Good topics for company's HR newsletter?

[stuckinmn]

My wife is head of HR for a mid-sized manufacturing company that does a monthly employee newsletter.  She wants me to start contributing each month with an article about a financial tip/trick/tax advice for the workers.

The very first one will essentially tell them they are screwing up if they do not at least contribute to the company match on the 401k, but that one is so easy to see even I figured it out.  In later articles, I'll also point out the importance of low fees in mutual funds, time value of money,etc.  What are some others?

 As background, these are smart people that are fairly well paid (roughly 40 to 75k) but definitely blue collar and not the most financially savvy group.  So they have no interest or need for an article on backdoor roths.  We are not necessarily trying to get them fully on board with mustachianism (though that would be great) but it would be nice to see them having a shot at a secure retirement at 55 or 60. 

[regulator]

Debt management and smart use/minimization of borrowing, how to read a loan agreement and understand what you are signing, etc.

[Rezdent]

Ive been putting out a newsletter for the last 4 years.  My boss wanted to do away with it but our clients protested.
You dont say how much space you get but I recommend combining a large really easy with a small "advanced tip".
Really easy:  getting ahead: pay more than minimums on credit card balances...examples...fast math...caution you may not want to do this with mortgage, here's why.
 Advanced tip: are you already paying full every month?  If so, you may want to look into rewards programs.

Then I'd repeat that basic format with different topics.
I do recommend the really easy to be absurdly easy.  It won't hurt more advanced readers to see the basics.  It would hurt beginners to not understand.

One thing I always do is use Word to run an ease of readability check.  I want my articles to have less than 10% passive sentences and be at 7th grade level.
My audience reads at a much higher level - lots of PhD s.  But I've found the newsletter needs be an easy read anyway.  No one has time or desire to slog through technical jargon and complicated sentences for a newsletter.


Topic ideas:
Withholding scenarios - are you having too much withheld or not enough?
Whats a Credit score and why you should care
Financing:  costs over time with an example comparing 2 cars and rates
Tax time, what will you need?
Are you saving enough?
Saving for college

And my pet peeve:  Just because you can afford the monthly payment doesnt mean you can afford it...it's not the monthly payment that matters - it's how much the thing costs in the long run

This sounds like fun.

[pagoconcheques]

One trick with the potential to be a huge, long-term money saver for anybody is to buy economical cars used and keep them for a long time.  The clown-car has been discussed to death on this forum, but keeping the costs of car ownership in check is huge, really huge.

[teen persuasion]

Aimed toward those who can't find the money to even capture the match:  even starting small (a few percent) is worth doing.  Then follow up with ways to find that small amount painlessly: tweaking withholdings, add a percent each month, increase with raises, etc.  Show future results from even small amounts regularly contributed, and of course compare starting RIGHT NOW vs ten years later (even at a higher rate).

[MDM]

Kudos to your wife for sponsoring something employee-helpful from HR.  Certainly not the first one ever to do so, but there are enough management-oriented HR departments that it bears noting.  On to some suggestions:

The very first one will essentially tell them they are screwing up if they do not at least contribute to the company match on the 401k, but that one is so easy to see even I figured it out.

When you do this, can you publish overall statistics on 401k contributions?  You have to be a little careful about how and what you present (e.g., because it is a lot harder for a $40K/yr employee to contribute $17.5K than it is for a $75K/yr person), but real statistics about their fellow employees might get attention better than generic exhortations.

In later articles, I'll also point out the importance of low fees in mutual funds, time value of money,etc.

Good ones.  Others have already added more.  "Getting a big tax return from the IRS is not a good thing" might be worth doing.

[stuckinmn]

All good ideas- thanks for the input, everyone.

MDM, I want to shy away from using actual stats as the company is small enough that people might start talking and speculating and it could do more harm than good.  Thankfully, only 2 or 3 people are not taking advantage of the match so the first article should be easy.

I'm thinking about rotating between investment advice one month and lowering your expenses the next.  Nothing like full-on mustachianism of going with less as they might feel I am pushing it down their throats.  Just pointing out how they can spend less for the exact same product.  Perhaps I'll shamelessly steal IPFreely's cell phone guide, with permission of course.

[Apples]

Our business has employees making $20k to $50k, and is verrry blue collar.  You might consider an article explaining that Social Security is not going to fund a great retirement.  You don't even have to touch on the debate about future funding.  We have several guys here who have no idea how much SS benefits they'll get each month but plan to retire at 65 either way.  (Of course, they don't even know for sure that's their full retirement age, they just expect that).  So an article on how to check what SS you will qualify for and explain that it is supposed to fund very basic life expenses might open the eyes of a guy or two.

[JoJo]

Show the effect of modest expense cuts.  You can even ignore the time value of money and it's quite effective.

I explained how cutting expenses by $20 per week (whether that is skipping starbucks and bringing your own lunch a couple times a week)  is about $1000 per year - your article could talk about several easy ways to cut spending by $20 a week).  Then have them think about their paycheck and how many days or weeks they need to work to make $1000 after taxes.  Multiply that by the number of years they plan to work.  That's how many more weeks they'd have to work in their lifetime to pay for these additional expenses.

[1967mama]

I have written this in the Notes section of my phone so I can look it up anytime I want. It has been one of the most revealing things I've learned on MMM:

To calculate the 10 year opportunity cost of a weekly expense, simply multiply X by 752.

To calculate the 10 year opportunity cost of a monthly expense, multiply X by 173.

By cancelling Amazon Prime and an online newspaper subscription last week, it comes out to $7934. Ridiculous!