Secure the Future – Marc Fowler, QKS Breaks Down Secure Act 2.0

[00:00:00] because the link between financial health, overall physical health, and employee productivity is very closely linked. Right? Back, folks. This is episode 68. It's About Your Paycheck. And we got a really special episode today. Our very first guest on It's About Your Paycheck. Yeah. Before we get into that, what is going on, bro?

[00:00:30] What's good, man? I'm good over here. How about you? I'm good, man. I remembered an update for the fitness challenge. Yeah, I switched. And I mean, I'm so mad at AT&T Direct TV because I became a victim of their separation. Because you know AT&T sold Direct TV to Dish Network. Yeah.

[00:00:55] So I got impacted two times because once on my internet and then the second time on my cable. Or Direct TV, rather. Dish, whatever. You know, I don't know. It's all cable to me. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the second I got past the internet piece, I knew exactly, like, whatever. I needed internet. So I just, I'm going to, I got that for now. And then I'll figure that out another solution later for that because I don't want to stay with them.

[00:01:24] Like, they're just horrible. And then, so for the fast forward to Direct TV, they just handled something really bad on the migration. Like, they basically have to decouple their, you know, their relationship, right? So they got to take their customers and put them on a different platform. They can't be on the same, where it was all one platform. I'm a long time AT&T customer with different products.

[00:01:53] And it was all in one place for me, easy. And now they had to break that apart. And they didn't give good customer service in that piece. And anywho, I went, I said, you know, I was like, nope, just cancel my service. I'm done. And I went with YouTube TV and less money, more features. You know what I mean? And I'm like, what was I doing all this time? Why didn't anybody tell me?

[00:02:20] YouTube TV was, I'm loving it right now. YouTube TV is the bomb right now. It's like, holy cow. Like, I was like, why didn't anybody tell me this? So anyway, I'm saving money on that. So that's my little saver. You know, I switched accounts, got a lower monthly on that. So that was my financial fitness update for today. Good, man. What about you? Anything on the financial fitness front? No, just plugging away.

[00:02:50] Just, you know, trying to be good and just pay off these credit card balances and stuff like that. Just locking those down. And that's it, man. Just taking more bites here and there. Yep. Instead of doing one big chunk on one card, I'm just like paying little by little on each, just spreading it out. And just the balances are going down. So, yeah. If I get a bonus this year, then I'll pay a good portion of the month. Okay. Yeah. All right.

[00:03:19] So take us into the news, man. What you got for us? So look, you know, our guest is going to speak about the SECURE 2.0 Act and, you know, 401k, basically. And so I just did some stats about U.S. workers and 401k. So in 2025, about 57% of U.S. workers have access to 401k plans with 80, about 85% of those people participating in them.

[00:03:45] However, a significant portion, 43%, 40, almost 44% of workers do not participate in their 401k plans and nearly half do not receive employer matching contributions, which is crazy. Wow. That's crazy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So access, right? So about a little under 57% had access to 401k plans at the end of 2023.

[00:04:14] According to Capitalize, this figure increased slightly in 2025 due to the implementation of automatic enrollment mandates under the SECURE Act 2.0, which requires most newer 401k plans to automatically enroll employees according to USA Today. That's pretty much what I had, man. What about you? Yeah, no, that's some good numbers. Mine was just, I was kind of along the same way.

[00:04:40] Like, what can I find about employee pension or employee 401k and things like that? I think I started research employee retirement. And unfortunately, U.S. government is trying to take a swipe at the targeting federal employees to save money over the next few years. And the way they're going to do that is by in the calculation for pensions for workers or federal workers.

[00:05:08] So basically, it boils down to for the government to save some money, they're taking it away from federal employees' pension plans. Wow. Yep. So, you know, link will be in show notes if you want to look at that or just Google it, really. I'm sure it's out there. But, you know, just impact on and that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. It's and yeah.

[00:05:37] Hey, look, we could maybe we'll talk more a little bit more about it with Mark. And our guest today is Mark Fowler. Let's go. All right. So today we have a guest. His name is Mark Fowler. He's the director of retirement education at Human Interest. The fastest growing 401k provider with over 30,000 customers.

[00:05:58] He specializes in supporting partners and clients in understanding the value of retirement plans, particularly the power of 401k and the relevant legislation surrounding saving for retirement. After starting two small businesses in New York right now. Shout out to New York. He is passionate about 401k plans and can support small business sector.

[00:06:25] Mark has over a decade of experience at the high growth, high growth tech companies, including Data Robot and WeWork. Oh, and you know about WeWork. When he's not at the office, he enjoys spending time as a certified scuba diver instruction instructor. Sorry. A boat captain and a proud girl dad. That's what's up. Welcome to the show. Mark Fowler. Awesome. Welcome to the show.

[00:06:55] Welcome to the show. Mark Fowler. How are you doing, sir? I am doing very well. Obviously, an honor and privilege to be on the show. We're putting you on a different show. We do two podcasts. One is It's About Your Paycheck and It's About Payroll. And this is the first time we have a guest on It's About Your Paycheck because we felt like 401k is confusing to, you know, a lot of employees.

[00:07:22] And, you know, we're like, oh, we need this on that to speak to the employees and, you know, help folks understand a little bit about more about 401k. Walt read some interesting stats at the beginning of the show. We do a little like a little news update. And he said 43% of employees do not participate in 401k. Do you find that to be true in your research or data?

[00:07:55] Well, yes and no. So the reason I'm giving you both an answer and not an answer is because certain things have changed in the 401k industry, right? Right. So previous to what we now call Secure Act 2.0, which I won't bore everyone. But we do want to know what it means. The full details of that just yet. We're still all trying to wrap our head around it. Yeah.

[00:08:24] Well, yeah, that was introduced at the end of 2022 and basically sort of updated a lot of things about the retirement industry. It was a federal level sort of legislative measure, changed a bunch of different things. But in that came this drive to what we call automatic enrollment. All right. Previously, it had been, hey, my company's got a brand new benefits package thing.

[00:08:54] It's this great new 401k. Sign up if you would like to, you know, to all the employees, at which point for a sort of normally performing 401k, you would probably see 35 to 45 percent of people going, yeah, actually, I'll raise my hand and I'd like to be a part of it. Right. Since then, they've started to push towards in automatic enrollment, which flips the script. Right.

[00:09:23] So what it does there is say, hey, everybody in the organization is going to be a part of this unless they raise their hand to say, I don't want to. Right. And what that then we've seen is this move from that sort of, you know, like round about a thick third. Right. Up to. Oh, wow. We're seeing now like 80 to 90 percent. That's amazing. Wow. Yeah. And participation.

[00:09:54] Yeah. And it's, you know, also, there's a lot of other things going on with that. I think a lot of HR teams now know more about how to how to sort of educate around that, how to sort of talk about not just 401ks, but financial wellness in general. There are folks like yourselves out there helping, you know, people understand that this is all put together, all linked. It's all in your best interests. And, you know, this is how you can sort of maneuver through it.

[00:10:23] So I think a number of factors kind of play into that. But one of the things we're seeing is that adoption rate creeping up. So previously, pretty low. Currently, certainly on our end, we're seeing very high adoption rates because of the automatic enrollment. What? Yeah. A lot of good things. You say automatic enrollment came from secure 2.0, but like how so? Because it existed before the 2.0 Act, right?

[00:10:54] Yeah. And that was probably just my brevity leading to a little confusion there. So you could elect to have automatic enrollment in your plan previous to secure Act, right? But then it came along and said, actually, as of the year 2025, so sort of essentially two whole years after secure Act was sort of unleashed upon the world, right?

[00:11:21] It said, at that point, essentially all new plans will have to have automatic enrollment as mandated, right? So they gave us sort of two years to build the infrastructure that now all these plans are going to be automatic enrollment. But there was a two-year grace period. And then, hey, everyone 2025, automatic enrollment.

[00:11:49] There is a tiny, narrow window where that's not the case. But for the majority of plans, it's, yeah, you have to do automatic enrollment now if it's a new plan. So employers can't opt out of it. Wow. Okay. That is definitely a big change. With the asterisk, of course, if your plan was grandfathered in before secure Act 2.0, it doesn't change. Gotcha.

[00:12:18] All right. And then let's back up a bit. How did you get into this world? Because we just talked offline a little bit, and you were like a luxury yacht boat captain. Oh, you're taking the long way around for this. But now when you're in 401, it's quite a vast difference.

[00:12:47] I can see how that might not be the traditional path. And so, well, one of the things I learned when I was actually in that industry. Well, first of all, I was a scuba instructor as well as the yacht captain, right? So one of the things in that is that I love people. I love supporting people. I like helping things come true for people.

[00:13:12] And I love the instruction piece, the education, the, hey, I was here, but now because of X, Y, and Z, I am slightly better than I was before. That moment where you get to turn the lights on for somebody, that's a good moment. I think you guys probably know that too when you get some of the feedback of, I never saw it that way, but now. Right?

[00:14:05] With a really nice company that I was with, did corporate training for a while, got into sort of selling at the same time. That really wasn't my vibe. I'm not a salesperson. I'm an educator. If I can help lift somebody, I'm all in. And one thing went to another. I got into the startup world, got into the sort of, hey, we're mission driven.

[00:14:34] And when this company came knocking on my door, it was too good. Thank you for sharing that. An opportunity to pass out. You're very welcome. I hope I didn't like get everyone to leave the podcast. Going from yacht captain to 401k. I was like, people were like, wait a minute. How do we pivot like that? Right? We're like, with all the employees that are losing work right now, folks getting laid off.

[00:14:59] The government just kind of gave companies license to lay off, really. Not in a direct manner, but in the way of Elon Musk kind of doing his thing with Doge and laying off all these workers. A lot of companies just took the opportunity to say, oh, me too. And had rifts and had layoffs. And we're seeing it in every sector and all around.

[00:15:24] So every time that we can, we're trying to just give some information to help folks out there with that. What happens when employees behave badly? Boy, we could do an entire TV show. Maybe a Netflix special on that. Well, Ryan and I sat down and recorded episodes for Fama. And we asked practitioners, give us your most outrageous story.

[00:15:53] You know, the sales leader that brings cocaine to work. You know, whatever. Just bring us the outrageous. And it is funny. So if you need a laugh, which we all do from time to time, search for workplace misconduct wherever you get your podcast. And you'll find it. And trust me, you will laugh and cry. But you'll definitely laugh. All right. Thank you. Yeah.

[00:16:20] And that's kind of where having that financial security, that sort of understanding of what's right, what could be, what options are out there. Because often people leap for the first one or the easiest one. And I just want to sort of say to folks, hey, there were more options out there. There's more education out there. You can make some seriously powerful decisions in these moments that could affect for many, many reasons.

[00:16:50] In terms of emergencies that occur, because, you know, things happen in life. How does the SECURE Act 2.0 address that? If I need to tap into my retirement savings in case of an emergency. Can you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. And there's a few things to consider here. First is there is this term that they use called hardships, right?

[00:17:20] And hardships kind of cover a broad range of things, right? It's from being able to sort of, you know, if you have to do a repair on your, an emergency repair on your primary residence. That is considered a hardship. If you need to pivot your career and re-educate yourself for your new career, right?

[00:17:46] That education is called a hardship, right? If you need to sort of pay some medical bills that you weren't expecting and the insurance doesn't cover, that's called a hardship, right? And so what the SECURE Act did was actually change some of the rules in and around hardships.

[00:18:08] And, you know, hardships and emergencies have their own terminology in here, but we're going to sort of focus primarily on the hardship element of it, right? Where there are some specific rules, right? We'll talk about emergencies in a second. Emergencies is a bit of a, it doesn't really speak to it, but it is actually a broader term, right? Hardships, you actually have to meet some certain criteria.

[00:18:34] Emergencies is actually sort of, you know, it's kind of up to you what you consider an emergency. There is some opportunity there as well. So on the hardship element, a lot of what the SECURE Act 2.0 changed is actually optional from plan to plan. So what we're going to talk about may or may not be enabled in your organization's particular plan.

[00:19:01] That's the sort of asterisk I want to throw out there first is what we're talking about might be available in your plan, but it also may not be. All right.

[00:19:13] So one of the first things it did was say to anyone running a plan, there used to be this moment of, hey, if my employee has a hardship, they have to come to the person running the plan and prove they have a hardship, right? Before they can take money out of their 401k, right?

[00:19:39] Which gives us sort of weird moment of having to prove that you are sort of unemployed or that's actually probably not a great example, but that you are not able to pay the rent and you're about to be evicted, right? You're having to prove that to your employer, which is potentially a weird moment. So the first thing they did was say, actually, employers can elect not to have that, right?

[00:20:08] So they can say, yeah, we will just waive that decision and let you try your luck with the IRS come tax time, right? So you will still have to prove the hardship potentially, but not to the organization. Now you'd have to prove it to the IRS when they come asking, right? So that's one. Next, again, if it's permitted by the plan. Yeah, no, no, no. But that's a good one. It's a good thing.

[00:20:37] Folks can run away and say, oh, I heard Mark Fowler told us that we can do this. And they're like, what? No, we don't have that in our plan. I'm familiar with 401k plans. I'm usually the day-to-day administrator, so I get it, but not all, especially employees that are just like, man, I don't want, I can't afford it. And then, yeah. And the next one or another one is the emergency withdrawals, right?

[00:21:07] And this is saying basically at any one point you can take up to $1,000 per year withdrawal for what, and I'm going to sort of actually give the proper definition here, unforeseeable or immediate financial needs relating to personal or family emergency expenses. That's the IRS language around that, right?

[00:21:34] And that you can take, and it's essentially not going to cause any tax issues if you pay it back within three years. You can get the $1,000, but you got to pay it back? Right? Yeah, because it's when your money's in a tax, in your 401k, it's in a tax advantage situation. It's a loan against your contribution. Okay. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah.

[00:22:03] And if you don't pay it back, you can only take one of those per three-year period. So every year if you pay it back, but only once every three years if you don't pay it back. Right. So you took one the first year, you didn't pay it back, it would become income at some point because you didn't pay it back. Is that right? Right. That I would have to check.

[00:22:30] That I would have to go to our ERESA team and be like, exactly what forms have to happen here. That's right. But needless to say, the IRS won't let it slide. Right? They're not famously forgiving. Right? So, Mark. So, Mark, would you consider that, I guess, that if I didn't pay that emergency fund back or that withdrawal back, would you consider that a penalty? That every three years?

[00:22:58] Or are there other penalties that the employee should consider if they fail to pay it back? Well, yeah. There will be some tax penalties on that. I believe there may even be the 10% early excise tax as well. So for removing it out of the retirement plan before you are of retirement age, right?

[00:23:26] Sometimes there can be the 10% penalty on top of having to make the income tax statements right. You know what I mean? So when you put your money in, particularly if it's pre-tax, right? So a traditional 401k contribution, right? No tax has been levied on that. Now, the tax man wants, the IRS wants tax on it at some point when you withdraw it. Right?

[00:23:56] So if you take it out as an emergency withdrawal, right? That then becomes regular income unless you pay it back into the 401k plan. Right? And when it becomes regular income, there is tax due on it. How quickly can folks usually get this payout, like the emergency access to funds? This one is designed to be pretty rapid.

[00:24:25] The whole point of it, the whole point about a lot of the nuances of Secure Act 2.0 is to make it more participant friendly, right? To make it a bit more accessible, right?

[00:24:39] Because, and I'm supposing here, but a lot of the movement suggests that the government understands that one of the reasons people don't put money into a 401k is the feeling of when it goes in, it's gone until 67-year-old me sees it later on. Right? Right?

[00:25:02] And so a lot of this is sort of enabled to create faster, more flexible opportunities, particularly, I mean, if you look at when Secure Act 2.0 came out, it was really at the sort of last gasps of the COVID era. Right? So everybody involved in making this process had just had COVID in their brains. I don't mean physically, but like on their mind. Right?

[00:25:32] And so a lot of this is people went through severe economic hardship as a result of COVID. Right? And I think, you know, now a lot of people may be experiencing similar, well, maybe not similar, but, you know, certainly economic hardship right now. We've went through hyperinflation.

[00:25:52] We've went, you know, so there's a lot of things out there where somebody might be feeling like, you know what, I need some way of getting more capital. And this kind of comes back to one of the things you were saying of, like, not all places or sources of capital are created equal. This is where being able to go to somebody and say, hey, what are my opportunities? What are my options? Right?

[00:26:22] Is super powerful. Because, you know, there may well be other options where if it's not likely that you'll be able to pay it back within three years, maybe there's a different kind of loan. That would be advantageous where you're not going to hit these tax implications. Right? So having that education, having that support to be able to understand, oh, yes, this is one option.

[00:26:51] It's available to me. And that's good to know. But maybe there are options that should. And this is, again, only if you actually have been contributing to 401k and you actually have a balance that you can tap into. Right? And that caveat we've spoken about too, which is if your plan. So you've gone through that. You are contributing. You do have a balance. And then you go ask for this emergency withdrawal.

[00:27:19] And they go, yes, it's not enabled on this plan. Right? So, you know, there's a number of caveats that you have to get through to be able to get there. So if you're wondering, if you're out there and you're wondering, like, is this a situation that I might be facing soon? Go talk with your benefits specialist at your organization. Talk with your HR person. Find out what is available.

[00:27:46] And then also ask the question of, do we have any other financial resources? Perfect. Because I'd like to know. So what could the employee do from your perspective, Mark, to find out exactly what their employer's 401k plan does include in the Secure Act 2.0? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:28:13] I mean, well, not just in the Secure Act 2.0, but overall, right? So every 401k administrator is required to make sure that periodically all the participants are informed of what the 401k contains. Right? Right? So, you know, what the plan provisions are. Right? So you could go back and look at the documents that were sent to you.

[00:28:43] Right? For some folks who like to, you know, push the glasses up the bridge of their nose and really get into the weeds, that can be a really good way of going. But for a lot of folks, you could read that. Yeah. And end up not feeling, you know, or feeling less informed than you did before reading it. Right. So that's where you can do a couple of things that are available.

[00:29:10] One is obviously talk with your HR person at your company. Right? There is probably reasons why they chose to set up a plan this particular way, and they will happily talk you through it. They will typically know how the plan is set up and probably explain it to you in a way that you're actually okay with listening to. Right? Another way is you can actually contact the provider. Yeah. Right?

[00:29:40] Contact the provider support and say, hey, what are my options? Obviously, they will only be able to talk you through 401k options. Right? That you can do with your balance. But, you know, if you want to know what provisions are enabled and what are not, you'll be able to go through that route too. So it sounds like no matter what, I'm impacting my retirement savings for the future.

[00:30:09] And it's either two forms. Is there any way to get withdrawals, no loan, without the penalty and interest in an emergency or any situation?

[00:30:54] Hey, this is William Tinca. Search for Heroes of HR, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. I mean, it's like you can take the withdrawal, but it will act as a loan. Because it's from a tax-advantaged situation, you will have to pay it back in. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:20] And there's typically, if you are younger than the retirement age, there is typically that additional 10% as well. That's what I was going to say, because you can start withdrawing. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like, was it 59 and a half? You can start withdrawal from your plan without penalty and interest? Or is that not right? Yes. In certain conditions.

[00:31:47] For instance, if you have done Roth contributions, right? And that money's been in for five years, right? For at least five years in a Roth contribution, you can withdraw that money absolutely penalty-free, right? Absolutely tax-free and absolutely penalty-free, right? After 59 and a half. And Roth is, just for folks to understand, Roth is an after-tax contribution.

[00:32:15] So you don't pay taxes on withdrawal from it. Correct. Right? Okay. Yeah. You paid your tax right up front. So it went through the tax man first and then went into your balance, at which point the tax man's happy that that money is, you know, he's had his slice and he's happy for you to have it now, right? The pre-tax is the one.

[00:32:45] The traditional contribution is the one where you've just said, Hey, tax man, I'll talk to you once I'm a retired. Even when you hit a qualified age for withdrawal? Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry. I just want to make sure I'm being very, very clear here, right? So the Roth contributions, right? You pay tax today, goes into your retirement.

[00:33:12] You meet the two conditions of 59 and a half and it being in there for five years. Got it. And it's absolutely tax-free. Right? Okay. So no income tax applied to that. Now, if you pay it in traditional or pre-tax, they're the same thing. They're just the different terminologies for the same thing. What you've essentially said to the tax man is, I'm going to put this into the account.

[00:33:41] I'm going to allow it to grow in a tax deferred way. And deferred meaning I'm just going to put it off till later. Right? I'm just going to let it ride. And when I take it out in retirement, you will count it as income then. Right? And take your tax out of it then. So that's why there's two different options. So you do pay the tax on it when you get withdrawal in retirement.

[00:34:09] But is it only federal? Do you have to still pay Social Security and Medicare from those dollars? Oh, that's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. And I would go again to my specific team. This is good. I love it. Mark, is there anything that the employee could do if their employer doesn't have certain options,

[00:34:38] right, or offer certain things regarding the emergency withdrawals or anything like that? Could they advocate for anything? Is there a way that they could do that with their employer? Or is it just basically? Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. And the majority of all of these are literally just, if you imagine somebody's there at sort of administering the plan, you can literally turn some of these features on and off.

[00:35:07] All right. So if you and a collection probably of other employees say, hey, we would like this feature and we would like this feature because it would give us a bit of a buffer in times of need, you could take that and go and talk to your sort of benefits folks at your organization and say, look, there's a group of us that would like this. Is it possible for us to have this added to the plan? Right.

[00:35:36] Some organizations charge for making that change. Some organizations, it's free, but it can be changed. Right. It's just an election in a plan document. I guess from the employer side of things, do you see it as a potential benefit to the employer?

[00:35:59] Does it impact retention or employee wellness if they offer more in a plan? Well, that's great. I mean, there is an enormous link between financial stress and overall wellness and health and therefore productivity, right?

[00:36:22] So whatever you can do as an employer to support your team's overall financial wellness. Yeah. I saw a study that said of people who this was, I think it was a PricewaterhouseCoopers study. So like a legitimate study here, right? Of people who report financial hardship or financial stress, right?

[00:36:51] The majority of them spend over three hours a week at work worrying about financial stress, like being distracted by financial issues. That's three hours a week. That's 150 hours a year, right? I'm European. That's almost a month of work for us in Europe, right? And that's, you know, that's obviously a big drop in productivity.

[00:37:19] Now, if you could find some ways of being able to sort of support your employees' financial wellness, right? We're seeing the growth of sort of benefits where organizations are literally employing a third party to come and say, hey, we will give you financial advice. We'll give you financial education for your employees, right?

[00:37:44] Because the link between financial health, overall physical health and employee productivity is very closely linked, right? And so anything you can do, it's that sort of holistic approach, right? And, you know, for some folks, they're going, yeah, I love the idea of just taking care of my employees. And then there'll be other folks out there going, look, it's a business. I run this for money.

[00:38:14] The productivity piece is where your return on investment comes, right? When your employees are happy, healthy, and they can focus on work, you will get more out of them. And that'll lead to a stronger bottom line. One more on for the employer's benefit. Does it, is there any significant burden to administration of like implementing secure 2.0 or basically that?

[00:38:40] Yeah, like, you know, if I'm opening a new plan today and I'm mandated for these things, is it going to be any additional burden on the administrative side? That really depends on the platform you're operating with, right?

[00:38:59] So one of the things to think about is how well your payroll platform interacts with your retirement benefit platform, right? And there is this thing called integrations that allow your payroll platform to communicate. I'm going to use a great word, automagically with your 401k platform in our instance, right?

[00:39:28] And when that's in place and you have a good setup, then a lot of the sort of administrative burden can be taken on by the service providers, right? But if that's not in place, then, you know, some instances would be if you had a fairly niche payroll and you're sort of working with a state-sponsored retirement program, right?

[00:39:57] Some of those don't have the capability of integration. And so, yes, there is a lot of manual work that goes into that. And so, if you don't have the platforms that allow for these things to happen sort of electronically, let's say, then, yes, you could be taking on a bit more administrative burden, right?

[00:40:21] But if you have a platform that's pretty seamlessly technologically integrated, then that is just an election and things happen in the background, right? So it's – I'm going to use a very British phrase here, horses for courses, right? So it's really going to depend on a lot of your individual circumstances as to how these things will line up for you.

[00:40:49] Do you find that employees – going back to the employee side – do you find that employees have difficulty understanding the differences between those hardship withdrawals, loans, and any of the new emergency savings provisions? I don't sit with the customer service team, right?

[00:41:16] So everything – I'll try and answer the question, but I just wanted to say, like, in terms of my direct experience, I'm going to have to hold my hands up and say I don't truly know, right? What I do know is that there is a lot of folks out there who are intimidated or bewildered by 401ks in general, right?

[00:41:44] A lot of my team works with – we run enrollment meetings for brand new clients, right? And so some of my team will sit on calls and explain a 401k to participants, right, that have just joined in.

[00:42:02] Within that, there's a lot of questions around the fundamentals of a 401k, which to me speaks to the fact that if you're still trying to figure out what Roth is versus traditional,

[00:42:19] then understanding what qualifies as a loan and the consequences of that may also be something that you're not familiar with, something that you're not comfortable with.

[00:42:33] And that concerns me because in that environment, when somebody is stressed, pushed for money, this is – I think if you haven't been stressed for financial reasons at some point in your life, you are missing a major life experience, right? It's hard to empathize with how visceral that can feel, right?

[00:42:59] And at that moment, you're asking somebody to make a decision about things that they may not fully understand and that they may not sort of really appreciate the long-term consequences of. And that's my concern is folks not feeling ready to make that decision but having to make it anyway. All right. Thank you very much, Mark, for the time. Last two questions.

[00:43:28] If you can give employees one piece of advice about saving for retirement, what would it be?

[00:43:59] Well, first of all, technically I'm not allowed to give advice. What I wish I could say to my younger self, right? What I wish I could say to my – the thing I wish I had done was save earlier and save a bit more, right? Compounding interest. I think it was – one of my colleagues brought this quote up is Albert Einstein said, compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world, right?

[00:44:28] Those who understand it benefit and those who don't understand it pay it. Yeah. Right? I don't claim credit for that. One of my colleagues brought that up. Yeah. I love it. I'm stealing that every day. We are allowed to give advice. So we say the same thing all the time, right? We literally save. If you have a 401k plan, take advantage of it.

[00:44:53] If it's an employer match involved, especially and max it out so that you take full advantage of the employer max or match rather because it's not dollar for dollar for 100% of the dollars usually. I don't know. I've never heard of that. You know, there are even some organizations that give you 401k or retirement money even if you don't contribute.

[00:45:19] So, right, like take advantage and I like what you said. Save early, save more. And yeah. And yeah, I mean one of the – I run the numbers so often on this and like even a little over a long period of time makes an incredible impact. Because I always tell the story of a friend that I had that was at a company already when I got there.

[00:45:48] He was there for like 10 years and did not contribute to 401k. Could have been like 50k in at that point, you know, because this is 20 years ago already. But it was just like, what do you mean? You're not – all this time you've been – you haven't put anything? Like are you kidding me? And I think I remember like doing the math for him and was like, you could have did this, you know. And it was –

[00:46:12] Unfortunately, it was just like whatever, you know, because some folks just don't get it. They don't see it. And it's sad really, you know, especially if you're young. Like you said, your younger self, you know, same thing for me. I wish I did this out the gate and never stopped because unfortunately I have hit those, you know, financial impasses and I have had to withdraw out of it just to get help.

[00:46:42] And it's been tough, right? I'm in the bucket with every other 70% of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck. And it's tough, right? We do – we've started a little thing between Walt and I where it's like a financial fitness challenge and we're taking very – like we're looking at our accounts. We're looking at our money, seeing where we can cut down and spending and push it to savings, push it to investing.

[00:47:08] And, you know, again, we don't tell you like tell folks how and what to do, but we just tell them that they should be doing something, right? You should be budgeting. You should be investing. You should be saving. How you do that is definitely on you and there are 100 million resources out there to learn it and figure out what to do. We just say you need to do that, right? Like because it starts with your paycheck, right? It's about your paycheck. So it starts there.

[00:47:34] That's where you're looking at your money and you need to make some decisions on how to do – what to do with your money from there, right? I love this term that they say that poor folk work to pay bills, middle class work to pay credit, and rich folk put that money to work to make more money, right? Money makes money. So – Yeah, money makes money.

[00:48:00] So before I give you the last question, is there anything that you wanted to share that you didn't share? Just that, you know, if you are – and this is sort of a personal bit – if you are going through financial hardship, it – and I have been through my own versions of it.

[00:48:26] And I don't know if this is a male-female divide, but I know what I felt. I felt embarrassed by it. I felt alone. I didn't want to talk to people. I wanted to just make a snap decision and have it all go away. That's what I wanted. It didn't work out that way.

[00:48:49] And I just want people to know that there are – and like, thanks to you folks for being out there, talking to people, getting people to understand there are options. There are people who are out there struggling. There are a lot of people struggling. It is not – you don't have to – like, I'm sure you don't feel good, but you don't have to feel as bad as you feel right now. Yep. Right? Yep. Come to work with somebody.

[00:49:14] You've got to have a growth mindset where it's like every challenge is an opportunity to learn something, an opportunity to overcome and gain something from it. There is opportunity and chaos. So, you know, it is that. It's like don't defeat yourself. Oh, gosh, I'm done. Life is over. I'm broke forever. And that mentality is going to keep you there, right? And it's having the opposite of that, that growth mindset to get you out. And it's tough, right? We've been through it. And it's just tough to –

[00:49:44] We all need that resilience, right? Yes. Mark, thank you for speaking to that. And I think a lot of people can empathize, sympathize with that, with what you said. And, you know, it resonates with me and my personal lifestyle stuff that I'm going through. So I thank you for saying that. I'm sure a lot of listeners are going to identify with that. And could you let listeners know where they can go to learn more about human interest? Next. Surprisingly enough, humaninterest.com, right?

[00:50:14] But if you want to get into some good stuff, put a backslash learn on that, right? So humaninterest.com slash learn. And there's a lot of things in there, right? Articles about the difference between Roth versus traditional. Articles in there about, you know, what we see being good for – if you're administrating a plan, we can talk through the different levers that you have.

[00:50:44] Everything is contained within there. If you're thinking about putting a plan in place for your employees because you want to set them up long term, again, we can get – we can provide all kinds of things for you to read, calculators, et cetera. It's all on learn. So that's humaninterest.com slash learn. And just understand that you are not alone. Thank you for that. Walt is going to close us out with the quote of the day. All right.

[00:51:14] The reward for good work is more work. Tom's text. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Mark. We really appreciate it. Look, you have a home here. Anytime you want to come on and you got anything, you know, spread the word. If you guys are doing anything amazing that you want to share, please feel free to come on back. But until then, it's humaninterest.com slash learn. And you guys can find out more, you know. Absolutely.

[00:51:46] And can I just say thank you for inviting me on. It's been an absolute privilege. Thank you very much. A lot of fun to spend some time with. Thank you. Before we sign off, here are a couple quick things. Don't forget to follow It's About Payroll on LinkedIn. And it's about your paycheck on Facebook and TikTok. Thank you for being part of our payroll community. And thank you for being a part of this journey with us.

[00:52:16] Until the next time, keep learning, keep growing, and most importantly, keep going.