People are having a tough time saving—for health care, for retirement, for emergencies—especially since so many are living paycheck to paycheck and bending under the weight of student debt, credit cards and other financial obligations.

Retirement in particular is endangered by employees' failure to save, since in times of financial trouble they tend to turn to their retirement accounts (if they have any) for a financial bailout. In fact, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, for every dollar that manages to make it into a 401(k) or similar account, between thirty and forty cents "leaks out before retirement."

And that amount doesn't include loans people take to bail themselves out that they actually manage to repay.

However, says the report, employers can help the situation—something they've expressed interest in as a way to boost employee financial wellness—through providing a means of saving for the proverbial rainy day. The process can be cost effective, too, the report adds, and goes on to examine three different options for doing so: after-tax employee 401(k) accounts, deemed Roth IRAs under a 401(k) plan and depository institution accounts.

Auto escalation of deposits into such accounts doesn't necessarily mean that people will lower their nonessential consumption to accommodate those deposits, the study found, although the "crowd-out effect" (outside spending that isn't reduced to make up for higher deductions) does exist—just not as a huge influence on savings/spending.

But the very existence of separate rainy-day accounts, says the report, enforces discipline in recognizing what savings can and can't do. In addition, the separate account with that stated purpose can help influence employees into not raiding those funds for other purposes.

The design of such accounts needs to incorporate certain features into the structure of the account: liquidity, the tax treatment of withdrawals, partitioning to encourage "separate mental accounting by employees" to discourage them from draining the accounts; auto enrollment; the ability to make matching employer contributions; satisfaction of compliance requirements; investment allocation; account portability; and what to do if the account's target balance is reached.

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Rainy-day savings accounts could help protect retirement savings

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