Getting the ‘Best Bang for Your Buck’

Legislators and regulators have been focused on helping Americans with their financial wellness, opening the door to new savings vehicles for different financial needs. But there is only so much money to go around, among plan sponsors and participants alike.

When retirement accounts do not attract enough money to create ideal participant outcomes, plan sponsors can reframe deferral percentages to pennies, recommend out-of-the-box side-gig options and pivot to unconventional match strategies, speakers said last week at the “Best Bang for Your Buck” session of the 2026 PLANSPONSOR National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Creative strategies do not require additional spending.

Reframing Percentages to Pennies

George Fraser, the founder and chief revenue officer of GigMatch, said plan sponsors and advisers need to have empathy for participants struggling to bridge the gap between their current and desired savings levels.

“People may forget what you said, they may forget what you did. They will never forget the way you made them feel,” Fraser said, paraphrasing acclaimed American poet Maya Angelou. “How are we making our participants feel today? We need to give them hope.”

One successful strategy to give participants hope—and to improve their savings—is to reframe a defined contribution deferral percentage to pennies on a dollar.

“People don’t understand percent—they think it’s a lot,” Fraser said. “A participant talks about 2% of [their] salary and think[s], ‘My gosh, that’s going to kill me—2%.’ But if [a sponsor] said, ‘We’re going to [save] two pennies out of every dollar that you make,’ people can relate to that.”

Fraser added that research from institutions including Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles, has shown that 401(k) participants saved about 20% or more under the penny approach than when they were presented with deferral rates in terms of percentages.

To demonstrate the success of the model for even the lowest earners, Fraser said a hypothetical 20-year-old who makes $25,000—and whose salary never increases—might deem it a struggle to save even $100 over a period. But if that 20-year-old was asked to save one penny out of every dollar until age 26, then six pennies out of every dollar until age 65, they would have saved $68,000. If the investment earned only a 6% return over the term, the participant would have more than $300,000 saved.

“We can make a difference and make it really, really simplified,” Fraser said. “We have to be understanding of where people are now.”

Recent research from the Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation, however, has shown that as Americans rely more on digital payments and engage less with physical coins, penny-based approaches to retirement savings resonate less well than they once did. Yet the importance remains clear of devising messaging to participants that results in the best savings outcomes.

Gig Solutions

To help participants generate supplemental income, Fraser recommended plan sponsors encourage participants to harness talents and possessions they already have. His company runs an app and platform that connect people with side gigs, freelance opportunities and post-retirement projects.

Fraser told the audience about having met a man who was going through a divorce, lost his house, maintained caregiving responsibilities and had only $400 for retirement—Social Security and 401(k) distributions considered—after a 35-year, hard-working career in the small town of Sweet Home, Oregon.

When Fraser asked what the man would do if he could live any life imaginable, the man said he would spend all day on his boat. Acknowledging that the man had a boat, Fraser asked him, “What if I told you for 27 days per month, it could be all yours?” The man’s dreams could be fulfilled, Fraser suggested, but for four days each month, he would take visitors out on the Oregon coast and make $500 per afternoon.

“We have to find ways to create additional income for people that maybe they haven’t thought of in the past,” Fraser said. That’s one of the things that I think is going to make a big difference.”

The Point System

Plan sponsors can pivot to creative company match solutions, as well.

Felix Okwaning, a managing director in the enhanced plan design practice at Principal Financial Group, helped one of his clients create a “point system” for company matches, rewarding employees for their length of service at the employer. The sponsor’s goals in restructuring were to help participants save more for retirement, reallocate money toward additional saving programs and improve recruitment and retention.

Rather than offer a standard company match for all employees, the employer added together the employee’s age and tenure to determine how many “points they earned,” a multiplier used in calculating the match. For example, a 25-year-old who just joined the company would earn 25 points, solely for their age, while a 35-year-old who joined the company at age 25 would have 45 points—35 for their age and 10 for their length of service.

Participants earned the following company matches based on their earned points:

• Less than 40 points: 2.5% (42% on 6% deferred);
• Between 40 and 75 points: 4.5% (75% on 6%); and
• 75 points or more: 6% (100% on 6%).

Okwaning’s client spent $14.3 million on matches under the new system—$4 million less than under the old system, in which each participant received a fixed 4.5% match based on a 6% deferral. Outcomes under the employer’s old, standard match system were expected to replace 65% of participants’ income in retirement. Under the point system, the projected income replacement shot up to between 75% and 76%.

While rewarding older, more tenured employees with higher matches, the company was able to appeal to a broader audience by reallocating the $4 million saved to student loan match programs and health savings accounts. The incentives paid off not only for all employees, but for the company’s talent attraction and retention outcomes.

“There is a challenge in getting your employees prepared to retire, and it doesn’t just impact the employee,” Okwaning said. “It impacts you as a plan sponsor as well.”