The Gap
Most hard-working Americans are not saving enough for retirement and will come up short. Even with all of the focus over the past decades, most Americans don't have access to an employer sponsored retirement plan, or aren't adequately saving in their existing plan. This equates to a sizable GAP in American's retirement savings. Get ready for a dose of insightful conversations with Shannon Edwards and her expert guests as they explore innovative strategies to bridge the retirement savings gap. Whether you're an employer, benefits manager, or a financial advisor looking to excel in the retirement plan arena, listening in will help you unlock the secrets to closing The GAP and stay ahead of the future!
The Gap
Sunny Days are Here Again!
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Episode Introduction - The Gap with Rachel Fox
Today’s conversation is one I am really excited about, because it goes straight to the heart of what The Gap is all about—not just saving for retirement someday, but helping working Americans stay financially stable today so they can actually get there.
I’m thrilled to welcome Rachel Fox to the podcast.
Rachel is a seasoned leader in the employee benefits space with more than 23 years of experience helping employers support their workforce in meaningful, practical ways. For the past four years, she has led sales and partnerships at Sunny Day Fund, an out-of-plan Emergency Savings Account—or ESA—provider that helps employers turn financial wellness from a concept into something employees can actually use when life happens.
Before joining Sunny Day Fund, Rachel spent nearly two decades running her own Aflac agency, where she consistently ranked among the top five district sales coordinators nationally—an achievement that speaks volumes about her leadership, her ability to build strong teams, and her deep understanding of what employees really need from their benefits. She also worked as a health broker, guiding employers through an increasingly complex benefits landscape and helping them make smart, people-focused decisions.
What I love about Rachel—and what you’ll hear loud and clear today—is her passion. She truly believes that emergency savings are a missing link in closing both the financial stress gap and the retirement savings gap. Because when employees don’t have a cushion for unexpected expenses, retirement savings is often the first thing to suffer.
Episode Description
A stronger retirement starts with steadier today money. That’s the core of our conversation with Rachel Fox, a veteran benefits leader who’s helping employers turn “financial wellness” into a real system: automated emergency savings that keep workers from raiding their 401(k)s when life hits. We dig into the data behind out-of-plan ESAs, why they reduce loans and hardships, and how smart design—balance-based incentives, payroll automation, and clear, inclusive communication—builds a durable first line of defense.
Rachel traces the human stories behind the metrics: employees one event away from catastrophe, HR teams overwhelmed by loan requests, and the relief that comes when a car repair or deposit is covered without penalties or taxes. She explains why ESAs act as an on-ramp to retirement, increasing participation and contributions by making long-term saving feel possible. We also unpack the limits of PLESAs under SECURE 2.0 and why employers prefer out-of-plan flexibility that avoids ERISA complexity and allows meaningful employer contributions.
Beyond the ledger, we connect financial stress to safety, focus, and retention. Rachel highlights a study of short-haul truckers showing an 87% drop in citations among ESA participants and shares how employers repurpose bonuses and underused budgets into savings multipliers. The takeaway is practical and hopeful: lead with systems, not lectures; make saving effortless; and let people save for both emergencies and aspirations so behavior sticks.
If you care about reducing 401(k) leakage, improving benefits ROI, and helping workers move from survival to stability to growth, this conversation maps the path. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns benefits strategy, and leave a review with one change you’d make to your company’s savings design.
Guest Bio: Rachel Fox
Rachel Fox is a leader in the employee benefits space with 23 years of experience. For the past four years, she has led sales and partnerships at Sunny Day Fund, an out-of-plan Emergency Savings Account (ESA) provider that operationalizes financial wellness initiatives for workforces. Before joining Sunny Day Fund, Rachel spent nearly two decades running her own Aflac agency, where she consistently r
Hello, I am Shannon Edwards, your host and owner of TriStar Pension Consulting. I would like to welcome all listeners to our podcast with a special welcome to those of you listening for the first time. I started this podcast because I have a passion for helping Americans achieve a dignified retirement. By sharing innovative ideas, this podcast is designed to help close the gaps that America has in retirement savings and coverage. By doing so, we can improve the lives of working Americans. Today's conversation is one that I'm really excited about because it goes straight to the heart of what the gap is all about. Not just saving for retirement someday, but helping working Americans stay financially stable today so they can actually get there. I am thrilled to welcome Rachel Fox to the podcast. Rachel is a seasoned leader in the employee benefit space with more than 23 years of experience helping employers support their workforce in meaningful practical ways. For the past four years, she has led sales and partnerships at Sunny Day Fund, an out-of-plan emergency savings account, a provider that helps employers turn financial wellness from a concept into something employees can actually use when life happens. Before joining Sunny Day Fund, Rachel spent nearly two decades running her own AFLAC agency, where she consistently ranked among the top five district sales coordinators nationally, an achievement that speaks volumes about her leadership, her ability to build strong teams, and her deep understanding of what employees really need from their benefits. She also worked as a health broker guiding employers through an increasingly complex benefits landscape and helping them make smart, people-focused decisions. What I love about Rachel and what you'll hear loud and clear today is her passion. She truly believes that emergency savings are a missing link in closing both the financial stress gap and the retirement savings gap. Because when employees don't have a cushion for unexpected expenses, retirement savings is often the first thing to suffer. Rachel is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington, where she earned her Bachelor of Science and played both field hockey and rugby. So, yes, she brings grit and teamwork into everything she does. She lives in Northern Maryland with her husband and three children, and she is deeply committed to helping working families build real financial resilience. This conversation is a powerful reminder that retirement readiness doesn't start at retirement. It starts with stability, dignity, and support along the way. Hello, Rachel, and welcome to the gap.
SPEAKER_02:Hi, thanks for having me. That was quite an introduction. I feel like I feel very important now.
SPEAKER_00:Well, good. I hope you do. I hope you do. Okay. So, first of all, whenever I have somebody on, what I want to start with is your story. So you've spent more than two decades in the employee benefit space. Can you please walk us through your professional journey and how you arrived at your current role with Sunny Day Fund?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so my professional journey had lots of twists and turns in it. Again, I think many of us were not little, little kids dreaming of going into employee benefits when we got older, but it finds us somehow. And then we find the meaning in it and we find, you know, the passion in it and how it can impact people's lives. And so that all kind of drives our mission for better, sunnier days ahead. My bachelor's degree was in biology. I had done a couple years of environmental consulting when I got out of school because my brother had owned an environmental consulting company in Northern Virginia. So I worked there and I loved it, but felt like, you know, I wasn't doing exactly what I felt like was going to change the world. I was ultimately kind of working for the developers because those are the people that are impacting the environment and those are the permits, and that's where the money's flowing from. And I just always felt like I was going to be the boss's little sister. So I wanted to branch out and do something on my own. I found AFLAC and I felt like if this is what I was meant to do, I was born to do this. What have I been wasting all my time doing other things for? And I had done that because I really liked the idea of residual renewal income. I, my husband and I keep very separate finances, and I really liked the idea of still having an income when I was a stay-at-home so that I could support my half of the family bills. And we were in just IVF land for a decade. And so I ended up staying there much longer than I had anticipated. But there's nothing like work to kind of throw your throw yourself into it when you're feeling defective and broken and defeated. And so I found lots of success there. And that was really important part of my journey and understanding everybody has a sad story, and I can help empower and protect people from more sad, sad stories impacting their finances. And for many families, it's really just one event. They're just one event away from a really, really catastrophic situation. And so that's when I really learned the power of employee benefits and how it can really change people's lives. And I really liked the idea of being self-employed at that time. I was with AFLAC, I was a 1099, and I liked that. I was hungry, I was ready to go change the world. And then when I finally had my kids, I had the flexibility with that to take a step back and work just as much as I wanted to. And then I went back to work full-time as a health broker. And it was a much different environment than what I had been used to. I was like, how hard can this be? Benefits or benefits. Health insurance world is really difficult, and it's getting increasingly so, especially for smaller companies who don't have as many choices to go self-funded as some of the larger companies. And so it's really difficult landscape for people to navigate. And so I was there, but I really felt like this isn't exactly the thing that I feel like I found my place and where I've landed. It was really a meaningful experience for me to gain at that time to understand the whole benefits ecosystem. But I had always, ever since my AFLAC days, really been steeped in financial precarity. And that's what voluntary benefits are all about, just making sure that we are resilient against financial catastrophes when medical events happen. But it really made me realize there's a lot of other things besides just medical events that it can cripple families. And then when I start working as a health broker, you see the whole ecosystem of benefits and you realize retirement is one of those benefits that a lot of companies have. And it was kind of coming in the crosshairs a lot because people were financially unfit for some of the other things that were happening. And so it's great that we're systematizing retirement, but many people don't begin their savings journey at retirement. So when Sunny Day Fund found me through the magic of LinkedIn and some connections there, I really felt like this is where I meant to be. I was meant to be. And all of those steps on my journey really helped to give me the foundation that I needed to be able to look at it from the lens of what does success look like? What is the problem fundamentally we are trying to solve? How does this impact employees? How does this impact employers and work with the whole ecosystem? And that was right around the time when I think the whole wellness world was increasing in employee benefits. And whatever that word means, there's typically three pillars to it. There's the physical health, there's mental health, and then there's financial health. And so when we talk about employee wellness from a benefit standpoint, we kind of have those three pillars, but they're not distinct, untouched pillars that are siloed. It's really more of like a Venn diagram of how they really interact with each other. Benefits are all how can we support our employees where they need it the most? How can we make life most affordable for them and address their biggest concerns that keep them up at night? And as you dive into those numbers, just like what you had talked about, we saw that loans and withdrawals from the 401k were on an uptick across the board. Why are those happening? Why are those even provisions in a retirement plan? What is there? It's because people don't have emergency savings to fall back on. And for many employees, the 401k is where they have accumulated the most money. And so it's always going to be in the crosshairs. Yes, we've got hardship withdrawals. If our messy emergency does not nicely fit into one of those checked boxes and qualify for a hardship withdrawal, we have early loans that can be a host of other reasons. But again, there's penalties and there's reasons why we don't want to encourage people to think of their retirement account as it's an emergency savings account, but too often the data was pointing in that direction. So if we can use that same rails that the retirement does, where it's a familiar payroll deducted, employer incentivized employee benefit, we can do the same thing on the emergency saving side to protect retirement assets and build a more meaningful financial resiliency within the workforce.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, you said a lot there. There's a lot for us to unpack here. You've worked on both the employer and employee-facing sides of the benefits from running your own AFLAC agency to working as a health broker. How did those experiences shape the way you think about financial wellness?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that AFLAC obviously had a much direct, more direct impact on it because we were delivering checks to families who had been through a really terrible situation with impossible choices to face. And I'm a firm believer that behind every data point is a real family going through real situations with impossible choices to figure out what is the least terrible option that I have to draw from. And often we have debt resources available. And many times that AFLAC check would keep people from reaching out into a retirement plan for a loan or going into a payday loan facility or doing something else where they really did not want to be in that situation of having to pay that money back. So having that influx of cash during that time, that cause and effect relationship to help address this specific event, it was so powerful. And so that was really meaningful for me, for me to see my eyes of what that impact couldn't do. But what if we, you know, extend that beyond medical events? What if we extend that to when somebody's car breaks down, when somebody's hot water heater breaks down, when their sister's about to be evicted, or all of these things that might not necessarily count as a hardship withdrawal or, you know, a qualification under some emergency relief grant programs and that sort of thing, where a lot of times there's qualifying qualifying reasons when you can access money. And if we just take that all away and use a little bit more carrot and a little less stick and encouraging better fundamental savings behaviors, we don't just address the one-off situations then, but we're actually building a system with more financial resilience where yes, they will be more prepared to handle those unexpected emergencies that fall onto us all. And we can start looking at aspirational goals, like actually working towards achieving economic mobility and asset building and all those things they're working for that paycheck to accomplish. We can make meaningful progress to that and helping people get safe and reliable transportation and housing and all of those things that we all fundamentally want for our family. So sometimes the horizon of how we're thinking about money is not as far as retirement. For many employees, I'm just trying to make it to paycheck, or I'm just trying to make it to Friday, or I'm just trying to make it through this month. And so we need much more immediate needs addressed, or they'll never get into retirement. They're just going to be like, man, you're asking me to lock money away for 30 years from now and I can't afford my groceries this week. Like, this is not where I'm at. So emergency savings has really started as a more approachable starting point. And seeing that from the AFLAC side, I saw, man, if we can make this available not just for medical events, but for all events, this can really unlock a lot of situations for people. And then again, with the benefit broker side of things, I think that that has been something that we're talking about a lot more. It used to be very siloed where there was a benefit side of the house and there was a retirement side of the house, and those two didn't always talk. But now we're seeing a whole lot more communication on that because we want this really comprehensive view of how the benefits all work together and how they help each other. So all of these are addressing retention, which is a goal for the benefit broker. All of these are addressing building a benefit stack that's going to be impactful for this specific workforce. And it's not necessarily a cookie-cutter design. It's like, let's really figure out what's going to be important. And there's been a little bit of a Trojan horse campaign happening where it's like in some of the brokerage firms, that retirement arm of the brokerage firm has this group. Like you think at the next renewal, they're not going to introduce their own benefits people to come in and try to get the BOR from that. So I think on the benefit side of things, it was really open, eye-opening to me to say, hey, we should really be talking a lot more with retirement guys because, you know, we're all on the same, on the same boat, we're all on the same journey, we're all trying to do the same thing. And all of these things support each other. So let's have a more comprehensive view of about how we can serve the employees the best and meet their needs.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I know you you mentioned earlier about, you know, having to have or are having ways for employees to get money out of the 401k plan. And why do we do that? And, you know, I think one thing that we've all learned is that if there's not a way, because so much of their savings is in the 401k plan, if there's not a way, if they feel like it's locked up for 30 years, then they just won't participate.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_00:And I think that that has really brought more of a spotlight on, you know, some of the changes with secure. For instance, we when they started letting employees self-certify hardships, we just saw a huge output outgoing of money. Just, I mean, all sorts of hardships. But you're right. And we've also had situations where it was a very sad story, you know, somebody needed a car to take their mom to chemo an hour away. And, you know, that's not a hardship because you're not the one with the medical bills, your mom is, or things like that. So it is, it is so important that they have some ability to save something and hopefully leave leave more of that money in the 401k. You know, and also when they take it as a hardship, they're getting hit with a 10% early withdrawal penalty typically and taxes. So they're not even getting, you know, necessarily as much as they as much as they need, or they're paying a lot of it to the government. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I mean, there needs to be deterrence there because obviously we want retirement money to make it to retirement. And so we want to reaffirm to people like this is called a retirement account for a reason. But that's all the more reason that we need an emergency savings vehicle because the retirement plan was not really designed to be a retirement plan and an emergency savings account at the same time, even though that's how employees are using it. And so as we're building towards the health of retirement plans, we want to figure out how we can best support that and make sure that people are contributing, that they are participating, and that we can encourage that. And you're right, I think that things like auto enrollment and different provisions that have come out have overall been a very positive thing. And certainly we would hope to see auto enrollment in the ESA world in the future, because that would really be a significant and meaningful impact for us. But I can also see, like if I'm looking at the trajectory of loans and withdrawals, I can typically see when auto enrollment went into effect because loans spike then, because people are busy and we don't always pay attention. And HR has a lot to communicate during open enrollment, and we might miss that one little bullet point that says, hey, we're switch, we're switching everybody to auto enrollment now. And they might not realize immediately, but then all of a sudden, next year, three years later, it's like, oh, you've been cooking that pot a month. That's mine. I need that pot of money. I need that. Right. And then we see that type typically go up because we're trying with the best of intention to do what is best for people, but we need to also understand what are their most immediate needs that's keeping them up at night. And for many people, they can't even make it to retirement because their today isn't okay. So it's really hard to just have conversations about tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree. Was there a specific moment or a client experience or a pattern that you saw along the way that really opens your eyes to the importance of emergency savings for our working families? Like what really opened your eyes to how important that was?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we always love watching, you know, from the savers. And I think that that's the we we call ourselves a mission delusional team because we are so focused on changing lives of people who have been trying for a long time to do this themselves, but this system is kind of built against them. And so finally having the opportunity where it's like every year we're making these New Year's resolutions to save money. And broadly, I know what I need to do, right? I know I need to spend less and save more. But if I don't have a new system built out in 2026 than I do in 2025, it's really just a wish list. It's just a pipe dream. It's never something that's going to create meaningful change unless I have a system that changes that for me. So when we can bring in an ESA as an easy button and have that be part of the benefit stack, where you don't need to have a minimum account balance requirement. You don't need to qualify with a credit score to qualify for a high yield interest rate savings account. We've seen it where people have been formally justice involved and they came and said, I have tried to get a bank account at many, many different banks. And you're the first people that have included me in this process and allowed me to open a bank account. And now I now I have a bank account. Now I have a savings account because it's not an individual qualification, it's not a retail product, right? As a benefit, we have a lot more leeway than what retail products would, just because these are all for the KYC process, these are all I-9 verified individuals, the money's all coming from a single place through payroll deduction. It's not all these external sources. So it's much safer dollars. And so we can have different rules with that than the retail product would. I also really love hearing from employers the meaningful difference it's made for employees. And we'll do data analysis on a quarterly and annual basis for accounts where we can kind of present back to the employer aggregated anonymized data analytics that show, like, you know, here's the average withdrawal of your population. And your population had 3.1 average number of withdrawals, and the average withdrawal amount was$542. And 27% of those withdrawals went towards transportation events, right? Either securing a new car or fixing an existing car. And then 35% went towards housing. That's either saving up for a security deposit or home repairs or something like that, right? 23% went towards vacations and home goals that I have vacation goals, family goals that I have with my family. So they can kind of see that breakdown of what are people able to accomplish and celebrate because we brought this in, and what are the biggest financial stressors that we've been able to address with this. So while we capture saver stories and share that, we also capture employer data to know how is this making a meaningful change to our workforce. And we have a press release out and a blog post about a specific nonprofit client called SERCAP in Pennsylvania. And they had brought us in specifically because they saw too many loans and withdrawals taking coming out of the 403B. And that was something that they specifically wanted to address. They said a lot of our hourly workers are not even participating in it. And the people who are participating in it are treating it as if it's an emergency savings account. And we want to turn this around. We want to build a better system that works for them to get them to their near-term goals and hence their long-term goals. And since they launched Sunny Day Fund, they hadn't seen a single 401k withdrawal, 403B withdrawal. And they said this has been a night and day difference. And our workforce took to this, you know, really quickly and they understood it immediately and it addressed that need. So it was a win for the employer, it was a win for the employees as we have all of those individual stories coming in of what employees were taking those loans for and didn't have to anymore because they had their own savings to lean on.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. That's awesome. What when when Sunny Day Fund approached you, what ultimately drew you to Sunny Day Fund and the mission out of plan emergency savings accounts?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's funny. Nobody's ever asked me this before, but it's funny because I had I had for the most part always been a 1099. So I was always 100% commission and you just eat what you kill. And I kind of like that idea. And that's another reason why my husband and I kept very separate money because he's like a federal government worker and like very stable paycheck. And he'd be like, you know, like you haven't gotten paid in two months, and then you get like$40,000 in one month. Like, how does this work? And I'm like, I'm not going over my pipeline with you. Like, I'm not just like it's gonna be fine. I've got my stuff. So we kept it all very separate. So when I went with Sunny Day Fund, like I'm definitely a W-2 here, but you know, when Sid hired me, he it was very like, Hey, so I just want to make sure that you knew that we're a startup. Did I tell you we're a startup? Because I wanted to make sure you know our star. Did I mention we're a startup? We're a startup. I want you to know we're a startup. And I was like, okay, like I okay, like I'm okay with a little bit of risk. And like I've been doing that as a self-employed person for for 20 years, so I kind of get it. And I'm used to making decisions that make sense financially. And, you know, is this conference going to be worth it? And is this thing gonna be worth it? Because I understand how it's gonna impact the business in a better way. So yeah, I think when he found me and he explained the mission, I was like, I this has legs. This this is gonna change the world. Like this is, I love the idea of being at the start of something where we can build it and nobody else is doing this the way that we're like, this is amazing. You guys have all of these. Of data and people are talking about it as if it's still on the roadmap. Like, we got to tell the world about this. This is going to change lives. And he was like, I know. And and I loved that it was his founding story, right? Like he was like, I'm not some serial entrepreneur who was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I'm on my seventh startup. You know, he's like, This is my lived experience. As an immigrant, I came to this country, I was denied a bank account. My family was in debt. We were struggling, and we thought we were the only ones because everybody has the beautiful Facebook filters on. And we didn't, we thought it was just our family curse. And then he was like, I went to college and I realized like everybody around me was in the exact same situation. We're just really a lot better at covering it up and acting like we're keeping up with the Joneses. And I was like, Yeah, I mean, this is this is the lived experience of most people. And even if it doesn't impact you personally, you have people in your family or your neighborhood where struggle is not that far away. And if we can change that, if we can fundamentally build a system that works for more people instead of excluding them and instead of making more debt solutions even more ubiquitous than they already are, and actually start working on improving financial health, like this is great. Cause I saw this on the health side where it's like there's a bunch of people making a bunch of money on really unhealthy workforces. But instead of actually reducing your BMI and reducing your A1C, we can just medicate that away with a prescription. Like everything's great. On the financial side, I saw that same parallel where there's a lot of people making a lot of money on a very financially unhealthy population. And instead of actually creating financial resilience and building and accumulating savings that they could fall back on for their own dignity and independence, to have their own dollars to fall back on instead of reaching to borrow money that doesn't belong to them, which will always be more expensive. All of the debt solutions were ubiquitous, you know. We were not encouraging saving strategies as much as we were encouraging debt. I mean, the national average savings account interest rate is below a half a percent APY, but their credit card cashback rewards are at 5%. So maybe which one likely has the higher balance. We're not teaching financial literacy in schools. We plop credit card companies down on college campuses and wonder why kids are coming into the job market in debt. Like it's their fault. So from a system standpoint, I was like, this is amazing. Like we can make real, we can impact millions of lives. And he was like, Okay, good, you get it. All right, we're in. I was like, Yeah, I'm in. This is great. Like, let's do it. Let's let's let's build it and let's do it because nobody else is building it.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's awesome. That's a great story. You consistently ranked among the top district sales coordinators nationally while running your AFLAC agency, which is an incredible achievement. What do you think drove that success?
SPEAKER_02:So the way that I found a lot of success with AFLAC was growing my team through team building and recruiting. And so there were different strategies that different district sales coordinators and regional sales coordinators could take, but I never really loved cold calling and marketing in that way and trying to set appointments. And I realized if I just recruit people, I'll have a bunch of people that are setting those appointments and then my calendar is filled with deals to go close. And so that made a lot more sense to me. And then I saw changing people's lives, people that had come from, you know, I felt like I was in this dead end job forever and I was hanging on because I thought I was gonna get that promotion. And then somebody got promoted above me, and I finally just had enough and I was like, I'm gonna do my own thing and be a self-employed 1099. And then I could see the transition in their own lives and all the people that I had helped to elevate to financial freedom in that way. And I was like, this makes a lot of sense. And again, because I was going through my infertility journey, I really loved it, I was very competitive. Obviously, I'd played sports my whole life. I was very competitive. I really wanted to win. And my regional sales coordinator, his name is Eric Silverman, and he's very active on LinkedIn as well. And he was very competitive and he wanted to be the top region, and I was his top district, and so I needed to be the top district. And so there was a lot of pressure on me, but I thrived on pressure and I knew exactly what I needed to do. And I was like, let's grow through, you know, volume. And the more people that we have, the more appointments we set, the more sales we have. And so we would end up, you know, topping not just the growth charts, but also for sales by extension. And that meant a lot to me just because salespeople are very like, we need acknowledgement, we need award banquets, we need little chatchkies and prizes and trips. And so that was very motivating to me at the time. And so it served as a really good foundation to establish everything I needed to kind of come into this startup environment where you don't have that structure built. You don't really have that internal competition. And so you're really trying to build something. And it seems like every month we hear about some new company that's saying that they're doing ESAs. And we were really the first out-of-plan ESA to get started in 2019. And so we really feel like we're the OG at this point. And it's just, you know, like this is our, this is ours to lose.
SPEAKER_00:And so we're excited about it. Awesome. At Sunny Day Fund, what accomplishments are you most proud of so far, especially when it comes to helping employers operationalize financial wellness rather than just talk about it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So this is something that I have a big passion for, and I have a little bit of an opinion on this because we talk with a lot of employers. Again, I don't, I still don't do any outbound marketing, right? So, like half of our leads kind of come through strategic partners, and then the other half come through Google searches or my own ridiculous like LinkedIn and TikTok content. And so, as people are coming to us, again, they've got different things that they're looking for and how they can improve this. And sometimes they come to us and they're like, Yeah, we've had this big initiative on financial wellness, and you know, all these knuckleheads are walking around with Starbucks cups and then they complain they don't have any money and like blah, blah, blah. And so it's just this concept where a lot of times it's like the CFO who comes in and just says, I really feel like people need to learn more. Like if they knew better, they would do better. And we just need some sort of financial education or literacy program to come in and really help give them that framework of knowledge that they need. And that sounds good on paper. And I'm totally, you know, financial literacy and education has its place. But if it was just that, like we'd never really have doctors who are overweight and we'd never really have nurses who smoked, right? Like it's just really at the end of the day, it does come down to a systems of what does the doing. And we can't just tell people, like, here's all the stuff you should do, now go do it, and expect that that's going to get massive adoption within a wide, diverse workforce where the opportunity, again, is not uniform. So it's been really encouraging sometimes when we come in and can use those dollars, that same budget that they're using for an underperforming financial literacy or education program, and we can turn that into something that's really meaningfully doing the building for employees to create that financial resilience, to help them start thinking about expanding that financial horizon. Because now, you know, instead of going like income minus expenses equals savings, I don't have anything left over, so I can't afford to save. We fundamentally have to shift that equation where it's now income minus savings equals expenses. And if you have already saved up for that new car down payment, or you've already saved up for your family vacation or your kids' holiday gifts or your new like security deposit, nobody's gonna throw shade at you for carrying a Starbucks scuff around, right? Because you're you're taking care of the big things first. What comes up, what becomes a problem is when we're not prioritizing the right things in the right way and automating towards not just emergencies, but also towards the things that are really important for us. If we don't create savings and we don't create room for anything good to happen in the future, because nobody's gonna do it for us. We have to do it ourselves, we have to build it ourselves. And this allows people to do the building. And so that's been really powerful from an employer standpoint to say, let's take these existing budget dollars from an underperforming benefit, repurpose them into this. And now all of a sudden we've got 40 to 60% voluntary participation. And here's all of your metrics. You know, 57% of your workforce is participating. The average account balance there is over$2,000. They're only taking less than three withdrawals a year. These are the kind of things that you were looking for. Oh, and by the way, let's compare the retention rates among your savers and non-savers, and let's compare the number of 401k loans and withdrawals within those two populations. And it's just, wow, this is impactful instead of just a suggested guidance on what you should be doing when you get your act together.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. Yeah, I agree. So looking back at your career, what lessons stand out the most? Um, particularly lessons that influence how you lead, partner with employers, or advocate for employees today.
SPEAKER_02:The biggest thing for me is just really understanding what is the problem we're solving. So I think especially in the financial wellness world, there can be a lot of fluffy things where we don't always know exactly what are we tracking. How do we know what success looks like? You know, if we bring in a payroll deducted loan program or if we bring in earned wage access, how do we want to see a lot of participation there? Like what does success look like? What kind of engagement levels do we want to see? How are we tracking if this is actually helping people? Or are we just throwing something out there and just checking a box and saying, we'll see. So that's a big part of my discussion is what is making this conversation happen, right? It's all inbound traffic. So it's like, what have you seen? What have you heard from your workforce? And many times that's first and foremost problems with the 401k. Either we have no participation in there, or people are treating it as if it's an emergency savings account, or people who aren't participating are coming to us for internal personal loans and we've kind of been giving them some money because they've worked for us for a long time. And now we've set a precedent that we can't keep up with and it's becoming problematic. And so, you know, if they're right back in your office the next six months, it's like, yeah, because if you're always the FEMA, they're never gonna build the levies on their own, right? So we have to create that system. Number two is usually retention issues. So again, let's track if people are job hopping for 50 cents an hour across the street, it might be because we're not investing them in them in a really meaningful way that matters to them, especially low to moderate income workers can sometimes feel like the benefit stack was more advantageous for highly compensated workers. Younger workers might be coming in thinking this, none of this applies to me at all, you know? And so it's really trying to kind of customize what are the goals of you working here, whatever that fill-in-the-blank savings goal is, we can support that. And a lot of times, number three, it's coming in through employee engagement surveys, and employers are trying to operationalize that. Financial wellness will continue to be either the number one or number two top requested benefit that is on the horizon. That and mental health have been the top two for the past two years. And so it's really about how can we operationalize that? And I don't always get that information on the employee engagement survey that dials down to which silo can I put the money towards where it's going to be really impactful. I don't want to have to tell my employer that I'm saving up for fertility stuff. I don't want to have to tell my employer that I'm saving up to go through a divorce. I don't want to tell my employer that I'm saving up for a wedding. I just know that this is why I'm working for that paycheck. And if you could help me with whatever that fill-in-the-blank adventure is, gosh, I would feel really supported and that would be really meaningful. And I wouldn't be job hopping around so much because I would feel like I was supported and I had a place here. So understanding how the data is telling the story of the issues that we need to solve is really important. So at that initial discovery, it's really what is the problem we're trying to solve? What are the metrics we can track to show success? And what is the vehicle that's going to get us there? And can we optimize a plan design that incentivizes this particular metric in this particular section of the workforce?
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Yeah. And I love that I love that your solution is data driven and that you can actually like see the changes. And that's just that's very impressive to me. How have those lessons changed the way you approach conversations about benefits, savings, and long-term financial security?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I think the biggest lessons that we've have learned is the power of customization and that every employer is slightly different, just like every employee is slightly different. And so we can't have a blanket cookie-cutter solution and expect that to resonate across every employer and across every employee the same way. So we really, yes, we have a data-driven approach so that we can understand, you know, I'm mapping out the loan trajectory from the 401k Form 5500s for the past 12 years or however far I can go back. And I'm also tracking whatever metrics are really important to them. And they'll give us like an anonymized census file so that we kind of understand, okay, here's the distribution of wages, here's where the retention problems lie, here are the where the 401k loans and withdrawals are coming from, here's the population that's not participating in the 401 at all, so that we can have a really customized approach there. And so many employers are worried about cannibalization of the 401k we've learned. And this has been a big lesson that all the data is out there to show that an ESA really just increases contributions and participation into retirement savings. But having that ready and kind of heading that objection off at the onset, we've learned, has been really important because that's obviously a huge concern for employers. I want to make sure that people are not going to reduce their$100 401k deduction down to 80 and put$20 over here. The data shows that that's not happening. And once we have them started to save up in emergency savings, we see a lot more people start participating in retirement savings because it stair steps people into that, right? It's diversifying the workplace saving strategy. So it's not just one thing and we can really speak to more people. So as we figure that out, like, hey, let's reward your hourly workforce with this particular reward that's really aggressive and it's balance-based, right? Not a contribution match. Contribution matches work really well for restricted vehicles like a 401k. When it's liquid, we have to encourage not just contributions, but to maintain a balance is there as well. So you can do something like, you know, my employer contribution will be, we'll look at what your over your average balance was last quarter, and our employer contribution will be 10% of that, you know, up to$50 a quarter or$100 a quarter. So we'll put some budget certainty on there in case I start some massive savings epidemic and everybody starts saving in mass. But that way, instead of giving everybody a$200 gift card to Target for holidays where they're going to come out spending$400, use that same$200 to become a money multiplier, right? Where you don't get one dollar from us until you've saved 10 of your own. And so now that$200 could have over$2,000 of savings if used strategically in a plan design that speaks to people in a way that makes sense to them and where they're incentivized for keeping the money in, instead of just you put in$25 and we'll pay, put in$25 and then everybody just takes out$30. Like that's we're not, you know. Right. So that's those those have been some lessons learned in really how are we actually going to improve the financial behaviors associated with people as opposed to let's just throw more money at them and hope that that changes behaviors, because that doesn't usually work.
SPEAKER_00:Right, exactly. So emergency savings is gaining traction, um, but it's not universally adopted. What are the biggest challenges you face today in getting employers to prioritize emergency savings alongside the retirement plan?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, auto enrollment will definitely change the game here once that happens. So we look forward to auto auto enrollment legislation coming down the pike. You know, if there was a way that we could get a tax-preferred employer match, I think that that would be very powerful too. I'm not sure that I'm gonna hold my breath on that anytime soon, but that would be really if we if some of those really strategic things that the 401k has were applied to ESAs, we would see, you know, similar adoption and participation. There've been all kinds of really great reports, like Ibris came out with a study that said 77% of employers either currently offer an ESA or plan to in the next few years. So we know that this is on the roadmap. We know that Fortune 500 companies are all looking at this as this is the next big benefit that we need to invest money in. And so now it's just a matter of what does that look like? How much are we talking? Can we repurpose dollars from underperforming benefits? In our case, can we repurpose existing budget dollars from retention bonuses and safety bonuses and performance bonuses and turn that into an employer contribution so that we can operationalize the dollars that are currently in our budget better and use that as a carrot to build better financial behaviors within the workforce instead of just dumping that in? So we've seen a lot of companies say, hey, if you choose to get your bonus put into your Sunny Day fund instead of in your paycheck, we'll actually give you an extra 25 bucks or something on top of that. Because now it's strategically going into a third goes into my emergency savings, a third goes into my new car down payment, a third goes into my family vacation. I'm less likely to abuse those dollars because they're categorized and labeled with those dollars. If if things go into the paycheck, they just tend to evaporate with in in a weekend, and we're not quite sure where that went. So those events are really big things. Auto enrollment and a tax-preferred employer match would be really amazing. But also, what else is on the horizon that's going to operationalize this a lot is studies being done around the safety side of things. So in safety critical roles, emergency savings are going to reduce the financial stress that employees are showing up to work with. And if we are a truck driver, if we're a forklift driver, even on things like call centers, where we're tracking the metrics of performance within our workforce, if we can lower the pressure on financial stress, people show up better. They show up as their whole self, they're able to do their job much better. So we saw that happen in a two-year study out of the University of Pittsburgh, where Professor Carrie Liana had monitored short-term, like short-hauled truck drivers for two years. And the employees, those truck drivers that were participating in the emergency savings program, had an 87% reduction in traffic citations from prior to the ESA. So if, you know, traffic citations as a truck driver is a proxy for, you know, accidents, preventable injuries, mistakes on the job that could cost the companies a whole lot of money. This is a huge new area of research, as well as the link between financial stress and mental health and how those two benefits will work together to have really powerful impacts down the road. So we have our mental health partner called Mind Club America. And that's something where, again, people can bring them in together. We can encourage people to meet with a mind club coach for mental health or meet with a financial coach for financial consulting. And the employer can put in an additional$20 or something to incentivize that behavior to have even more impact across the board. So all of that to say we can customize anything to work with the exact metrics the employer's looking to operationalize. But there's been a lot of things happening that gives us a lot of hope and tailwinds for the future.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. What misconceptions do you most often encounter when you're talking to employers about the emergency savings accounts and financial wellness?
SPEAKER_02:We talked about one is the cannibalization, right? So that's not an issue. But the other one is everybody thinks that PLESAs are the only game out there, right? So PLESAs for people in an acronym world, Principlin-linked emergency savings accounts as part of Secure Act 2.0 that was passed in December of 2022. And it's really just about, hey, we're going to carve this little pocket out of the 401k so it's easier for you to access this money in times of emergencies. And of course, you can find me on social media on a daily basis having a temper tantrum on my soapbox about stop pointing people to the retirement account in times of emergencies. That is not what it's for. So there's a lot of problematic things with PLESUS. Like overall, it's a great initiative to get people thinking about emergency savings in the benefit stack in an automated way so that we can protect retirement assets. But that$2,500 limit is really problematic for payroll, right? To turn that spigot on and off as people are using it. It's still inside the plan. There's still a Form 5,500. There's lots of compliance and reporting that has to take place. And there's not a big ability to customize it. Any employer contributions can't go into the PLUSA. It has to go into the retirement plan. There's all of these conditions. And employers have resoundingly said, we prefer out of plan because we want to have more control over what's happening. We prefer it to be outside of ERISA and we don't want one more Form 5500 to file. And it seems to be terribly logical outside of plan because I can just structure it however I want. And that's the flexibility that they're seeking. Plus, it's really been hard to find record keepers who want to turn on the PLUS or any administrators that want to administer that. It's just has not been, you know, received with open arms. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I and I will tell you um so as a plan sponsor myself, but also as the owner of TriStar, who all we do is compliance work for 401k plans. And I'm a smaller TPA firm. We have about you know 400 clients. So I'm not one of the national firms or anything. I haven't talked to anybody who Has seen wide adoption of Pluses since Secure Past. I don't know of a single plan that has. Now, maybe some of the mega plans are. You know, a lot of times the mega plans will adopt those things and then they work their way down the market. But I haven't seen any record keepers doing it. I haven't had any clients interested in it. We've talked about it. I know I'm curious now that you you say that. I need to go check Plan Sponsor Council of America does a survey every year. I need to go check their survey and see how many plans that took that survey, how many plan sponsors have adopted that or into it.
SPEAKER_02:So definitely look at that. And the other thing I would also mention, just to point out here, because again, I'm with you, we haven't seen really high adoption or high demand or an appetite in any way from plan sponsors or from employees for that matter on having this. Because again, highly compensated employees are not eligible. The people who aren't participating in the 401k obviously aren't eligible. So this is not going to help your 401k participation or any of those other metrics that people are coming to us to work with. But sometimes we'll see it where companies have a pension as well as a 401. And we see the loans for that 401 usually triple what a typical 401 would look like because the employees see the pension as their real retirement account. And the 401k then becomes an emergency savings account. So that is another thing I'm trying to work with on companies where I see that they have a pen, they have multiple retirement accounts, but nothing in between. It's like, that's great that we have such a focus on retirement. People are never going to get there because they're just loan after loan after loan. I had an employer come to me this year and said, I was so excited because one of my employees came to me and said, How much is left on my 401k loan so that I can pay that off? And she was like, Oh, I'm so glad that you're making progress on that. He's like, No, no, no, I need to take another one. So I have to pay this one off so I can get another one. How much do I owe? Because she has a limit of one. And she was like, that broke my heart. And that let me know we are not doing something. We are not supporting this employee in the way that he needs to be supported the most. And what is that retirement plan going to look like for him if we don't put in an ESA? Because we have to build a first line of defense, or it this this pattern will continue to happen.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we had a client call two weeks ago and up the loan number of loans to three. And I was like, what are you doing? But why? Why would you do this? And they just let's have a conversation, Shannon.
SPEAKER_02:Make an introduction.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's it's crazy. Some of the things that we see happening, but we also have employers who are like, I'm not their parent. That's not my problem. And then we have some, I have some great clients who are very paternalistic, probably overtly so. But yeah, it is my problem.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Right. That can go either way. We talk to some employers who are like, and again, sometimes this is a generational thing, right? The way generations are thinking about money is very different. And so sometimes we have a lot of leadership that is making, you know, decisions and protocols that are of one mindset, but their workforce does not necessarily mirror them and thinks about benefits a little bit differently. And so I think, you know, prior generations, it was very, you know, like this is my own personal finances, and I don't have to tell my employer about this. And there's a, you know, this is very private thing. Where, you know, newer kids are coming into the workforce, just like, what's what's going on here? What's everybody doing about this? And they're leaning verbally on their employer, saying, All of my money comes from you. You are the wellspring of my money. Like this has to, we have to have a better system on this. Like, where what is everybody else doing? What are all the grown-ups doing? Right. Like, this is kind of what they say. And they're leaning on their employer for this advice. And I think that that's another reason why financial wellness has boomed so much and people aren't quite sure how to operationalize that. It's like we have literacy programs, we have budgeting tools, we've got, you know, coaching, we've got emergency savings accounts, we've got earned wage access, we have all these things to choose from, these shiny budgeting apps. What's going to make the difference? And that's where we really have to follow the data and show what's impactful. But I think that as employers, employees come in, the lack of financial literacy has been there and that's already ingrained them in some poor behaviors. And so we have to really implement new behaviors, which takes incentive and automation to do those things. And I think that there's just been more resent, like after COVID, where we saw everybody pulling out of their 401k and the federal government's handing out money, and it's like, oh, like nobody has any money to fall back on. We need to work on legislation to address this. Let's do it through the employer, because we've seen it's the same argument, right? It's like, well, everybody could go get an IRA to do their own retirement too, right? But it's they're much more likely to have success if their employer brings it in. So we're applying that same mindset to it, where yes, you could save for emergencies on your own, but clearly people are struggling to do that. So wouldn't it behoove us for a lot of reasons as an employer to support them in this way and do exactly what we've done for retirement with emergency savings?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, agreed, agreed. Um so how specifically do you help employers understand the connection between emergency savings, reduced financial stress, and better retirement outcomes just by showing them metrics, or what do you do?
SPEAKER_02:We're usually pulling up their existing data just to see where the problem spots are. And again, usually they're coming to me with I have this specific story, or I have this specific employee, or this pattern continues to repeat and I need that to end. Or this is costing me a lot of money. I had an HR person at a large hospital on the East Coast say, you know, we're spending a ton of money on employees for their education and their licensing and their certifications, but they can't afford to get new tires on their car. So it's like we're spending all this money on them on things that look good for us and they're shiny and kind of pat ourselves on the back, like, look at how much we're investing in your career. And they're like, none of this is holding me here. You know, this makes you look good, but it doesn't make me feel good necessarily. So you can have all of these like apprenticeship programs and free training classes, unless you have somebody that can watch my kid at home before they turn nine, that that is not a pathway forward for me. That is not something I can actually do. So you can get in the papers and saying we've we've done all this to engage low-way workers so that they have a they have a way forward and we're creating this ladder for them. But a lot of times, like child care and these big things are standing in the way. And unless those are addressed, none of those solutions are really meaningful and impactful because it's it's not a reality for them. It's just something that we put on paper saying, look at all the good things we're doing for the community and for our workforce. But it doesn't always come into play. And so I think, you know, meeting with employers, it's really what is your data telling you? I will have pulled a lot of my data that I can see. Maybe they know those numbers, maybe they don't. But we're also going to talk about what are the existing benefits that you're paying for and understanding like what are your priorities, what are your goals, what are your initiatives, what are you trying to accomplish here? What would success look like? Like, what would you want to see in a perfect world? What would you want these metrics to be? Let's come up with a game plan on how to connect those dots instead of let's just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. Um, so for employers who feel overwhelmed by everything they already have on their plate, especially small employers, um, how do you help them take the first manageable step towards, you know, getting one of these in place for their employees? Because I know, I mean, you know, I'm a small business owner. So I know when people come to me and like ask me for one more thing to do, or or my office manager when I'm like, hey, guess what? Guess what new program I'm starting and you get to manage it. So I mean, how do you help them take that first step?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that's another thing. I really want to make sure that all the stakeholders are involved and really bought in on what are we trying to accomplish? Why are we doing this? I do not want this to be another leadership has made this decision and it's been thrown on your plate and you're gonna love it. And it's like, what if I don't? Because it seems like I'm the only one doing all this work on here. So we want to make sure that we get HR and payroll and all those people involved so that they really understand the metrics of how this is going to impact them in a good way, you know, keeps their team happier. They're not gonna have those people coming and knocking on their doors for 401k loans and withdrawals. They're not gonna have as much turnover where they have to hire and onboard those people as well. But our onboarding process is really easy. We've really gotten this down to make sure this is as simple as possible. We can work with any payroll provider. So we're doing the payroll integration. I usually kind of just say, let's look at how you're doing your 401k and let's do this the exact same way because that can vary on what that looks like. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. You already have a system that works. Betty's gonna be doing this. Let's talk to Betty and see how she does all of this. And we will set it up in the exact same way. It takes one meeting to do this onto payroll. And to do that, we will set up the post-tax employee nodes, like the post-tax employee contribution. And then we'll also put in a note in there for the employer contribution. So, because again, this is additional W-2 wages, compensation I've earned from my employer that did not go into my paycheck. So, payroll taxes will have to be reconciled through payroll on that. But we've worked with every payroll company out there. We can do it in whatever way makes the most sense for them. So it's really a one-hour onboarding meeting and then a one-hour payroll meeting. And usually I'll meet with them to talk about a marketing cadence as well. Like, do you have a dispersed workforce? Do we need to send out some little 60 or 90 second YouTube videos because nobody reads paragraphs? Let's do that. Do they need to be in Spanish or French or what languages do they need to be in? Let's make sure that your entire workforce feels included in this messaging and let's make sure that they understand it takes about 30 seconds for them to enroll in this. This is not your typical BYOB, bring your own bank account situation where it's like I have to go to my neighborhood bank and then I have to bring that accounting routing number to HR and then like split that up and then have no employer contract. Nope. This is going to be an easy peasy process. And so we're automated. We can make that the easier it is for employers. So we can move as quickly as HR does, but we're not usually the bottlenecks on that. They have a lot on their plate. So we map that out, but this takes about two or three meetings.
SPEAKER_00:This is quick. That's that's awesome. And I do know the the easier you make it for HR and the employees, the the better participation you're gonna get.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, the employees are gonna love it, right? It's free for them. They're getting free money from the bank, they're getting free money from their employer. They can take it out whenever they want, they can save up for whatever the no downside for the employee. But the employer, yep, they're paying for it and they're implementing it into their payroll. And so we will make that as quick and easy as possible. And then we'll we're taking on as much as we can on like the marketing side and the employee communication customer success side so the employer can really be hands-off after that.
SPEAKER_00:So as we start to wrap it up, I always like to bring it back to the gap. So, from your perspective, how do emergency savings help close both the immediate financial stress gap and the long-term retirement savings gap for working Americans?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's the whole idea of what we do, right? So I think that retirement savings and emergency savings are really two sides of the same coin. And it's great that we've had such a focus on retirement savings. But for many hourly or LMI workers, low to moderate income workers, they never see that as something that is built for them because that's not a starting point for them. It's it was I had an exact this exact conversation with an employee last month who said, I had never participated in a 401k. I thought it wasn't for me. I didn't understand it. It felt like it was off and never, never land, and it was intimidating for me. And it wasn't until I had money in my Sunny Day fund that I realized I am able to save. I am able to do this. And now I understand what an employer match is, and now I understand why the 401k is important. And I never would have been a 401k saver if I hadn't started with Sunny Day Fund first. Because if I didn't have that$2,000 that was accessible to me, I never would have been able to lock away that money. I can't start with locking away money. So bridging that gap was really important. And we hear that from employees a whole lot where it's like, I want to get to retirement. I want to think about long-term goals, but the gap between here and there is not being addressed in my traditional benefit stack. And therefore it's too big of a leap for me to make and I'm never going to get there. And so all these smart people can sit around and talk about what I should be doing, but I can't do any of that unless I have a pathway forward. So if we can build that bridge as emergency savings and we can automate that, have it be an effortless part of your benefit stack, create new savings accounts for each employee. So we're not worried about qualifications with credit checks and minimum balance requirements and all those things that knock people out. It's just part of your benefits flow. Do you want to save for emergencies? Yes or no? How much? Five bucks, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, great. You decide. Whatever number you want is great because something is better than nothing. It doesn't have to be six months of your income right now. It's just going to be five bucks. That's great. And then just get them started. And we had over 70% of our savers this year when they made a payroll deduction change. Over 70% were increasing that payroll deduction, not decreasing. Oh, nice. So people are realizing, like, oh, that was really easy. Or I sat next to Peggy and she made a withdrawal and she wasn't penalized for it and she already has the money. What else can I save for? And then we start seeing that snowball effect.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. What final message would you like to leave with plan sponsors, financial advisors, and policymakers who are listening and thinking about how to better support employees' financial well-being?
SPEAKER_02:Out-of-plan ESAs are a thing. They're a thing. They've been we've got nearly seven years of data on it. So while we're talking about all these things that are on the roadmap, this is we've got hard data on how this actually works. Yes, it would be great to have future legislation to do some of these other things we're talking about. In the meantime, we're continuing to help people save on a daily basis. And we're continuing to hear those saver stories about what an impact it's made for them. So, yes, I think that the in-plan design has been good for the conversation and drawing attention to the need for emergency savings, but the pluses are not the only vehicle out there. And many times as I see people covering workplace emergency savings, it's only in the light of the in-plan variety, which we have discussed, is not quite ubiquitous yet. So the out of plan is definitely something that is more preferred. It is more abundant and we have a lot more data on that. It's more customizable and it's by far preferred by employers and employees for its simplicity and its customization.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so finally, what gives you hope about the future of financial wellness in the workplace?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we are in the business of hope. And we always lead with hope and sunnier days ahead. That's why we are not called the Rainy Day Fund. And we just help people.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. I love that. I wondered where your name came from. I honestly did, but I love it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because I think everybody else in the emergency savings account market is just focused on emergency savings, which is noble and it's worthy and it's something that we clap to. But it becomes just a fear-based motivation to save for all the doom and gloom, terrible things that are going to happen to you, or you better be prepared or else. Where it's like, you know, statistically, behaviorally, we always go back to what is the more powerful behavioral change. If we have somebody, employee one, just saving for emergencies, and we have employee two saving for emergencies plus an aspirational goal that they're really excited about, this person has the higher per paycheck contribution. The second person has a higher overall balance that they could draw from should something catastrophic take place. Overall better savings behavior, overall more assets. We have to lead with hope. And it can't just be carrying around the umbrella all the time. Yes, you should carry have an umbrella, right? Yes, I don't want you to say, I didn't think it was gonna rain. You can't blame me for this. Be prepared. Like we're telling you to be prepared. But you have to also just work for the sunny days just as hard. You can't look around and say, everybody else has all these nice fun things. Everybody else is going on vacation, everybody else has a car, everybody has these things. I'm never gonna get those things. You can get those things if you build towards them. But a lot of times that hasn't been ingrained and taught and the systems created to make that a reality. So that's really our mission is to lead first with hope. A lot of people hear financial wellness, that's for people that already have money. This doesn't apply to me and they go running away. You will not have anybody skipping into that financial wellness benefit meeting except for three Dave Ramsey fanatics who are super excited to tell everybody about all the stuff they know. All the people who really need it have checked out because you're handing out cookbooks to people who don't have a kitchen. Instead, let's help them start cooking by giving them the things that they need and kind of showing them the pathway forward instead of saying, go figure it out, bootstrap it, you know, everybody else is doing it.
SPEAKER_00:Why aren't you? Well, I just want to thank you so much for being on the show. I love your passion and I love what you guys are doing. And I think it is so important. So thank you so much for spending an hour with me and with my audience, and we really appreciate it. If anybody wants to get a hold of Rachel, her contact information will be in the show notes. And if any of you think that you have something to offer that would help close the gaps in retirement savings for working Americans, send me a message and let's talk.
