ryanwangman, Author at Best Money Moves

Reach Your Company’s Goals with Financial Wellness Programs

by ryanwangman | Aug 1, 2018 | Blog

In the Best Money Moves Roundup, we run down the latest news on financial wellness, business milestones and payday advances.

The research is in, and employees want financial wellness programs. A recent Bank of America study found that 91 percent of employees who participate in financial wellness programs say those resources have helped them. Similarly, 95 percent of employers who offer those programs agree that these support systems have been effective in reaching their company’s goals.

Financial wellness programs provide tangible benefits to the businesses that offer them, including greater employee satisfaction, improved productivity, lower turnover rates and potentially lower healthcare costs.

But here’s the problem — less than half of all employees are offered financial wellness plans, and when they are only 31% of those employees participate. Many employees don’t understand how to use — or even find — their programs, desire more personalized help or are too busy to utilize them. Find out how to overcome those issues below.

Here’s How to Increase Participation

What We’re Reading

Financially stressed employees are the new norm. Help Millennials find financial stability to reduce anxiety, take back productivity and lower absenteeism. Here’s how to get started.

Embrace green space in the office. Green space can help reduce mental fatigue to improve productivity and job satisfaction. Financial benefits for employers are an added bonus.

Say hello to “retirement income flooring.” This benefit offers employees an alternate strategy for retirement security that analyzes and addresses retirement needs to reduce stress. What is retirement income flooring?

Free payday advances. New apps allow employees to access their pay more quickly, with one service providing up to half of a prior day’s earnings to workers at no extra cost to them. Is it too good to be true?

Curb lost productivity. Employers say they’re helping to combat workers’ money problems by offering financial education. Here’s how financial literacy can benefit your workplace.

Milestone for women in business. This fall, the University of Southern California will set a new precedent when it enrolls more women than men in its MBA program, the first top-tier business school to reach that mark. What does that mean for other schools?

Get the pay you deserve. Know your worth before going into salary negotiations so you can receive compensation that equals your value. Three things to keep in mind.

Research Says Employees Want Financial Wellness Programs

by ryanwangman | Aug 1, 2018 | Blog

A recent study from Bank of America shows employees and employers agree that financial wellness programs have positively impacted them and their companies.

The research is in, and employees want financial wellness programs. A recent Bank of America study found that 91 percent of employees who participate in financial wellness programs say those resources have helped them. Similarly, 95 percent of employers who offer those programs agree that these support systems have been effective in reaching their company’s goals.

Financial wellness programs provide tangible benefits to the businesses that offer them, including greater employee satisfaction, improved productivity, lower turnover rates and potentially decreased company healthcare costs.

Lisa Margeson, head of retirement client experience and communications at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said companies are increasingly providing these programs to their employees because they realize it’s the right thing to do. Financial wellness, she said, is becoming more comprehensive.

“Financial wellness is more than just planning for retirement,” Margeson said. “It is really becoming more of a holistic conversation with employers and employees about all of the financial priorities that individuals can benefit from understanding, being educated on and planning for.”

But here’s the problem — less than half of employees are offered financial wellness plans, and when they are, only 31% of those employees participate. Employees don’t take advantage of these resources for a variety of reasons. Some don’t understand how to use or find their programs, desire more personalized help than the platforms offer or are simply too busy to utilize them.

The best way to increase participation, according to the study, is to offer cash incentives or discounts to participants.

Participation in these programs is key for many members of the workforce, as nearly 40 percent of employees report feeling financially unwell. These workers say they’re prevented from achieving fiscal wellness because they’re afraid of making mistakes, or are uncomfortable thinking about finances, among other barriers.

“Employees who don’t feel they’re financially well are most concerned about short-term goals…like managing their immediate debt or budgeting skills,” Margeson said. “Employees who do feel financially well are most concerned about longer-term goals, so preparing for retirement and good savings habits.”

Employees agree that the most helpful resource in improving financial wellness is advice from a professional, which is included in some programs. But specificity is key. Employees want these programs to address their specific goals, and offer a way to evaluate their unique financial health. Seventy percent say they would be comfortable sharing financial info as a part of an employer-offered financial assessment.

The report recommends offering financial wellness programs as a distinct benefit separate from other benefits such as 401(k) plans and health plans. To drive engagement, it recommends employers provide tangible rewards or incentives for employee participation, establish baseline engagement levels and measure improvement. You can bring financial wellness to your workplace with Best Money Moves. Best Money Moves is a mobile-friendly, online financial wellness platform that offers comprehensive financial education to employees of all ages. Our nationally-certified Money Coaches provide personalized advice to your employees about a myriad of financial situations. We run contests with cash rewards to incentivize your employees to use our system, and offer budgeting tools and calculators to help them manage their financial wellbeing. Click here to learn more about Best Money Moves and whether or not it might be right for your company.

Your Millennial Employees Aren’t Buying Homes Now. Here’s Why:

by ryanwangman | Jul 16, 2018 | Blog

A recent study from the Urban Institute shows that many Millennials are forgoing home buying due to student debt and high rental costs.

The data is in: With a different socioeconomic makeup and different living preferences than generational predecessors, your Millennial employees are less likely to be homeowners than Gen Xers or baby boomers.

A recent report from the Urban Institute found that Millennial employees are more likely than their counterparts in older generations to delay marriage and childbearing, life milestones that often lead to homeownership.

And while Millennials as a whole are owning less homes, black and less educated Americans are falling even further behind. Minority households have homeownership rates close to 15 percentage points lower than white households. Additionally, there is a gap of about 10 percentage points in the homeownership rate for households with high school or less education versus those with some college education or more.

High rental costs and increasing student debt haven’t helped Millennials who are looking to save money for a down payment. In a recent federal survey, 53 percent of renters said a barrier to homeownership they faced was “I can’t afford a down payment to buy a home,” and 33 percent said “I can’t qualify for a mortgage to buy a home.”

The report also noted that Millennials prefer to live in high-cost cities with inelastic housing supplies. These cities — like the East Coast’s Boston and New York City and the West Coast’s San Francisco and Los Angeles — tend to have greater urban amenities and more job opportunities, making them more desirable for Millennials to live in.

To address these issues, the Urban Institute offered four key policy recommendations:

Increase homeowner awareness and financial knowledge by providing online training as well as education in high school and college
Utilize financial technology for a more efficient mortgage process
Include rental and utility payment history data in Millennials’ creditworthiness evaluation
Adapt land-use and zoning regulations to increase the housing stock

Whatever the next steps forward, it’s clear something has to change to enable a greater number of Millennial employees to set down more permanent roots and purchase homes.

Millennial Employees’ Lifestyles Depend on Side Hustle

by ryanwangman | Jul 5, 2018 | Blog

A recent survey from Bankrate shows that Millennial employees are increasingly taking on side hustles to save money and keep up with rising living costs.

It turns out that having one job doesn’t always make ends meet.

Millennial employees across America are taking on second jobs — more commonly called “side hustles” — to pay their regular bills each month, according to the latest research.

Nearly four in ten Americans have a side hustle, and they earn about $700 a month on average from these second jobs, according to a recent survey from Bankrate. But for Millennials, the numbers are even higher. More than half of Millennial employees are partaking in the gig economy, reaping extra income from their efforts, according to the survey.

Kathy Kristof, an award-winning financial writer who runs the site $ideHusl, said taking on a second job can help people save money and keep up with rising costs. $ideHusl is a website that consolidates information about various opportunities in the gig economy and scores them according to a proprietary rating system. Sample side hustle offerings featured on the side include tutoring and driving gigs as well as opportunities to take care of elderly patients, cook for families, or rent out parts of your home or even its furnishings.

The biggest appeal of a side job, Kristof said, is the money.

“With Millennials, I think a lot of them graduated college with a lot of debt,” Kristof said. “The Millennial generation is also extremely entrepreneurial. They’re looking for various ways that they can work for themselves, either full- or part-time. A side hustle is a good way to start.”

The Bankrate survey found that a majority of respondents considered money earned from side jobs as disposable income, and they work these odd jobs inconsistently. Only 11 percent of respondents indicate that they work their side jobs on a weekly basis.

Deloitte, a professional services network, and Prudential, a financial services company, also recently released surveys that both echoed BankRate’s survey findings as well as revealed other trends about the gig economy, including:

Deloitte found that having flexible hours and a better work/life balance were among the top reasons for why people would consider joining the gig economy;
On average, the Prudential survey found that gig-only workers earn only about 58 percent as much as traditional full-time employees annually, though the survey acknowledged that gig workers only put in a median of 25 hours per week, compared with a standard 40-hour work week for full-time employees;
Fewer than 20 percent of Millennial respondents in the Deloitte survey outright rejected the idea of taking on short-term contracts or freelance work to supplement or replace existing full-time employment;
62 percent of Millennials in the Prudential survey believe it is somewhat or highly likely that over the next 30 years, traditional full-time employment will largely disappear, and freelance jobs will come up in its place;
62 percent of millennials who would consider gig employment cited a need for “increased money/income,” according to the Deloitte survey.

Kristof predicts that the gig economy will continue to grow at a rapid pace, and that America’s workforce will have an increasingly difficult challenge to differentiate between great side hustle opportunities and platforms with exploitive terms and conditions. She encourages anyone looking to get into the game to research different offerings before wasting time or putting assets at risk.

“There are gigs in almost every industry, so look for what you really like to do, because you can find something that you like and something that will pay well, all at the same time,” Kristof advised. “And that’s kind of the ideal, right?”