A Fresh and Health Way to Look at Investing

Your employees are dynamic. And dynamic employees deserve a fresh and unique way of experiencing ideas that can improve their overall wellbeing. Traditional financial wellness in the workplace is a great example of good intentions gone stale as we continue to stare mindlessly at PowerPoint presentations or click through one-size-fits-all digital “solutions” for helping employees manage their money.

It is time we put into practice what we all know: that the individuals that power your company’s engines are dynamic, multigenerational, and multicultural individuals that deserve a well-rounded and personalized approach.

Your employees have different visions of the abundant life they wish to lead. Each one of them is navigating a unique journey through their financial life with widely different origins and wildly different destinations. Addressing such a situation might seem like a challenge but in actuality there are many ways that employees can be reached with engaging events and programs that can and will create lasting change in habits surrounding money management. 

When it comes to investing, I find that people typically fall into one of two camps. Either you get excited about the prospect of making more money or your eyes glaze over and your brain goes into a deep hibernation. For those of you that are quickly overwhelmed with the idea of investing, it is important to know that you may be missing out on an opportunity to improve not only your financial fitness but your overall health and well-being, too. 

At Workplace Money Coach, we define investing as putting time, energy and/or money into something with the hope of receiving a greater return on your input in exchange. For example:

• Walking for 30-minutes each morning can exponentially improve your health over time.
• Organizing a time for family meetings on a weekly basis will help improve family communication for a lifetime. 
• Purchasing term life insurance now can protect your family from catastrophic financial troubles in the event that you die unexpectedly sometime in the near future. 

I have found it helpful to break down investing into building blocks and believe that investing should be done is stages. I wanted to share those stages with you in the hopes that it will help you to see investing from a different perspective.

Stage One – Invest in Yourself

Investing starts with taking some time and money to make sure you are healthy and happy. There are many ways to invest in yourself including putting healthy food in your body, exercising regularly, educating yourself, focusing on career advancement and taking care of any mental health needs. 

Make sure you include money in your monthly budget that can be used to invest in your health and personal growth. 

Stage Two – Invest in Your Family

Before you concern yourself with retirement and building wealth, you need to make sure that your family is safe, healthy and happy, too.  Some examples of ways that you can invest in your family include purchasing or renting a home or apartment in a safe environment, purchasing term life insurance, setting aside money for future educational expenses, traveling to experience new cultures and create great family memories. 

Another very important way to “Invest in Your Family” is to build an emergency fund to protect you from unexpected expenditures that can wreak havoc on your budget making it difficult to pay your bills. This can be seen as an investment in mitigating stress in your life.

Stage Three – Invest in Your Belongings

An often-overlooked way to invest is for preventative maintenance on the things you own. By investing money to clean and maintain your property and belongings regularly, you can prolong their life and save tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. 

Make room in your budget to get regular oil changes, tire rotations, brake inspections and fluid flushes for your automobiles.  Have your air-conditioning, pool pumps, and appliances serviced regularly.  Make sure you have adequate homeowners and car insurance and keep up-to-date with pet check-ups, vaccinations and medication to prevent larger, costly treatments or surgeries down the road. 

Stage Four – Invest for Retirement

Now that you have invested to make sure you and your family are safe and happy and that your belongings are clean and well-maintained, it is time to focus on investing money for a time later in life when you would like to stop working or may be unable to continue working. 

Many individuals have the opportunity to invest for their retirement at work through a 401K or 403B. If you do not work for a company that offers a 401K plan then it is up to you to open an IRA (Individual Retirement Account). You can find a financial advisor to assist you or do it yourself online with a company like Vanguard. If you own your own business then you have a tremendous opportunity to invest for retirement (SEP IRA or Individual 401K) with business income that doubles as a great way to cut the tax bill.   

Take some time to schedule an appointment with a financial advisor to make sure you are taking enough money out of each paycheck to invest so that you can live the life in retirement that you envision. 

Stage Five – Invest to Create Passive Income and Build Wealth

The final stage of investing comes after we have built our strong financial foundation, have an emergency fund savings account, have our consumer debt paid off and are maximizing our contributions to retirement savings. 

Now it is time to put our money to work for us. Passive income allows us to make money without having to actively go to work to earn it. Many individuals that have built real wealth do so through creating multiple passive income streams. Some popular ways to build wealth through passive income include investing in taxable mutual funds that pay dividends, purchasing rental real estate, buying an equity stake in a small business, lending money to others at a specific interest rate, collecting royalties on a book, song or game you create and even creating a product that you license to a company to produce and sell for you. 

Some of these investments require a lot of money up front and others do not.  There are a ton of books, blogs, trade magazines and podcasts that you can check out to learn more about a specific passive income investment to make sure it is right for you.

Happy Investing,

Shane Robson-Smith, AFC

The Workplace Money Coach