Financial Wellness: Industry Buzzword or 401(k) Value Add?

You can always count on the Retirement Plan Industry to be drumming up new concepts Advisors can utilize to add value when working with Plan Sponsors. The hot topics of the past ten years have been Fiduciary Liability, Fee Regs and then Retirement Readiness. What is the industry next big buzzword? Or am a doing a disservice by calling these “buzzwords” and are they instead real 401k value add concepts important to Advisors and the clients they support?

Clearly the DOL Rule is a hot subject, but if we put that one aside (doesn’t that feel good? Are you not sick and tired of the damn DOL Rule?) and scan the agenda of our National 401k Conferences you will see the term Financial Wellness pop up quite bit. What exactly is Financial Wellness and how does it impact the 401k world?  

Click for Video of What is Financial Wellness 

Financial Wellness is having an understanding of your financial situation and taking care of it in such a way that you are prepared for financial changes.  FYI….I stole that definition from the internet. The importance to the 401k world is simple, if 64% of Americans don’t have $1000 saved for an unexpected emergency (Marketwatch 2015)….how can we expect them to actively participant in their 401k plan?

When you really think about it, 401k and Financial Wellness complement each other really well. If we can get people to take their personal finances seriously, that really is the first step towards getting them involved in their 401k plan.

In addition, it is important to understand that the employee’s financial health is impacting the Employer in ways the Employer might not realize.  Lower productivity, higher turnover and increased health care costs are just a few of the areas impacted when employees struggle with financial wellness. In terms of the retirement plan, when people struggle with personal finances you can expect the following: Lower contributions, lower balances and 401k loans become the norm.

Is Financial Wellness important to 401k Advisors and can or should it be added to their overall service model? Or is it just another buzzword that the satanic financial services industry has created to further their evil plan of asset gathering.  Muahahaha!   Watch The Retireholiks in episode 21 as they discuss this quandary with no filter and healthy amounts of truth serum (aka Beer).

Did you know?

All the cool kids (aka Advisors) that are jonesing for 401k blog posts hang out at www.four01k.com and when their parents (aka Broker Dealers) are not looking they watch Retireholiks at www.retireholiks.com