Cowell visits three counties to promote financial literacy

Shortly after Janet Cowell took office as State Treasurer in January 2009, she realized that the state is not a best practice workplace on financial literacy. Her Financial Literacy Tour, which made stops in Gaston, Dare and McDowell counties in late March, is one of Treasurer Cowell's first steps toward promoting financial literacy among local government employees.

"I want us to be better partners to you as employers in this system," Cowell told attendees in McDowell County.

Representatives of N.C. Retirement Systems, N.C. Supplemental Retirement Plans and the Local Government Federal Credit Union joined Cowell at each stop to talk about the need for financial literacy in the workplace and discuss the resources available to both employers and employees.

Diane Whaley, Member Services Section chief with the Department of State Treasurer, touted the benefits of ORBIT, the Retirement Systems' online presence that provides secure, 24/7 access to accounts for the more than 800,000 individual members of the state and local government systems. Whaley said that some of those services include the ability to make beneficiary changes and check retirement account balances. She said employers should educate themselves about ORBIT so they can help employees access their accounts.

Whaley encouraged employers to tell employees who leave local government that they are better served leaving their money in the system or rolling it into a supplemental retirement plan than taking it out and invoking fees for early withdrawal, in addition to having to pay taxes on their savings refunded in cash.

Derwin Dubose, director of financial literacy for the State Treasurer, cautioned people who think their pension is all they need for retirement. Dubose said the pension is only built to cover half of the needed income during retirement. In addition to Social Security, employees need to be making regular contributions to other retirement savings accounts – and that's where Prudential, North Carolina's partner in providing 401(k) and 457 deferred compensation supplemental retirement plans, comes in.

Prudential's Tim Bryan said that at www.NCPlans.prudential.com, participants can answer two basic questions and receive asset allocation advice to make sure they are making proper allocation decisions based on their preferences.

The LGFCU's Chris Brown said the credit union is committed to financial literacy, and has a goal to educate any local government employee that applies for a loan on how that loan fits into their full financial picture.