PLANADVISER - January/February 2020 - 34

in practice
meetings, targeting workers by age: under 40, 40 through
55, and 55 and older. " The idea was, participants would feel
they are getting more custom information for their lives. "
He adds that his staff always takes the emotional side in
meetings. " Emotions move people; facts don't. "
For further effectiveness, staff attend public-speaking
classes, and they work hard to simplify their message for
participants.
" Overall, whenever participants see us, we tell them to
bump up their retirement savings by 1%. I recently had a
participant come up to me and say, 'I just got to 13%.' It was
a high-five moment, " Lampsa says. " If we can just touch a
few people that way in every single meeting, we believe
we're changing lives. We only hire people for whom that is
their mission. "
Start the Conversation
GEORGE P. FRASER, Fraser Group at Retirement
Benefits Group, Scottsdale, Arizona
" If you find someone with a sharp idea and
can get permission to use their stuff, do it, "
says George P. Fraser, financial consultant
and managing director of the Fraser Group at Retirement
Benefits Group (RBG) in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Fraser has operated his practice for 28 years. It has about
40 clients-mostly 401(k) plan sponsors, but he has started
advising for 403(b) plans, too.
Fraser fancied the award-winning " Let's Taco Bout Retirement "
truck campaign developed by Jason Chepenik and
Chepenik Financial. With permission, Fraser adopted the
concept for his " Prepare for a Spec'TACO'lar Retirement! "
campaign.
" While eating together, you can get to know people before
the meeting, " he notes. At one such taco lunch, he learned
a worker had lost access to a prior retirement account. Her
old employer had gone bankrupt and been purchased by
another firm, she had found. He helped her get her $18,000
retirement plan benefit from the former employer.
The meetings at his Spec'TACO'lar Retirement events
always start with confronting people's fear that Social Security
" won't be there " to provide retirement income. He says,
people have been told that Social Security will become insolvent,
so they need to save at least 15% of their income to have
retirement security. This is a daunting thought for many, and
" some low-income people don't even save-they think if they
can't save 15%, it won't help anyway, " Fraser says.
" The fact is, Social Security will be there. It has been
documented, and people will be just fine. That message
has changed employees' attitudes in meetings, " he says.
Fraser will hold up a lottery ticket and tell attendees
they have a better chance of being hit by lightning and
drowning simultaneously than winning the lottery. Then,
he will say, " Let me tell you about the lottery you've already
won: A $1,000 a month from Social Security, if you live to
85 equals $250,000 in retirement. "
" Reframing it to saving pennies
on the dollar has resulted in
almost 100% participation for
our plan sponsor clients. "
Following the Social Security discussion, Fraser focuses
on his trademarked " Pennies on the Dollar " education. " If
you talk about saving a percentage of salary, it can sound
enormous to individuals. Reframing it to saving pennies on
the dollar has resulted in almost 100% participation for our
plan sponsor clients, " he observes.
To show what saving pennies on the dollar could mean,
Fraser uses the example of a 20-year-old earning $25,000
a year. He says if the employee starts with saving just one
penny out of every dollar and goes to six pennies by age 26,
by 65 he will have saved $62,608.33. If that grows at just 6%,
he will have $296,413.24 at 65.
Presentation is important, too. " We don't want to come
in as smarty-pants advisers. In meetings, we dress in golf
shirts and khakis, " Fraser notes. He says his firm encourages
the advisers to make the concepts they teach simple
for everyone to understand. Individuals come to him and
his staff to thank them for doing that, he says.
Message to Relate
JUSTIN GOLDSTEIN, NFP Retirement, a registered
investment adviser and wholly owned
subsidiary of NFP Corp., Madison, Wisconsin
His time in the military working with a
diverse group of people helped Justin Goldstein,
AIF [Accredited Investment Fiduciary], to become
good at tailoring communication styles to the recipients.
Goldstein, vice president, advisory services, retirement
at NFP Retirement in Madison, Wisconsin, has been working
in the plan adviser industry since 2010. His team in Madison
has approximately 130 401(k) plan clients.
" I've learned that the better you can represent information
in terms and numbers that participants can actually
relate to, the more effective the message will be, " Goldstein
says. " For example, I ask them to think about their gross
pay and the first two numbers-and whether, if their next
paycheck was $15 less, they would even notice. "
He then explains how that $15 can translate to more
income in retirement. According to Goldstein, the concept of
increasing retirement income appeals to older participants,
while the idea of small steps making a big difference speaks
to younger participants. As one young participant told him,
" I've wanted to do this but didn't understand before. You
made this all make sense. "
Speaking to participants in this way can enliven a potentially
dull topic. Goldstein also uses the idea of an interactive
game show, with questions participants can answer
34 | planadviser.com January-February 2020
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