The 401k Girls Are Making Financial Planning Actually Fun

401k Girls: [00:00:00] our strategy is to be direct, but also entertaining short form content with bite-sized action items that are easy for people to follow.

Amanda Umpierrez: This is the 401k specialist managing editor, Amanda Umpierrez, and this is the 401K Specialist Podcast. Today, we’re happy to have on the show the 401 Girls, a financial education platform founded by Jessica Porter and Haley Porter, who are both financial planners with BPG Wealth Management.

The 401 Girls aims to make saving, investing and planning for the future approachable and fun through social media. On LinkedIn and Instagram, the platform pushes out quick tips and busts misconceptions about financial planning with the goal of simplifying complicated jargon and helping individuals take charge of their financial wellbeing.

 Among the topics they cover include investment education, financial planning, tax savings, current market insights, and wealth building among others. Thanks for coming on the 401K specialist podcast, Jessica and Haley.

401k Girls: Thank you for having us. We’re excited to be here. Thank you, echoing that.

Amanda Umpierrez: All right. I [00:01:00] wanted to talk more about the 401k girls and your mission in forming the platform.

Can you two speak more about your motivation behind creating your platform?

401k Girls: Absolutely. So Haley and I manage the retirement plan consulting side of our business at our firm. And we have the opportunity to do a lot of hands-on education with the employees and participants in these plans. And we quickly realized a lot of the things that we know and that come very second nature to us, people don’t know about.

There were so many questions that people had that really made us realize what a gap there is in the amount of information that’s available, the ease of understanding the information. Uh, we also recognize that two women managing a retirement plan department is fairly unique in our industry still. And we both have the same last name, as you mentioned.

We are not actually related, uh, but everybody thinks we’re sisters. And so we thought it would be fun to play with that a little bit and create a [00:02:00] platform that was really about all the education we get to bring to the companies we work with. How can we get that out to the masses? How can we get this information out to as many people as possible, make it as easy to understand as possible, and hopefully make it a little bit more exciting and fun to, to view as well?

Yeah, we wanna cast a wider net than what we can at those employee education meetings, and we wanna work specifically to empower women and younger people to take charge of their financial futures. So we don’t wanna just be talking heads or pointing any fingers, we wanna be empowering people and, and make it accessible.

Amanda Umpierrez: Yeah, absolutely. so what inspired you both in making retirement planning approachable through social media?

401k Girls: Yeah, so the internet and social media are stream of information and information overload. So it’s where most people are consuming their media and their news these days. There’s a lot of opinions out there, quick fixes and get rich, quick suggestions, but we [00:03:00] all know in the industry that the best way to approach retirement readiness is to start early and be consistent.

Think to echo Hailey, what we also realized is there’s so much misinformation out there, and we kept seeing all these things, and we were scratching our heads thinking, “Well, that’s not actually correct, but this is what people are learning and taking away.”

I think for us, we wanted, you know, we’re licensed, we’re educated, we practice this every single day. We wanted to sort of put our voice out there and make sure this is the correct information. Let’s hopefully cut through some of the noise and, you know, give real actionable advice that actually is, again, from somebody that’s licensed and educated in this.

Amanda Umpierrez: Awesome. So then where do you see the biggest opportunity to improve financial wellness through social media?

401k Girls: Yeah, I think as Hailey mentioned, social media really is where people get their information, where they get their news, where they get influenced on certain things. And [00:04:00] I, I think what we’ve also recognized is people’s attention spans are very small these days.

And so creating things that are really bite-sized but easy to take action on. So, you know, putting something out there that says, “Increase your 401k by 1%.” And then we get a message from somebody that says, “Hey, I increased my 401k by 1%,” which is amazing, right? Or we put out a video, uh, last week that said, “Here are the, you know, in order how you should be allocating your money.”

And those are the things where people go, “Okay, this is really easy. I don’t have to do everything at once. It’s not January 1st where I have to take all the actions.” There’s one thing that I can do that’s actually going to make a difference. And again, to be on social media, to be in front of as many faces as we possibly can, to be able to influence a little bit more of that financial wellness.

Amanda Umpierrez: So studies show an increase in retirement planning interest among younger clients. How does this influence your work with 401k girls being to, younger individuals yourselves?

401k Girls: Yeah, [00:05:00] we’ve, we’ve heard that stat too, or we’ve heard that too. Our younger clients are very proactive. We had a great meeting with a very curious gentleman this morning, and seems like they all have a genuine thirst for knowledge.

The questions we get from the younger clients are getting more and more sophisticated, and you can tell they really wanna understand their investments. Uh, we’ve heard the term loud budgeting, referring to the trend of money conversations becoming less secretive, more open, and it becoming more socially acceptable to establish firm financial boundaries.

So knowing that the conversations and sentiments around money are becoming more candid and positive, that supports our theory that th- there’s a demand for this content that we’re putting out there. So like, let’s talk about this stuff so we can all be informed and stay ahead together. Again, everyone is on social media, so we’re meeting them where they’re at, and we know it’s hard to earn people’s attention in this world.

So our strategy is to be direct, but also [00:06:00] entertaining short form content with bite-sized action items that are easy for people to follow.

Amanda Umpierrez: Yeah. And, I think that’s definitely working, especially with anything finance, right? I think having that short form sort of content really is what hits with a lot of, people online.

401k Girls: Right. We know it’s the most thrilling topic, but we try to make it entertaining. Exactly. We can make it entertaining. Um, so kind of pivoting a little bit, as two women in a male dominated industry like financial services, can you talk about how the retirement plan industry can better service women clients and what the 401k girls are doing to help support them?

Yeah. So we really wanna encourage women to take an active role in the understanding of their financial futures. Financial literacy is not just about understanding the difference between stocks and bonds. We believe that financial literacy is synonymous with financial confidence, and that confidence then allows people to make firm and guided [00:07:00] decisions, not to mention sooner decisions.

They don’t wait as long to make those decisions, uh, leading to higher retirement savings, more money in their emergency savings bucket, and the selection of appropriate investment choices for them. So even deciding to work with a financial advisor takes a certain amount of confidence. You have to know what questions to ask and feel comfortable asking your advisor those questions.

I saw a statistic the other day that said that 94% of women prefer to work with a female advisor. So we feel we have empathy for the unique financial struggles that women face out there, and hopefully the content we’re putting out there gets their wheels turning and also provides a space to turn to for advice and support.

Yeah. I would echo Haley. I, I think we’re sort of uniquely positioned to really understand what women are going through, what they’re feeling, the struggles they have. We have longer life expectancies. [00:08:00] We tend to have different earning patterns. Unfortunately, those patterns tend to be less earning than our male counterparts.

We tend to have more career pauses to raise families or take care of, you know, aging parents and things like that. We tend to be more caretakers. And so, you know, I think really understanding that women still need to be in charge, they still need to be making certain decisions, but they might be different than what a man would be making.

I think it’s also about how we communicate. So, Haley mentioned 94% of women wanna work with female advisors. They wanna work with somebody that they feel like can understand what they’re going through, but also can communicate they want how they want to be communicated. You know, it’s historically the industry’s been built for men, and it was specifically speaking to men and what they wanted to learn, and that’s very different.

So our goal is to really create a very approachable, judgment-free space. We’re not gonna be using a bunch of jargon, we’re not gonna be using a bunch of acronyms. We’ve also gone through a lot of these things. We’ve, gotten ourself out of debt and made dumb decisions with money. We’re not here [00:09:00] to judge.

We’re here to tell you we understand and we, we wanna, help you make better decisions and have more confidence in the future. Um, so, we just really feel like representation matters. Uh, not only … I, I think for us, it’s about servicing women in the industry, but also the younger women that see us working in the industry and recognize, y- this could be a path for me.

I think historically it’s, finance has been such a path for men and we haven’t seen it in the same way. But again, that representation for younger women to see, “Hey, this could be a path for me too,” and just really creating that space to build that out for the future to better serve women on a continued basis.

Amanda Umpierrez: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, like you said, that understanding and that communication can really make all the difference, especially coming from a woman advisor who kinda knows, right, what their women clients are going through. And, like you said, representation matters, in all industries, but especially also in financial services where you don’t see as many women in.

But hopefully that’s changing.

401k Girls: Yes, exactly.[00:10:00]

Amanda Umpierrez: Absolutely. All right. Well, Jessica and Haley, this has been wonderful. Before we end, could you tell our listeners where they can follow you at?

401k Girls: Yes, we’re on Instagram at the 401kgirls. We’re also on LinkedIn at the 401 Girls as well.

Amanda Umpierrez: Great. And we’ll also have a link as well on our podcast homepage so our listeners can make sure to give you guys a follow.

 Thank you guys so much for coming onto the podcast and telling us all about the 401K girls and how you guys are supporting financial literacy.

401k Girls: Thank you, Amanda. Thanks, Amanda.