Do Your Homework!
Welcome to the Cutting Room Floor, a newsletter where I round up all my personal finance articles, put out exclusive content and interviews, and flag my favorite job listings from around LinkedIn.
I know, open enrollment season sucks. I get it. It's complicated, it's confusing -- and who has the time?!
The result is that two-thirds of us spend less than 30 minutes on these critical financial choices, according to new data from Voya Financial . And 90% of us just click on the exact same options we had last year, according to Aflac .
These are mistakes, and pretty big ones. We're talking about choices worth thousands of dollars annually, compounded over every year of your working lives. So for my sake, dear reader, put some time into it to make sure you are squeezing every last nickel out of your employee benefits. (Especially Health Savings Accounts, the best deal around.)
Whether you realize it or not, these benefits amount to 30-40% of your total compensation. So get to it -- but before you do so, read my new column for Reuters :
C-Suite Spotlight: Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit
Everyone's talking about generative AI these days, but what I find really interesting is the impact it could have on people's financial lives. Intuit and Credit Karma were in NYC the other day, led by Sasan Goodarzi and Kenneth Lin , talking about how these AI tools could help change the game.
For instance, let's say an average user wanted to boost their credit score by 50 points -- they're probably not sure how to go about doing that. By doing an X-ray of their financial lives, AI tools can lay out that pathway -- and even take charge of that whole process, and do it for them. Cool stuff!
Sasan has a fascinating personal history, so I asked him to share a few key lessons for this newsletter:
-What was a formative financial lesson you learned??
“I was born in Iran and when I was a young child there, my family was financially comfortable. That all changed when the Iranian revolution happened and we moved to America when I was nine. We had to leave everything behind and start over financially.
“I lived with my mom and my two older brothers. My oldest brother started a small import/export business in Florida, and one of my earliest memories was how stressful it was for him to make ends meet each week, and how lonely managing your finances can be. I can still remember sitting at the family kitchen table and watching him stay up into the night trying to figure out how to make it all work, how to keep the business going, and the pressure he felt because the whole family, which now included me, depended on it. How he had no one to turn to and it was all on his shoulders.
“That pressure he experienced as a small business owner really made an impact on me and has stayed with me to this day. I remember that time often in my work at Intuit when I think about what so many people are experiencing around the world as they’re sitting at their own kitchen tables and trying to manage their finances.”
?-What financial advice do you like to give people??
?“One of the most important things I've learned is you don’t have to do it alone. Finances can be very lonely. I know this is especially true for small business owners like my older brother, but I also think it’s common for most people when it comes to money. Intuit recently did a survey and we discovered that most people feel alone and not confident about their finances. And that feeling of being alone and on your own makes the actual work that much harder.
“So my advice to people is to try and find a way to break through that sense of isolation. You are not alone. Talk to your family and friends. Consult an expert. Find tools and resources that can help you have confidence in yourself and the financial decisions you make. You don’t have to carry that burden all by yourself.”
Jobs of the Week
After years and years of employers complaining about how people just don't want to work hard anymore (totally false, but whatever), along comes a hysterical story the other day: Employers complaining that people aren't quitting!
What do they want from us, exactly? To work? To not work? What?
I can't, y'all.
Anyways, if they apparently want more of us to quit, here are a few job leads that will help make their wish come true!
领英推荐
As always, feel free to get in touch via Twitter (here), or email ([email protected]) -- to suggest story ideas, or hire me to write fabulous articles, or broadcast your job opening.
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-CT