financial stress Archives

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

by LizStevens | Dec 11, 2018 | Blog

What tops financial stress for employees? Retirement and student loan debt, among other financial issues, worry employees enough to inhibit productivity, but financial wellness programs can help them take control and regain focus at work.

John Hancock released their annual Financial Stress Survey this week and the findings are worrisome. An overwhelming majority (69%) of American employees experience financial stress. Over 70 percent of them worry about personal finances at work (costing employers up to $2,000 annually per employee in lost productivity).

High levels of financial stress manifest through physical symptoms like anxiety, lack of sleep and a feeling of being overwhelmed. Nearly 90 percent of workers feel there is a social stigma associated with not being financially well, which could motivate them to conceal symptoms of financial stress.

Employers might not notice when employees are highly stressed about finances if they hide it well, and finances aren’t a topic employees are comfortable bringing up with their supervisors. Surveys like these give insight into how employers can better help employees by targeting the issues that affect them most through effective financial wellness programs and benefits.

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

Close to 80 percent of employed Americans are concerned about retirement savings and student loan debt. More than 60 percent of workers are concerned with keeping up with basic expenses, like monthly rent payments. Others are stressed about their overall financial situation and a lack of emergency savings.

Most Americans think getting financial advice at work would reduce their stress and more than 60 percent believe it would help them start saving more for retirement. Employees think employers can help them most with financial issues like retirement income preparation and Social Security and Medicare claiming. Roughly 30 percent think employers can help them with debt counseling or buying a house.

Employers recognize today’s American employees experience high levels of financial stress and are looking for ways to improve health and wellness offerings in this vital area. New solutions, like the creation of HRAs, and the rise of student loan benefits help employees deal with specific financial issues and have the potential to be incredibly successful in their respective areas. Their specificity is also a drawback. Employees in poor health or without student debt won’t benefit from those solutions, but they’ve surely got their own unique financial stressors.

Expansive financial wellness programs that give employees the tools and support to improve the issues affecting their overall financial wellness, versus those that tackle singular financial issues, are likely to make the most difference. Employees are able to reduce their financial stress by using and applying knowledge from their financial wellness program and eventually, will start to reach their financial goals.

More on Financial Stress and Financial Wellness Programs

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

How Does Financial Wellness Affect Health?

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

Hiring Trends to Watch in 2020

What Is Financial Literacy and Why Is It Important?

4 Big Employee Benefit Trends for Family Planning

How Can Financial Wellness Be Improved?

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

What Does Financial Wellness Look Like for Women?

by LizStevens | Sep 7, 2018 | Blog

Pay equity is a huge barrier to women’s financial wellness in the workplace, but it isn’t the only one. Most women haven’t used retirement calculators and don’t have backup plans if forced into retirement. They’re not going to ask for help, but employers who provide the right tools can help them help themselves.

Everyone knows: Women make up 46.8 percent of the American labor market, but they still earn an average of 20 percent less than men in the same position. Pay isn’t equitable by any stretch of the imagination.

Even in situations where women and men are offered the same job, women are initially offered salaries up to 45 percent less than what men are offered, according to research from Hired. Hired’s research underscores how critical it is for women to advocate for themselves in negotiations until legislation and corporate policies better support pay equity.

Pay equity isn’t the only issue women face when it comes to financial wellness. Research from Transamerica Center found that less than 10 percent of women have used a retirement calculator and barely 20 percent had a backup plan if they were forced into retirement sooner than expected, either because of job loss, health issues or family obligations.

Why? An argument posed in a MarketWatch article claims that “societal norms and cultural messages undermine [women’s] ability to gain financial literacy and investment expertise.” Research shows that for women, finances, especially issues with personal finances, are generally associated with emotions of embarrassment, shame and fear. Even if women know they need to be more financially literate, they might not ask for help in gaining the knowledge.

Companies know they have a serious problem when it comes to women, pay equity and financial wellness. While both men and women feel financial stress, women feel higher levels of it. And, it causes more complications in their work lives.

That’s where there’s an opportunity for employers to help. Employer-sponsored financial wellness programs like Best Money Moves can bypass cultural barriers and social norms to give women access to the tools they need to measure their financial stress, learn how to manage their money around issues ranging from student loans to mortgages, elder care to relationship issues, and get on track with saving for retirement. The best part about employer-sponsored financial wellness programs is that it takes away any shame or embarrassment associated with asking for help and simply provides the best tools for employees to help themselves.

Employers might also consider adding policies that pledge equal pay for equal work, especially if they’re in the process of recruiting more women. And with unemployment at 3.9 percent (nearly an all-time low), it doesn’t hurt to work on policies that will attract a demographic that makes up nearly half of the workforce.

Best Money Moves Founder/CEO Ilyce Glink will be giving her expert insight on this topic at the “Women, Pay Equity and Financial Wellness” panel at the 2018 HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, September 11 at 10:30 AM.

Best Money Moves will be at the 2018 HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas this September 11-14. Stop by booth #753 to learn how you can improve your company and your employees’ financial health.

Why I Started Best Money Moves

by Ilyce Glink | Sep 6, 2018 | Blog

Updated September 19th, 2019: The Best Money Moves Team is heading to HR Tech and SAP’s SuccessConnect in Las Vegas. Will you be attending either of these events? If so, please stop by and say hello. We’d love to show you our Best Money Moves financial wellness solution and explain why we’re winning awards, closing deals and making employees everywhere smarter about money.

The Best Money Moves team is headed to HR Tech and SAP’s SuccessConnect. While we’re en route to Las Vegas, I’d like to share with you why I started Best Money Moves, a mobile-first, cloud-based technology + coaching platform designed to help people measure their level of financial stress and dial it down in order to get control of their financial lives.

I’m a longtime financial journalist, syndicated columnist, book author and radio talk show host. I’ve been helping people make smarter decisions with their money for more years than I care to count! Five years ago, I was hired by three different companies to design financial wellness programs. Their intent was to create an opportunity to sell their own services by giving a veneer of financial education to employees.

Given that we were in the aftermath of the Great Recession, I didn’t think that would work. And, it didn’t. None of the companies wound up creating a successful product because the truth was – and is – that the majority of employees are broke.

How broke? Forty percent don’t even have $400 in cash for emergencies, and less than 75% don’t have $15,000 saved in a 401k. In my book, that’s pretty broke.

One day, I had an insight that would change the trajectory of my career – which up until then had been spent as a financial journalist and the owner of a content production company specializing in financial information.

I realized that financial wellness companies fall into a couple of categories:

1. Niche products. These try to solve student loan problems for Millennials, or they claim to help you save for retirement by taking the change from a cup of coffee (which you shouldn’t be buying) and socking it away somewhere or helping you earn a little more interest on your savings, or they help you get paid faster, sometimes by the end of the day so you don’t have to get a payday loan.
2. Products that try to sell you things. Like the products I was asked to design, these push credit cards, loans, different types of insurance and other things that most employees don’t need and can’t afford.
3. Financial education products. These are typically course-based and require employees to do a lot of general learning about money before they can figure out how to solve their problems.
4. Products that try to get assets under management. These tell you all about saving for retirement, and encourage you to get into their robo-investing platforms with whatever cash you have available.

Here’s my insight: No one was attacking the problem from the perspective of the employee: They’re extremely stressed about money and have pain points they want to solve now. And, they need help.

So, what if we designed a program that would help the employee understand the root cause of their financial stressors (because, there’s always more than one), use algorithms and machine learning (you know, the cool stuff) to push relevant, personalized information and solutions? What if we helped employees solve the financial problems they have today, across a wide spectrum of issues? Everything from student loans and credit card debt to identity theft, marital issues and elder care?

And, what if we let employees drive it?

Best Money Moves is my answer to the problem of employee financial stress. I know it has a huge ROI for employers, whether you’re trying to measure the effect of financial stress on healthcare costs and outcomes or retention or workplace accidents or unexplained absences. (Our technology can be used to measure all of these issues, and more. Just ask us how.)

Having spent a long career helping people make smarter decisions with their money, I knew there was a better way to help. So, we created a mobile-first platform that is simple to use, easy to understand, yet provides a great depth of knowledge across a wide spectrum of issues. And, we used the latest tech tools so the product would be smart enough to be personalized and relevant. And, we offered employers real-time metrics so they would have the same wonderful experience that they were providing to their employees.

Best Money Moves came out of beta in 2017 and has been winning awards, customers and accolades ever since.

Financial wellness is getting a lot of attention these days, but wherever we go, CEOs, CHROs, and CFOs are fascinated by the Best Money Moves Stressometer™, which is our primary financial stress assessment tool. We break down financial stress into 14 categories and use interactive algorithms to delve deeper and identify the root causes of someone’s financial stress.

The Stressometer™ is just one tool that differentiates Best Money Moves from other financial wellness services. We also have 540 original pieces of objective, custom-created content: video, written articles, calculators and other tools. We’re gamified, with contests that carry cash prizes. We allow our customers to customize Best Money Moves to an incredible degree – because each company is different, and we want to support their company culture.

And, it’s working. Financial stress levels are starting to go down for our customer’s employees. It’s not a magical overnight experience: Financial stress is real, and does more than keep your employees up at night so they’re less productive during the day. But for those employees using our product, they’re finding relief. And, that’s just the beginning of the ROI that companies enjoy.

As Founder/CEO of Best Money Moves, I’m proud that we’re helping people reduce their level of financial stress. We’ve figured out how to help your employees understand their finances better, dig their way out of debt, and feel more empowered to handle the everyday money issues they face.

So, if you’re at SAP SuccessConnect or if you’re attending the 2019 HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas stop by the Best Money Moves at booth #2550 to say hello and learn how you can bring financial wellness to your company in 2020.

Do You Know How Unprepared Employees Really Are?

by LizStevens | Aug 28, 2018 | Blog

Long-term healthcare is expensive and although most Americans will need it, it’s surprising to know how unprepared employees really are.

Long-term healthcare is a tough topic to discuss because it forces people to confront their mortality, but new research from Moll Law Group underscores the importance of saving for the costs of long-term care, like a nursing home or assisted living.

More than 60 percent of Americans have nothing saved for long-term care. Why? Less than half of Americans think they’ll need it. Unfortunately, 70 percent of Americans will.

That means there are millions of people that are seriously unprepared for future healthcare expenses and some of them are your employees.

Housing costs for long-term care are astronomical. Average costs for assisted living are $45,000, semi-private nursing homes are $87,775, and private nursing homes are $97,455. These housing costs are a far stretch from the $25,000 in savings Americans thought would be enough to cover long-term care.

This isn’t just a crisis for the future, it’s a concern many face presently. A new survey from Bankrate found that “For younger baby boomers (ages 54 to 63), money is the top concern keeping them up at night. Thirty-nine percent say financial worries occasionally keep them from falling asleep.” Younger baby boomers are wrestling with high costs for education, housing, and they have aging parents to worry about. All of these factors pull them further from their retirement goals and increase their financial stress.

The process and associated costs of aging don’t need to be unexpected, but often (at least for half of those surveyed by Moll Law Group) the decision to place a loved one in long-term care is unexpected. Although there’s no knowing if or when it will happen, by understanding the likelihood and estimated expenses families can make the right decision without as much financial strain

It’s time to stop avoiding the inevitable and start preparing for unfortunate events that are likely to happen later in life. Employers should encourage employees to contribute to their 401(k) program and offer an employee match. It’s worthwhile to re-approach healthcare and retirement plans to see where employers can better help employees tackle the incredible cost burdens they, or a close family member, will most likely encounter.

Why Are Millennials so Distracted at Work?

by LizStevens | Aug 28, 2018 | Blog

Financial stress is a huge work distraction for Millennials in debt and it’s costing the American economy billions. The statistics on student loan debt in this article have been updated as of February 20, 2020.

Millennials are now the largest generation in the American labor force and they’re distracted by an overwhelming amount of debt. Human resource departments are overwhelmed with solving new issues around financial stress that Millennials are bringing to the office every day.

Around 44.7 million out of 171.3 million American adults have student loan debt and the total amount of outstanding student loan debt passed $1.5 trillion in 2020. The average monthly student loan payment is nearly $400 and roughly 10 percent of borrowers have defaulted on their student loans.

Most millennials have nothing saved for retirement and of those that do, research from E-Trade revealed that 60 percent have already taken an early withdrawal from their 401(k). Nearly half of them use credit cards for monthly necessities they couldn’t afford otherwise.

Millennials are also falling behind when it comes to major life events like getting married and buying a home. All of this affects their work performance, including productivity, retention and turnover, unexplained absences, and presenteeism.

According to a PwC study, almost 60 percent of millennials are financially stressed. Money is a huge issue for them. Bank of America found they spend an average of 4 hours a week on personal finances at work. Close to 20 percent of them have missed days at work due to financial stress.

The American Psychological Association found that financial stress is responsible for 40 percent of turnover and 60 percent of workplace accidents. More than 20 percent of Millennials have changed jobs in the past year (a number 3x higher than those outside that demographic) and Gallup estimates Millennial turnover costs the American economy close to $30 billion per year. It’s advantageous for employers to help employees reduce financial stress to take back productivity and reduce absenteeism, turnover and workplace accidents.

One thing experts agree on: Millennials want help navigating their financial futures. Over 90 percent of Millennials surveyed by Bank of America say they would participate in a financial education program provided by their employer. In the same survey, roughly 80 percent of Millennials say their employer was influential in getting them to save for retirement. According to Willis Towers Watson research, employees are looking for financial wellness tools to track spending, saving, assess their financial position, and set financial goals.

With an extremely tight labor market, employers have become highly motivated to address their Millennial employees’ desire to gain financial wellness. What the early adopters of best-in-class financial wellness programs have begun to see is that greater employee financial wellness also improves productivity and retention, and helps them stay competitive in a tight labor market.

As part of a larger financial wellness program, some companies have instituted a student loan benefit and the IRS approved tax-free employer matched 401(k) contributions for student loan repayments in 2018. The Society of Human Resources (SHRM) reported over 50 percent of U.S. companies offered financial wellness programs in 2019, more than doubling the less than 25 percent who did so in 2015.

Even though more employers are offering financial wellness programs it doesn’t mean employees are using them. In other words, if you offer a financial wellness program that isn’t sophisticated, mobile-first, in the cloud, that offers different kinds of assessment tools and personalized information and solutions, it may well get overlooked in the sea of other benefit paperwork that has to be reviewed and managed.

For increased employee engagement select a financial wellness program, like Best Money Moves, that has the tools, information, and functionality your employees need. Best Money Moves is a mobile-first service that offers budgeting, resource articles, confidential counseling, free credit score, and personalized information and solutions for employees to use to measure and dial down their financial stress.

All of which will help your employees settle down and get back to work.

If you want to learn more about how Best Money Moves can bring financial wellness to your company download our whitepapers and sign up for a demonstration here.