the person who is in denial and doesn’t think they need any help.) The only thing to be embarrassed by is not doing anything about them….especially when the help is free!

The Financial Services Industry Is Broken – Here’s How We Should Fix It

June 23, 2017

Along with being a financial planner here, each member of our team wears a bunch of different hats. Obviously, one of my other hats is a blogger. Another is being responsible for hiring new financial planners, where I have the opportunity to talk with incredibly talented CFP®’s from all over the country who want to work at Financial Finesse.

The reality of the situation is that even with a minimum of 10 years of industry experience and the CFP® designation, along with being wonderful human beings, only around 2% of those who apply for this role end up making it all the way through our hiring process. It’s astounding to me that I actually made it through the process and am working here.

Don’t tell anyone, but I regularly talk to planners who are smarter, harder working, more entertaining and much more photogenic than I am, and quite often they don’t get hired. There are lots of reasons for that, but that’s not the direction I want to take this post. Maybe another day…

What most financial planners do

The reason I talk about this is that the overwhelming majority of planners I talk to are in the business of giving world class advice to high net worth families when they apply to work at Financial Finesse, which is what I did prior to coming here. They are typically measured by the amount of assets or fees they collect and are tired of having to sell in order to also do financial planning.

For me, when I was working on a high net worth planning team, there was always a piece of me that thought, “The people we are working with are going to be just fine for the rest of their lives, even if they develop a bad case of ‘the stupids,’ while the people who most need our help can’t afford it and don’t have access to it. There is something fundamentally wrong with this system!” I interviewed three planners today who said something very similar. And that thought is what is driving them to look at us as a potential final career stop.

Working with the other 99%

Most of the employees I talk to in my role as a financial planner will never become a client in a high net worth planning office. Most would be happy just paying off their debt and having enough income in retirement to live a modest lifestyle. My guess (because I’m too lazy to do the math!) is that over half of the people I meet with are there to discuss either how to get out of serious debt or how to stop living paycheck to paycheck and maybe prepare for retirement or put their kids through college. These are the people who wouldn’t normally have access to decent financial planning guidance. And this isn’t isolated to the people I talk to – my colleagues say the same.

A recent Fed “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households” reported that just under 1/4 of households can’t pay their monthly bills and almost half of households wouldn’t be unable to cover, with cash, an emergency expense of $400 or more. This information doesn’t surprise me, but it does get my hackles up a little bit about how messed up our financial services industry is.

These are the people that need help from our best and brightest planners. These are the people that our current system is leaving behind. These are the people that I wanted to help when I made the decision to work here.

A new branch of the industry

The good news is that these are the people that I’m helping today. Financial Finesse was founded on the belief that all Americans, regardless of income or net worth, deserve access to excellent financial planning guidance. That’s the vision that guides us. And we are actually excited to see more competitors in our space. Employers are catching on that providing a workplace financial wellness benefit is good for employees and it’s good for the bottom line – if you don’t have a financial wellness benefit at work yet, chances are you will. And that’s a good thing. I firmly believe that our industry will revolutionize the way traditional financial services are offered in the future.

I only wish that every employer in the country would work with us so that I could help everyone. Since I can’t clone myself, I try to at least hire others who have that same burning passion to help those who need it the most. Our internal motto and rallying cry (what I like to say is our true mission), is that we are “changing f’ing lives.” And that’s what we’re doing – one person, one family at a time.

What’s in it for you

What does this have to do with your own personal financial situation? Well, if nothing else, know that we feel your pain – getting unbiased answers to your questions is truly a challenge in today’s world. But if you do have access to a financial wellness benefit at work, USE IT. It’s there to help you and it’s not just for people who are in crisis. In fact, the best time to use it is when you’re not, so we can help make sure you’re ready when the next crisis hits.

Here at Financial Finesse, we believe strongly in the importance of workplace culture and the power of doing well by doing good. This article is the fifth in our week-long series of posts where we highlight a specific part of our company culture that helps to make Financial Finesse one of America’s best places to work. This is just one part of our celebration of recent recognition by Inc., who listed us as one of the Best Workplaces in 2017 and Entrepreneur, who named us to the Small-Sized Companies: The Best Company Cultures in 2017 list.

The Difference Between a Financial Wellness Benefit & Your 401(k)

June 20, 2017

Before I joined Financial Finesse as a member of the Planner Team, I worked for a large wealth management institution as a 401(k) plan specialist. As a 401(k) plan specialist, my role was to help design and implement 401(k) plans for companies as well as educate their employees about their retirement accounts. One of my bigger frustrations in that role was that I was pigeon-holed into discussions solely about retirement contributions and asset allocation.

Although these topics are important when it comes to retirement planning, as I tried to educate people about how to save for retirement, I quickly found that the real problem people were facing wasn’t that they didn’t know how much to contribute or how to invest. The reason they weren’t making full use of their 401(k) savings accounts stemmed from a lack of emergency savings or a budget.

This often leads to using a credit card or 401(k) loans to get through unexpected events like medical issues or family emergencies, and definitely gets in the way of being able to save for retirement. In order to help people achieve a secure retirement, I realized that they first needed help achieving a secure today.

A lack of solutions

As I looked for a way to help, I found myself stumped. I was trained to help people avoid estate taxes but not how to help someone who was overwhelmed by medical debt. My meetings were supposed to be focused on getting more money into 401(k) plans and helping people choose the best investments, not how to put together a budget or handle debt. The compliance rules in the industry kept me from REALLY being able to help with the other stuff, the stuff that had to be overcome before I could be of any use with my training and work objectives. It broke my heart to be sitting in 401(k) enrollment meetings, talking to people sometimes in tears over a financial crisis, feeling completely unable to help.

Finding a way to help

I knew that I really needed to be helping people navigate these barriers before my work as a 401(k) specialist would have any meaning. I started looking around for solutions, even something that I could offer as part of my meetings so that they could help themselves. That’s when I came across Financial Finesse, a company that provides employees with a workplace financial wellness benefit. I knew instantly I had found a new home. For the first time I could:

Focus on financial wellness vs. just trying to get more money into the accounts I managed.
Help “everyday” people with their daily financial needs vs. strictly helping affluent people become more affluent.
Stop being judged by sales quotas and instead be judged based on whether or not I changed lives for the better.

The difference between your financial wellness benefit & your 401(k)

While employees often come to us with questions about their 401(k) and companies often hire us to satisfy their fiduciary duty as a 401(k) plan sponsor, my colleagues and I spend more of our time helping people deal with the rest of their financial picture – how to choose the right mortgage, how to pay off credit cards, deciding the best way to deal with their student loans, etc. The big difference is that we take a look at your TOTAL picture, not just the balance in your 401(k). And that’s what I love the most about my job – helping people with what they really need.

Your 401(k) is one piece of your financial wellness puzzle. Working with a planner through your workplace financial wellness benefit helps you to see where it fits in among all your other priorities. If you’re fortunate enough to work for an employer that offers you a financial wellness benefit, I encourage you to take advantage today.

Here at Financial Finesse, we believe strongly in the importance of workplace culture and the power of doing well by doing good. This article is the second in our week-long series of posts where we highlight a specific part of our company culture that helps to make Financial Finesse one of America’s best places to work. This is just one part of our celebration of recent recognition by Inc., who listed us as one of the Best Workplaces in 2017 and Entrepreneur, who named us to the Small-Sized Companies: The Best Company Cultures in 2017 list.

Want more helpful financial guidance, delivered every day? Sign up to receive the Financial Finesse Tip of the Day, written by financial planners who work with people like you every day. No sales pitch EVER (being unbiased is the foundation of what we do), just the best our awesome planners have to offer. Click here to join.