Find Financial Advisors for University of Vermont Faculty & Staff: Q&A Insights from the Experts

Many UVM Employees Don’t Contribute Enough to Get the Full Retirement Match

Missing the match leaves free money on the table. The advisor below also helps employees use both the 403(b) and 457 plans and the Retirement Health Savings Plan.

Know the Difference Between an HSA and an FSA — and Don’t Discount Disability Coverage

Confusion between the two accounts affects healthcare, retirement, and taxes, and younger employees often underestimate the likelihood of needing disability insurance.

Tuition Benefits and PSLF Can Be Powerful for UVM Employees

Tuition reimbursement can reduce or eliminate college costs, and employees with student loans should plan around Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

First, I like to ensure that they are maximizing on the benefits provided by UVM, anywhere from their 403(b) and 457 retirement plans as well as the Retirement Health Savings Plan (RHSP) which helps with health costs during retirement as well as health benefits options while they are employed and looking to leverage the HSA and FSA opportunities. Next, I look for opportunities to ensure employees maximize on other insurances, such as disability and life and for clients who are seeking additional education or have college-bound children, I am a huge fan of the tuition reimbursement and employee discounts. Finally, I always ask my clients if they have student loans, as it impacts our plan and timeline for their PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness).

I start every client relationship with “getting to know you” meeting. During this 90-minute interaction I like to understand not only their current and future goals, but also their life-time and family relationship with money, their upbringing, their values, the current circumstances, and behavior when it comes to any and all financial decisions. I believe in holistic planning and like to consider their aging parents or other family members, like siblings, children, or anyone else who may become financially dependent on the clients, as I believe all of that impacts how we approach their plan and our collaborative approach to building it.

Yes! Three specific pieces come to mind: HSA v. FSA, Disability insurance, and retirement contributions. I find that employees often don’t understand the difference between HSA and FSA and the impact it can have, not only on their healthcare and retirement, but also taxes. I also find, especially with younger employees that they deeply discount disability insurance coverage as an event that they believe has a super-low probability of happening, meanwhile research tells us that the probability is rather high. Finally, the number of employees who don’t even meet the UVM contribution match is really high. I often have to remind folks that this is free money that is readily available to them.

Absolutely! First, tuition reimbursement is huge. In the era where a college degree can cost as much as a home, having a benefit where even a portion of that cost can be reduced or even completely removed is tremendous. Second one that I really like is the PSLF track for folks who have student loans. And finally, ability to participate in multiple retirement savings vehicles can give folks a ton of flexibility.

Most of the UVM employees when they leave, they go into a different university or college. I have them evaluate not only the new salary, but also benefits that are offered and if they are moving out of state we consider the cost of living in the new area. If they are leaving education or non-profit as a whole, I like to account for the student loans and calculate the impact. And of course, just like any other job, I like to look at the retirement vesting to make sure we account for everything.

This is often challenging, no matter what job or company you are leaving. For some individuals, in addition to income and expenses we talk about the social, purpose, and scheduling impact. For nearly all individuals I have conversations about mental-model change where we shift from accumulation phase to decumulation phase. I find that for many folks this is really hard concept to grasp, which makes perfect sense – you spent your whole life being taught to save and now you have to stop doing that and start taking funds out of it. It can be very weird, uncomfortable, and just plain scarry for many. So we plan and we talk about it and we strategize.

Two main challenges come up with UVM employees: academic employment and union vs non-union, staff vs faculty vs executive. And then if we broach into the UVM Health world then we have a whole new set of challenges that play the part. This makes for individualized, unique, and specific planning challenges and opportunities, but all are doable with proper planning.

All my initial meetings focus on getting to know my clients as people and we rarely even talk about the work. One piece that often comes through from the UVM employees is the commitment to life-long learning and desire to make the world better for the future generations, but that’s not suprising.

In short yes, but it all depends on who, where, when… given the multitude of different options it’s really hard to give a quick answer as I believe it’s very much individual impact vs group as a whole.

I believe that every client has unique opportunities, circumstances and challenges no matter where they work. Partially, it is about the place of employment, but family, age, upbringing, gender, how we process information, etc make a much larger differential in planning needs. What is perhaps unique about public higher education institutions like UVM is the reliance on federal and state funding (in addition to enrollment) and impact on the workforce and the community when those shift.