Retirement plan professionals are getting increasingly creative in how they observe 401(k) Week, culminating in Friday’s National 401(k) Day.
Take Qualified Plan Advisors, the high-profile Kansas City-based firm. Its Nebraska Practice Leader, Charles (Chuck) Smith, is an elite runner with many marathons and even hundred-mile races under his belt. He and four others in the Nebraska office decided to spend part of the work week running a 401k, the cumulative equivalent of 250 miles.
The reasons are threefold:
- Do something as a team to help reinforce office culture.
- Celebrate and shine a brighter light on 401(k) Week.
- Raise money for Junior Achievement to help with its efforts to increase financial literacy.
A Google Sheet tracks their progress, which they must complete by noon on Friday. According to runner Matthew Eickman, the firm’s National Retirement Practice Leader, holding each other to account isn't an issue.
“It’s the honor system,” Eickman said. “We offered to share screenshots and wristwatch shots, but the reality is, knowing the good people we have here and the reason we’re doing it, I suspect they would feel far worse if they were cheating than if they were honest about it.”
They’re simply enjoying the group aspect and getting outside together in the morning or late afternoons (because it’s hot).
Five people and 250 miles would make for simple math—50 miles each. Not so, Eickman said, with Smith doing the yeoman’s work.
“Chuck will run more than the rest of us combined,” he added. “But there’s another interesting aspect to it. All five individuals are running this week well over where we are comfortable running. It’s less about how we’re relatively performing and more how each of the five seeks to do something hard throughout the week.”
More amazingly, Smith is sick this week, yet he’s pushing through and ahead of pace in a Michael Jordan Game Five Flu moment.
“He’s digging in and not only taking the lion’s share to start with, but how hard he’s having to work to get to that point is pretty astonishing,” Eickman noted. “Just to be clear, his goal on Monday was to run 45 miles, and he was so sick he could ‘only’ run 43 miles that day.”
The real value of outside-the-office activities like this is the benefit to the team when inside the office.
“It’s kind of corny, but one of the neat things that’s come of this is the additional cultural value of doing something together,” he self-deprecatingly concluded. “We exchanged text messages as a group starting on Labor Day. It’s turned into the office discussing our run and other seasonal issues, like people offering to bring tomatoes from their gardens. I guess the lesson here is that if you are willing to plan a 401-kilometer, 250-mile group run, at the very least, you can get fresh tomatoes out of it.”
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT NATIONAL 401(K) DAY IS FOUND HERE
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