About Us
About PFEEF
The Personal Finance Employee Education Foundation, Inc. (PFEEF), a not-for-profit organization, is a private foundation established for the scientific purposes of serving the public interest for non-commercial purposes by educating employers on the bottom-line benefits of workplace financial education that improves financial literacy and personal financial behaviors (Click here for press release).
The Personal Finance Employee Education Foundation was established in 2006 as a logical extension of important research conducted over the previous two decades. Research conducted during the 1990s at the National Institute for Personal Finance Employee Education at Virginia Tech demonstrated the employer's return on investment for providing workplace financial education to employees. Additional research in the 2000s by the InCharge Education Foundation and academic scholars around the country further established the business case for workplace education that reduces employee financial distress and improves their financial well-being.
Personal Financial Well-Being (PFW) Scale A major breakthrough occurred in 2006 with the long-awaited publication and public availability of the Personal Financial Well-Being (PFW) scale. (The PFW scale is also known as the InCharge Financial Distress/Financial Well-Being scale.) The PFW scale is a concise 8-question survey that can be used by human resources professionals and financial education providers (for free) to do the research in one day to make the business case for more financial literacy to improve the bottom line. No academic researcher is needed to help in such an effort. The human resources director and/or financial education provider already has access to the data, and he or she only needs to put it together with results of PFW employee survey data. The human resources director and/or financial education provider then can take the findings that prove the business case to the employer's Chief Financial Officer and to top management.
What PFEEF Research and Knowledge Tells Us (1) The lack of financial literacy--spending plans, credit management, and savings--is the major reason why employees do not save for retirement; (2) Money worries hinder employee job performance; and (3) Providing employees easy access to basic financial literacy education programs improves their personal financial behaviors and job performance as well as the employer's bottom line.
What the PFEEF Does PFEEF advocates best practices in workplace financial programs that increase employee well-being and employer profits. PFEEF provides limited financial support to employers and those in business, government and academia those who educate employers about the benefits of quality workplace financial education. Support is provided to human resources professionals, financial education providers, academic researchers, and others involved in workplace financial education. We give employers no-cost-to-use tools and expertise to detail the bottom-line ROI of quality workplace financial programs.
PFEEF does not provide financial programs; instead we recommend the best.
PFEEF Helps Employers We identify the best providers of workplace financial programs and for no cost project their value to the employer's bottom line. PFEEF helps top management--one employer at a time--use company data to prove the bottom-line wisdom of providing employees easy access to quality programs that improve personal financial behaviors.
PFEEF Helps Workplace Financial Education Program Providers We help workplace financial providers demonstrate the value of their workplace financial program to employers. We help quality providers build market share in workplace financial education.
Why PFEEF Does What It Does? Harvard University's Lawrence Henry ("Larry") Summers provides this insight: "I think one has to be prepared to accept long casual chains. That is, if you're trying to think about a problem and propose a solution, it does not happen the next day. But it affects the climate of opinion, and things go from being inconceivable to being inevitable."
The PFEEF message that employers can increase profits by improving employees' personal finances used to sound too good to be true. All of a sudden more and more employers and financial program providers are telling the same story. Today employers are saying "Doing these things makes perfect sense!" and "Which financial program providers are the best?"
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