Free 401k Education Seminars For Small Businesses

Are you a small business with a 401k plan that some of your employees aren't taking advantage of? Retirement Solutions may have a solution for you; and it won't cost you a dime.

Retirement Solutions Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to boost retirement savings, has received a grant for small business 401k education that involves offering free educational seminars, focus groups and follow-up to employees of small businesses. The result of the research will be an educational CD-ROM which will be distributed free to all the employees who attend. Retirement Solutions is not affiliated with any investment adviser or 401k provider.

Retirement Solutions research has shown that even when employees do get investment education, it doesn't "stick." That's because most "educators" aim at getting the audience to memorize financial terms rather than simply changing behavior.

That's why Retirement Solutions offers a unique three-phased approach to retirement education.

Get Employees Involved: First we get employees involved by emailing them questions about investing several weeks before the seminars. Employees can only find out the answers to these questions if they attend the seminar. Our challenge to them: "Our theory is that the people who think they know a lot about investing frequently know the least and vice versa."

Here are three of the sample questions:

• Who are better investors, men or women?
• Jane Jones invested in small-company stocks starting in her 40s and Mary Doe invested in large company stocks starting in her 20s. Who ended up with more money, Jane or Mary?
• Who are better investors, people who try to "time the market" by buying and selling shares of stock (or stock funds) or people who leave their money alone?

Talk in Plain English, Not "Invest-Speak." We talk in plain English; we even occasionally get a laugh or two.

For example, Retirement Solutions:

• Explains how volatility in stock prices is meaningless over the long run, the same way that somebody who follows a healthy diet doesn't have to hop on the scale every day to monitor progress.
• Explain why many people THINK they can't afford to save more in their 401k accounts but in reality credit card and other debt is making it hard to save
• Show how people's homes aren't simply a place to live but one of their biggest retirement assets-and, for that reason, why home equity loans can be `hazardous to your retirement wealth.'

Offer Follow-Up to People Who Are to Shy to Ask Questions: Finally, we offer follow-up to those who may be too embarrassed to ask questions in front of others or those that think of questions after the seminars are over. RSF sends an email follow-up a week after the presentation, to find out if seminar participants have further questions. After analyzing the kinds of questions asked, Retirement Solutions sends an email to all participants with the answers to the "Most Frequently Asked Questions about Investing in Your 401k Plan."

Want to try Retirement Solutions' approach to 401k education at your workplace? As they say, you've got nothing to lose-and your employees have everything to gain. Any questions, please feel free to email or call Retirement Solutions president Jane White at smallbusiness@retirement-solutions.us. We look forward to working with you.

About | Glossary | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Contact Us

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.