Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb

There are many definitions of financial wellness, but in our view, it refers to the degree to which you have achieved financial security and freedom of choice for the present and future in four dimensions: budgeting, saving, investing, and planning.

Concerns over financial security continue to dominate in the U.S. economy as workers struggle to recover from inflation stressors and market volatility. These were the top two financial wellness issues for 72% of workers, according to a 2023 survey of workers by Mercer, a global investment consulting firm.

As a result of this new way of looking at financial security, we’ve seen the definition of financial wellness expand to intersect with other areas of our lives, including general well-being (i.e., life satisfaction); psychological well-being (i.e., self-actualization); and ways to mitigate financial stresses. Everyday expenses, debt and rising health care costs continue to be top-of-mind issues, as is the longer-term, widespread concern of being able to retire. Just as important to financial wellness is our ability to sustain our physical well-being into old age through access to adequate health care, diet, and exercise. One cannot easily enjoy wealth if their health is suffering.

So there is a growing awareness of a subjective aspect of financial wellness that corresponds to our emotional and cognitive evaluation of our financial condition.

Financial wellness should not be focused exclusively on fixing negative behaviors. We’ve intentionally titled today’s article, “Practicing Financial Wellness,” because wellness is something that requires practice — repetitive reinforcement of many positive behaviors over time. There’s much that we all do that contributes to putting ourselves in control of our situation and a positive financial light.

To achieve financial wellness, try “practicing” some or all of the following activities. Try to do a little each day to maintain positive momentum, improve your ability to withstand financial hardships, and become more confident in your financial success.

Increase your financial literacy: Financial literacy encompasses a range of skills, including the ability to save and budget, an understanding of investing and debt management, and how to set and achieve financial goals. Read magazines, books, or blogs on financial matters, or sign up for an educational seminar or webinar. Your local public library can be an excellent resource. Listen to podcasts, and network with peers and colleagues. The important thing is to gear your learning to your experience and level. Our firm offers a wealth of resources on the Insights page of our website, wealthenhancement.com.

Create a Net Worth Statement: On one sheet of paper, write down all the assets you own (e.g., your house, stocks, bonds, cash, personal possessions) and subtract from that number everything you owe (e.g., outstanding mortgages, lines of credit, car or college loans, and so forth). This gives you a good picture of your household net worth, a very useful financial planning tool. Be sure to do it each year to see if your net worth is going up or down.

Track your spending: Even before you can set a budget, you have to have a clear idea about where your money goes each month. Use a notebook or a money tracking app, and record what you spend each day in both the “have to spend” and “nice to spend” categories. Often your bank or brokerage firm will have an app that pulls in all the various threads of your spending that can help you set a monthly budget.

Reduce unnecessary spending: If you’re not getting the most value out of the products and services you buy each week, maybe it’s time to cut back on eating out, exotic coffee, video streaming services, or cable services. But don’t cut out all the fun things in your life! Balance is key so that when you want to splurge on something you like, you won’t feel regret or guilt about it.

Increase retirement savings contributions: Consider increasing your contributions each year with every raise you receive, or at least enough to qualify for the employer match. The Tax Code allows you to make catch-up contributions to your 401(k) or IRA after age 50. That said, be careful that you’re not putting too much in these accounts that can whack you with a big tax bill down the road. It’s always a good idea to discuss with a financial adviser to see how boosting your savings applies to your situation. In addition, many employers are augmenting their employee benefits programs with employee discount programs, tuition assistance, or debt management services. It’s worth investigating what may be available to you.

Pay off bills: Reduce what you owe by paying off loans, credit cards, and other debts (especially those that carry high interest rates). I know it sounds nagging, but you should not take on more debt than you can comfortably handle. Shop around for the best deal before taking out a loan, and avoid carrying a balance on your credit cards, if possible.

Set up or add to an emergency fund: Squirrel away at least six months of living expenses, especially if your job is not secure, or there’s a risk of disability in your family, or if you have an unexpected car or home repair. You don’t need an instant emergency fund, day one — start small and build it up over time. And keep this emergency money in relatively safe, liquid funds. You can always transfer any excess emergency savings to your “long-term” investment account.

Check your credit report or score: Your rating influences your ability to qualify for credit, and the terms of that credit, so even if you always pay your bills on time, it’s important to check your scores periodically. Plus, with identity theft and credit card fraud cases spiking, you can’t be too careful. If you discover any errors, contact the rating agencies and challenge anything wrong. (You can check your credit score for free once a year through the major rating agencies; visit AnnualCreditReport.com or call 1-877-322-8228.)

Review your asset allocation: At least once a year, sit down with your adviser to determine whether your allocations still match your objectives. Be honest about your expectations, particularly when inflation is running high, and the markets have been volatile. Even if you’re managing your own money, you need to do a self-evaluation about whether your allocation (and risk budget) is still appropriate.

Work with a financial adviser: Achieving financial wellness is a complex undertaking, even more so if you own lots of assets and/or income sources, have a child with special needs, or have a complex tax situation. Having an adviser in your corner can be a big help in these situations. And even if you like to manage most of your financial decisions, having someone to challenge your assumptions and provide a second opinion can be invaluable.

This list may look daunting, but you don’t have to do everything at once. Pick one or two financial wellness goals and work on them at your own pace. Celebrate victories and milestones, no matter how seemingly small — and pay attention to your overall physical health. Soon you’ll develop confidence in your ability to achieve and enjoy the financial success you deserve

Related Articles

Your Money: Is your asset allocation applicable to today’s markets?

Your Money: How the financial adviser’s role has evolved

Your Money: Women and wealth: a values-based approach to planning

Your Money: Don’t treat your 401(k) like an ATM

Your Money: Train your brain to make better money decisions

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Wealth Enhancement Group and Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services are separate entities from LPL Financial.

 

Vikings rookie cornerback Khyree Jackson has died in a car accident. The team confirmed the tragic news on Saturday morning.

The 24-year-old was selected by the Vikings in the fourth round of the 2024 NFL Draft.

The team released the following statement:

“We are devastated by the news of Khyree Jackson’s death following an overnight car accident. While we work to gather more information, we have spoken to Khyree’s family and offered the support of the Minnesota Vikings. We have also communicated the news to Vikings players, coaches and staff and have offered counseling for those who need emotional support. Our thoughts are with Khyree’s family, friends, teammates and coaches, as well as all the victims of this tragic accident.”

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Members of a U.S. Marine Corps honor guard salute during services for U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Arthur B. Ervin, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023.  (Sgt. Edward Randolph / U.S. Army)

After Barbara Dyer of Chisago City, Minn., died at age 86 in 2019, her family buried her at the Fairview Cemetery in Lindstrom.

Four years later, her family gathered again as Dyer’s brother, U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Arthur Ervin Jr., was laid to rest at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii — even though he died 75 years before his sister at age 22 during World War II on July 5, 1944.

A photo of World War II U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Arthur B. Ervin, along with his dog tags, is on display in the Chisago City, Minn., home of his niece, Nita Kay, on Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

It was a long-awaited service — with full military honors — and Dyer’s family wished she could have lived long enough to witness this patriotic sense of closure.

Instead, Dyer had spent her life wondering if her brother’s remains would ever be found, identified and returned. She died with those questions still unanswered.

“It broke my heart that …” said Dyer’s daughter, Nita Kay Gay (who also goes by Nita Kay), pausing for composure.

“… It was emotional … the question was always lingering in her head … but, the job was done in both Barbara and Arthur’s honor.”

Not forgotten

Until his body was finally identified, Ervin was one of the thousands of military personnel still missing from World War II. Currently, the lost or unidentified totals more than 74,000, according to the the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

To put that number in perspective, it’s roughly equivalent to the population of Lakeville.

It’s a scale of loss much larger than those missing from other conflicts, including more than 5,000 from the Korean War and more than 1,500 from the Vietnam War.

While some of the lost will likely never get to come home — such as those who died at sea — there are many whose remains have been identified in recent times, especially thanks to technological advances.

In Ervin’s case, the doggedness of volunteer researchers and the persistence of family members were also key in moving the process along to finally bring this Marine home.

With these combined efforts, Ervin became one of the 166 service members identified during the fiscal year of 2022. In 2023, 158 were accounted for; during this fiscal year, which ends in September, 109 more people have had their missing cases resolved, according to the DPAA, which is tasked with accounting for the lost.

“There are so many missing from wars and conflicts, our job is unfortunately never going to be done,” said Sean Everette, a spokesperson for the DPAA. “But we will never give up trying to find them and bring them back home to their families.”

A researcher’s personal connection

It was Ervin’s case that led Geoffrey Roecker of Glen Falls, N.Y., to found Missing Marines, an award-winning and incredibly detailed initiative and website (missingmarines.com) dedicated to preserving the stories of missing service members.

“I’ve been at it since 2011,” Roecker said.

His initiative also provides research support to multiple MIA recovery organizations and to families hoping to learn about their military ancestors.

This includes the family of Ervin, who shared a connection with one of Roecker’s ancestors: Ervin’s platoon leader, 1st Lt. Philip Emerson Wood Jr., is Roecker’s first cousin, twice removed.

Nita Kay holds a photo and the dog tags of her uncle, World War II U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Arthur B. Ervin, at her home in Chisago City. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Geoff deserves a lot of credit,” said Kay. “This never would have been resolved without his help.”

“She downplays her role, but she did a ton of work,” Roecker replied of Kay.

Kay’s uncle and Roecker’s cousin were friends as well as comrades; friends and comrades who died together.

In July of 1944, Ervin and Wood were members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, which the DPAA describes as part of the invasion force of the island of Saipan in a larger effort to capture the Mariana Islands from Japan.

From his research, Roecker learned that the Marines were trying to rescue displaced civilians on July 5, 1944. But then, Lt. Wood was hit by a sniper.

As Wood, mortally wounded, cried out, Ervin rushed forward to help him — and, while doing so, was fatally shot by enemy fire.

“He was likely dead before he hit the ground,” Roecker wrote on Missing Marines.

But what happened to Ervin’s body?

That’s been the question that Roecker spent 11 years trying to answer.

X-64

“Sgt. Ervin’s case is a particularly weird one,” Roecker said recently.

He mused about the mystery in a blog post on Memorial Day 2018.

“Arthur Ervin was buried without any means of identification,” he wrote. “Through a clerical error or simple incompetence, he was listed as ‘missing,’ his remains declared ‘unknown,’ and buried under an anonymous stone in Manila.”

Roecker credits a fellow researcher, Ted Darcy, who helped him locate the site in 2011. It seemed like a relatively simple case to crack, given all that was already known about the battle, the dead and the buried.

“He said, ‘I think we can solve this one right away,’” Roecker recalled.

Not quite.

But, Roecker says, after an investigation including dental records, diagrams, data and DNA, it was believed that an unidentified service member known as X-64 was Ervin.

DNA

Barbara (Meek) Dyer, circa 1958. (Courtesy of Nita Kay.)

He wasn’t X-64 to Dyer; to her, he was “Big Brother.”

Technically, they were half-siblings: Their mother, a widow, was raising her three sons — including Arthur — on her own before remarrying and having two more children, including Barbara Dyer.

Dyer was just 7 years old when “Big Brother” enlisted in the military from their then-home state of Texas in June 1940, according to Missing Marines; by October, he had joined the Marine detachment of the Naval Air Station, Pearl Harbor.

Dyer was 11 when her family learned her brother had been killed in action. She didn’t talk about the loss much, but in her later years, she renewed the search to bring Big Brother home.

“She was not so good with the internet, but she found out how to contact someone and they did send her a DNA kit,” Kay recalled.

Eventually, the family learned that a DNA sample from a male relative was needed; it took time to reach out — and convince — a male cousin in California to get involved, Kay says.

During their search for a conclusion, the family learned more about Ervin’s life as well as his death.

Nita Kay with her parents, Barbara and Royce Dyer, in 2017.  (Courtesy of Nita Kay)

“When I began helping my mother, a friend had found out about the Missing Marines site,” Kay said. “From it, I learned more about my mother’s family than she had ever told me.”

In fact, Ervin’s life story on the site — helped along with interviews, military records, family photographs, newspaper clippings and more — is as detailed as a novella, stretching back to describe the history of Ervin’s parents as well as his own backstory.

The story begins:

“Arthur B. Ervin, Junior was six months old when his father died in the mines …”

The effort inspired Kay.

“It was just amazing, all the information he had,” she said. “It motivated me to move forward.”

Through Missing Marines, the family learned how their Marine survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — and how he matured during this time and was given a second chance after allegedly running afoul of the law.

“The day Pearl Harbor was attacked,” Kay wrote in an email to the Pioneer Press, “Arthur was in the brink and in the process of being dishonorably discharged. After volunteering to dig up bombs that had been dropped but didn’t yet explode, he had a follow-up court date. To his surprise, he was offered to join the Marines again based on his volunteerism and work ethics.

“He went on to earn two Purple Hearts and the Navy Gold Cross. Even a Good Behavior ribbon.”

During this long process of searching and researching, though, Kay’s mother died. Soon after, COVID-19 hit.

“The government pretty much shut down,” Kay said.

Finally

Geoffrey Roecker, Missing Marines founder and researcher, giving a eulogy during an interment ceremony for Sgt. Arthur Ervin Jr., held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii, on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (Sgt. Edward Randolph / Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.)

The phone call that the family had been waiting for since 1944 — 78 years — finally came in 2022.

“They called and said, ‘We have a match,’” Kay recalled of the phone call from the military. “They said, ‘We’ve identified him.’”

Her reaction?

“I cried,” she said.

One of the first people she alerted was Roecker. He was also invited by the family to the funeral in Hawaii, which was held in October 2023.

Later, he wrote about it in a poem-like post on the Missing Marines page on Facebook:

Twenty-one shots rang out. Ospreys thundered overhead. Taps sounded.
(You can’t not tear up if the bugler knows what they’re doing,
and by god this one did.)

For about five minutes,
I told what I knew about Arthur.
It wasn’t everything. It will never be everything. But —
It was an ending.
Of a life story, and a life quest.

Arthur’s where he needs to be —
shouting distance, at least, from three who died with him;
Wood, Knight, and Hester.

And we who live,
who never thought this day would come,
enjoyed a day in the Hawaiian sun
with him.

A memory on a mantel

Royce Dyer and Barbara Dyer with their granddaughter, Lilly, in an undated photograph. (Courtesy of Nita Kay.)

On Friday — the 80th anniversary of Ervin’s death — his 13-year-old great-niece, Lilly, reflected on her family’s journey from Saipan to Chisago City to Honolulu:

“I felt honored to be part of Arthur’s funeral,” she said in a text message. “It was an amazing experience.

“I was also so happy to see Mom accomplish this. She worked for years trying to find Arthur for Grandma and often cried hitting roadblocks.

“I didn’t realize just how big this was until the actual funeral … to see someone buried as a hero and receive the honors he did was amazing.”

A shadow box at the home of Nita Kay in Chisago City on Wednesday, July 3, 2024, contains a U.S. flag and the awards of her uncle, U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Arthur B. Ervin Jr., including the Purple Heart, with star to denote he died in combat, the Bronze Star and the Navy Cross. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Now some of those honors are framed in a shadow box, including a folded U.S. flag and Ervin’s military medals. The box is displayed on the fireplace mantel of the lake home where Kay lives with her husband and two of their children in Chisago City.

This home was also the homestead of Dyer and her late husband, who moved here after they retired, so it feels right to keep Ervin’s keepsakes in a prominent spot.

“She used to say, ‘I wonder if we’ll ever find out, I still wonder what happened to my brother,’” Kay said. “I’m glad we have closure, but I certainly wish it had happened before she passed.

“But I know they were reunited in Heaven.”

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