Here’s something we think: it’s hard to have very good financial literacy without some financial experience.

• Until you have a financial account, the financial system will probably be a mystery to you

• Until you have investments, they are probably going to be quite mysterious too

We gave you a lot to think about in our last edition – with focus areas ranging across the spaces of legislative advocacy, financial expertise, and tech innovation. And we promised you a little bit more.

With the nip of fall in the air, we are looking forward. It’s conference season, so we’ll see you out and about. And as you are sharing social moments with colleagues, thinking creatively about the future, we’ve got you covered.

People care about their retirement. (When) (will) what’s happening in France migrate to the US?

You could argue we are seeing a bit of it right now. Labor is tight. For a range of reasons employers, especially those whose jobs rank at the lower end of the income spectrum, can’t find enough qualified workers to hire at prevailing wages and with prevailing benefits.

Many of us have found that our retirement savings options offer less rich benefits than options that might have been available to those who came before us. While we work on the retirement savings solutions of the future, it’s important to recognize and own up to the challenges current savers face to meet their retirement savings needs, especially when doing things like reminding folks of the importance of saving.

This is Part 3 in a series covering key elements of SECURE 2.0, entered into law as part of the 2023 Appropriations Act (Division T).

We’ve just covered Automatic Enrollment and the Saver’s Match, one auto-feature, and one incentive with an auto-feature. Now we’ll focus on straight-out incentives to employers to start new plans.

This is Part 2 in a series covering key elements of SECURE 2.0, as memorialized into law as part of the 2023 Appropriations Act (Division T) on December 29, 2022. We were still crying over our canceled flights, but it gave us plenty of time to read the Act.

In Division T alone we counted more than 40 new retirement-related provisions. We focused first on Automatic Enrollment, because it’s so impactful and we love it. This week we’ll hit the key features of the Saver’s Match – what qualifies, who gets the money, when, and where.

If you’re like us, you’re hearing the words “Secure 2.0” bandied about everywhere you go. The Secure 2.0 Act was memorialized into 2023 Appropriations Act (Division T), signed into law as you were picking crumpled wrapping paper off the floor and putting your sparkling into the fridge for New Year’s Eve. We are going to do a short series on some of the provisions, focusing on the ones that impact you, and retirement security, the most. We’ll start with our favorite:

Retirement savings are the second-largest source of household wealth for Americans, with over $10 trillion in assets across the defined contribution (DC) system. Yet we know that this system is inequitable and is not creating security and wealth for everyone. Access to retirement savings is foundational, but 45 million workers lack a workplace retirement savings option

Public policy tends to hyper focus on specific areas of people’s lives - whether health, economic stability, housing, etc. - as if each aspect of our lives exists in a vacuum separate from everything else. People need a lot of different needs met all at the same time in order for them to succeed and thrive. Public policy is starting to recognize the importance of those interdependencies and how they collectively contribute to people’s well-being, and that creates new opportunities for partnership and collaboration across public and private sectors.

The National Association of State Treasurers (NAST) is the professional association for the equivalent of the chief financial officer in all 50 states, D.C., and the territories. Not only are they the state treasurers, but they also could be the directors of 529 savings plans, ABLE savings plans, state debt management, investments, and sometimes pension and retirement programs, as well as the fun one – unclaimed property.

As a retirement program manager, one of your biggest hurdles is getting people to open and fund an account. Behavioral science and a careful look at human decision making can help overcome this first step. Using defaults can increase the proportion of employees enrolled in a program. Leveraging precommitments can help people overcome procrastination and keep contributions in line with inflation. These changes can shift participation by impressive amounts!

Defaults and Anchors are powerful because they operate on three behavioral principles. They make choices easy. They provide an implicit endorsement. And they endow users with a status quo that they have to actively choose to change. How can you use defaults and anchors to give your users a big nudge toward better outcomes? With Perry Wright of Duke University.

Defaults and Anchors are powerful because they operate on three behavioral principles. They make choices easy. They provide an implicit endorsement. And they endow users with a status quo that they have to actively choose to change. How can you use defaults and anchors to give your users a big nudge toward better outcomes? With Perry Wright of Duke University.

Behavioral science is a popular topic. We want to know: can tuning our designs lead to better user outcomes? In this edition we bring you the experts from Common Cents Lab sharing what they are observing about personal finance. We think this is news you can use.

Lack of affordable housing is an issue across the nation that is impacting the economic stability of individuals, families, and whole communities. Zoning is often blamed as one of the key barriers to building more homes. The state of Oregon is on the cusp of implementing a major, innovative change in zoning law that could help address the problem.

Addressing systemic inequities is so incredibly hard. You’re essentially fighting the status quo, and the status quo will reassert itself at every turn. Whenever you’re pushing for change to such ingrained problems, you can of course expect a certain amount of overt resistance, but the more challenging part can be the passive resistance. When people have the status quo on their side, doing nothing is actually a very effective method of killing the change. So how do you combat that?

Many years ago, I took a class in the Bronx to get my motorcycle license. The lessons took place in a random, shabby parking lot with bottom of the line loaner bikes that didn’t even have sideview mirrors. Most of the other students, like me, had cheap, low tech gear, barely meeting the requirements. One guy, though, had the full kit. His jacket, pants, gloves, boots, and helmet must have cost thousands of dollars. He looked impressive. But he was also the worst student in class. He actually flunked out, because he couldn’t make simple turns without falling over. I’ve witnessed new government programs suffer the same fate.

We recently had a chance to join the Honorable Kathleen Kennedy Townsend at some important, innovation-oriented meetings in Washington DC, including the Georgetown Center for Retirement Initiatives’ gathering of states, and NAST. Join us we meet one on one to capture three retirement security priorities and other key nuggets.

We hear all the time about other countries’ innovative ways to improve financial security. Sometimes, we can adopt similar solutions, but other times, those ideas simply won’t work here in the United States. There are a lot of reasons for that - legal, logistical, and political - but one you can’t ignore is culture.

I’ve spent most of my working career crafting purpose-built financial services platforms. One of the key attributes for the success of these efforts has been flexibility.

Employer buy-in is essential to the success of state-sponsored auto-IRA programs, but getting the attention of busy employers isn’t easy, especially across different geographies and industries. So how do you find them and help them get onboard? We share six proven approaches that work.

This week we are honored to include the expert insights of industry leader Lorie Latham, CFA. Recently retired from T. Rowe Price’s Defined Contribution Team, Lorie’s got some great tips to get and keep your year on track. We’re applying these concepts to retirement programs, but we bet you can find other areas of your work and life to which they apply.

When gearing up to implement a new government savings program, building the right team is critical, but one thing is for sure: you’ll never have enough people to do the work. So how do you build the team you need?

Are there ways to help our families weather financial hardships? Yes, there are! Linking emergency savings and retirement savings is one of several ways to meet people’s emergency savings needs. Paulina Diaz share more about current experimentation and early success, including through the Nest Jars program in the UK.

Life is changing quickly for individuals, families, and communities. So are the challenges they face. Can government change quickly enough to meet people’s changing needs?

Public-private partnerships are an area of rich innovation but are not a silver-bullet solution. Even successful partnership models can be difficult to duplicate elsewhere, especially if not enough time and attention is given to recognizing the different needs of each opportunity.

Amidst aflurry of legislative activity and the milesones reached by existing state-facilitated retirement savigns programs, here is the Grant’s Go-To’s list of top 5 stories from 2021.

Telecommuting and virtual meetings are here to stay, but not everyone benefits equally from these new technologies. For some, Zoom and Microsoft Teams just aren’t going to work. Outreach for certain audiences can only be successful if folks show up in person.

A summary of the latest studies and reports on retirement security in the U.S.

I once began a conversation with a marketing firm by asking, “Where should we advertise to get the best bang for our buck?” They answered the question with their own question, “How much money do you have?”