Scores Reveal Key Factors in Financial Wellness

While employee financial stress increased overall last year, the Financial Finesse Think Tank report, “2025 Financial Wellness in America: A Tale of Two Cohorts,” revealed a critical divergence between two age groups. Those experiencing less financial stress, the report argued, benefited from artificial-intelligence-driven coaching paired with human guidance and from personalized, specifically timed communication.  

Overall, the share of employees reporting high or overwhelming financial stress rose by 1.2 percentage points to 26.8% in 2025, up from 25.6% in 2024. Employees younger than 30 with annual household incomes of less than $60,000 saw their stress levels improve, dropping to 45.8% from 48.2%. Workers between ages 30 and 44 with household incomes between $60,000 and $100,000, on the other hand, saw their stress levels rise by 3.2 percentage points, to 43.5% from 40.3%.

“This divergence is not a coincidence,” the report stated. “It reflects a fundamental difference in what is driving financial stress for each group and, more importantly, what is working to relieve it.”

Stress Drivers

Despite having the highest baseline stress level in the workforce, the cohort younger than 30 experienced improved stress levels by utilizing targeted benefits, such as emergency savings accounts, employer-sponsored student loan repayment programs and artificial-intelligence-enabled tools, the research found.

For the older, higher-income group, housing costs, dual caregiving obligations, retirement anxiety and student loan repayment resumption combined in ways “standard benefits are not designed to address.”

Members of the 30-to-44 cohort were the most likely to be first-time homebuyers, according to a 2025 report from Homebuyer.com. In addition, MetLife reported last year that an estimated 46% of the age group served as caregivers for children or aging parents, compared with about 36% of the overall workforce that reported similar caregiving responsibilities. Meanwhile, 28% of Millennials reported feeling on track for retirement, which means 72% reported worrying about their savings. That was higher than the 69% of all adults who reported worrying they would not have enough money in retirement, according to AARP’s January 2025 Financial Security Trends Survey.

Targeted Solutions

The Financial Finesse report found that personalizing communications and timing them right, as well as pairing artificial-intelligence-driven coaching with human guidance, was critical in aiding the younger-than-30 cohort.

“A platform that tells employees what a [health savings account] is offers value,” the report stated. “A platform that knows which benefits an employee actually has access to and tailors its guidance accordingly offers something fundamentally different.”

Financial Finesse’s research found that among employees with access to “benefits-integrated” platforms, the share that was financially resilient—defined as having a financial wellness score of at least 5 on a 10-point scale—increased by 79% (22 percentage points) last year. Comparatively, among those using platforms without benefits integration, the comparable improvement was 55% (15 percentage points). People using integrated benefits tools were also more likely to achieve milestones such as setting aside at least $1,000 in emergency savings and being on track for their retirement goal.

In addition, targeted, event-driven communications produced 13 times higher engagement among participants using Financial Finesse’s platform than generic outreach with comparable content. The report suggested the generic option was not sufficient specifically for combatting the 30-to-44 cohort’s structural stressors. Rather, it suggested employers should take more proactive outreach approaches, such as providing caregiving resources when employees update dependent information and offering retirement planning prompts when employees cross key age thresholds.

Among employees who engaged with the Financial Finesse platform in 2025, those who combined AI coaching with a human financial coach achieved 40% better critical milestone achievement rates than those who used AI alone. People who used the combined approach achieved emergency savings of more than $1,000 at a rate 14 percentage points higher than those who used just AI—as well as being 15 percentage points more likely to be on track for their retirement goal.

The report drew on an analysis of data from 8.2 million interactions with Financial Finesse’s AI-powered digital coach, “Aimee,” in 2025.