MONEY HACKS: A Day in the Life of a Retirement Plan Advisor

You might be curious about what a retirement plan advisor does or what our typical day looks like... Well, it's not as glamorous as the life of a celebrity or a professional athlete, but it's still packed with interesting tasks and unique challenges.

Our primary goal is to guide individuals and families toward their financial goals. Our day can take many turns, from discussing upcoming projects in team meetings to helping clients design their 401(k) benefits. We conduct financial wellness workshops, help clients navigate regulatory requirements, and even provide one-on-one assistance to those seeking advice on emergency savings or a 401(k) rollover.

Essentially, our job revolves around three focus areas: assisting companies in creating retirement plans that reflect their mission and values, ensuring we comply with all associated regulations, and most importantly, working with employees to make informed decisions about their financial health. So, let's dive in and explore what a day in the life of a retirement-focused advisor looks like! Oh, and by the way, we also have some fun debates about the best fall foods/flavors in the office. I'm on team “Apple”, but I suspect all the Pumpkin / Pumpkin Spice folks might win this time around.

Any money questions you’d like answered? Our Money Hacks series is created from conversations we have with employees, investors, savers, and all people planning for their financial futures. What topics are on your mind for our next episode?

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Alex and it’s episode 109 of Money Hacks. We recently got a question from an employee at a 401k meeting about what is it that we actually do. What do we do as retirement plan advisors? Or what does a day look like for someone on our team here? As a retirement-focused advisor, it's not going to be anywhere as cool as when they do this sort of what a day looks like for a celebrity or a professional athlete.

But I thought it'd be helpful to share a bit about what we're doing on a daily basis. Now, like the vast majority of you. I'm awakened sometime around 6 am, 6:15 by my five-year-old son, who isn't worried about the financial markets, isn't worried about money, but what is he going to get to do today, what is he going to have for breakfast, and making sure we get him off to school.

When it comes to getting into the workforce, our days can go in a lot of different directions. But most of the time, what we're doing is helping individuals, helping families work towards different financial goals or priorities. For example, today on Monday we kicked off our day with the team meeting, talking about all of the different projects and initiatives that our team is working on when it comes to our client relationships.

So, these are things like helping clients and designing and considering how they're changing their 401k benefits as we get towards the end of the year, mapping out the upcoming financial wellness group workshops and education sessions we have, and helping clients navigate some of the regulatory requirements with year-end notices.

After that, we had a group workshop where we talked about juggling the sandwich generation. So, we met with 25 employees in their conference room. And the group session was about individuals in the workforce, who are caring for young children or perhaps teenage children while also now having to care for their aging parents or grandparents. This concept of the sandwich generation is a growing number of the population.

Then I got back to my office, and I had a number of one-on-one sessions and calls helping people build out a strategy for emergency savings, helping an employee roll over a 401k from their former employer to their current employer, and now we're doing a couple of videos to share that news with you.

So, it can go in a lot of different directions. At the end of the day, really, I like to think of the work that we do in three high-level scenarios: The first one is working with companies and organizations to help them design, create, and manage a retirement plan that aligns with their mission, vision, and values.

Second of all, ensure that we're navigating all the rules and regulations you have to follow when you offer a retirement benefit. So we're offering and providing advice that is compliant with ERISA, the law that governs retirement plans as overseen by the Department of Labor and the IRS. And then finally, and most importantly, working with employees in those organizations, investors, and savers and their partners, spouses, and family, to help them maximize and optimize their 401k, but also make the best decisions when it comes to the rest of their financial picture. Because we realize, even though the majority of our work is sort of through this conduit of a 401k or a 403b plan, that as individuals, as families, as investors or savers, we don't think of our 401k as just this silo.

It's one piece to a holistic financial picture and we want to be the go-to partner and advocate that helps individuals, that helps investors think about how they're making the best decisions for that overall financial picture.

So, a quick rundown of what a day might look like just so happens that today, you know, mid-fall season, we also in our office had a big challenge of what kind of fall foods do you like better? Apple-like foods or the pumpkin variety? So, a lot of our team brought in homemade soups and food and lunch. And I don't know where the competition's gonna end. Personally, I'm more of an apple-flavored person over pumpkin, but my guess is pumpkin's gonna edge it out on this one.