Homestead Funds got its start serving rural electric cooperatives and their employees, and we are proud to add our voice to the many individuals and organizations expressing their appreciation for the essential and challenging work lineworkers do. This year, we want to celebrate and acknowledge the training, focus and commitment line crews bring daily to their jobs.
Read on for financial planning insights we believe are especially relevant to lineworkers, along with a collection of educational resources. See something of interest? We invite you to connect with us and continue the conversation.
Celebrating a Diligent and Hardworking Force
We join electric cooperatives and communities nationwide in celebrating Lineworker Appreciation Day on April 10.
Lineworkers are their communities’ first responders when big storms bring power outages. They get up and out in all kinds of weather and work around the clock to restore power and keep their communities safe. Preparing for potentially dangerous situations in bad weather requires lineworkers to be calm and focused, skills honed with years of training and experience.
Being ready for an emergency is also important to your personal financial plan and can help you remain calm and levelheaded when life throws a curveball, such as an unexpected car problem, home repair bill, or a friend or family member in need of financial support. A smart strategy is to build and preserve a rainy-day account over time by contributing a manageable amount every pay period until you have a comfortable cushion — typically three to six months of living expenses that you can tap when needed. A savings cushion can help you to prepare and become ready to respond to an emergency.
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Being Ready
Lineworkers often are first on the scene, pitching in to help when they encounter an accident or other emergency. There are many stories of lineworkers who are unsung heroes — rescuing a motorist whose car was swept away by floodwaters, providing life-saving first aid to people experiencing a stroke or other accident, even lending a hand when they see animals in danger.
Being ready for the unexpected is something all of us put into action across many situations in our daily lives. Spare tires, portable cell phone chargers and a few protein bars in a backpack all attest to our not wanting to be caught unprepared for an emergency. But it’s a concept that is too often absent from our finances.
For most of us, emergencies are a when not an if. At some point in life, just about everyone is bound to hit a rough patch. Here we offer five steps to establishing and building an emergency savings account:
- Estimate all your normal, recurring monthly expenses plus 1/12th of your annual expenses. Don’t forget to add some cushion for the one-time, exceptional items that we all tend to underestimate.
- Multiply that number by 3: That’s your emergency fund minimum goal.
- Set up an investment account to receive the money you will set aside. You can open a Homestead Funds account online.
- Set up small automatic contributions from your paycheck or bank account.
- Consider allocating your investments to a conservative fund to start, such as a short-duration bond fund. If you feel comfortable diversifying your fund mix, you can start putting some portion into riskier, potentially higher-return investments, such as stock funds.
Neither asset allocation nor diversification guarantee a profit or protect against a loss in a declining market. They are methods used to help manage investment risk.
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Prioritizing Safety
Safety is always a priority for lineworkers. It’s a dangerous job in sometimes difficult situations, and lineworkers train to work in ways that help prevent injury and death.
Rural electric cooperatives are keenly focused on maintaining a culture of safety. Safety protocols, training workshops, safety benchmarks and performance measuring tools help keep lineworkers safe.
Safety is also a consideration for investors. When you use your money to buy shares of stocks, bonds or mutual funds, it’s important to understand how your investment will likely perform — both the degree of risk and the potential for return. At Homestead Funds, we strive to inform and educate our shareholders using terms you don’t have to be an investment professional to know. No one can predict the future with certainty but having an accurate understanding of investment types and their traits can help you be comfortable with inevitable fluctuations in your account’s value and confident that your investments are working for you in the ways you intended.
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Mastering Tools of the Trade
In addition to the physical demands of the job — climbing, lifting and working above ground — lineworkers have to master the tools and technology needed to perform their work safely. Lines, clamps, hand tools, transformers and bucket trucks are just some of the essentials. Lineworkers have completed years of training to hone the skills they need to perform their jobs safely.
Investment managers and financial planners — two of the specialty trades employed by Homestead Funds — also have standards for education and training. You can meet our professionals and read their bios here. Just as cooperatives want to be confident that their lineworkers have what they need to do their jobs and return home safely at the end of the day, investors should expect that the individuals they choose to help them meet their financial goals are trained professionals with the appropriate credentials.
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Driving Innovation With New Technologies
For over 30 years, lineworkers nationwide have competed in the International Lineman’s Rodeo, showcasing their skills and commitment to safety. Besides celebrating camaraderie and collaboration, the rodeo is also an opportunity for lineworkers to discover new technologies that can help them perform their jobs with improved outcomes for safety and productivity.
New technologies are also refining the customer experience in the financial services industry. Here, investors’ service expectations have been shaped by online shopping portals available 24/7 and often provide an option to connect with a company representative on demand.
Homestead Funds has been steadily deploying new technologies to make our financial guidance services available to more people. One of the most challenging tasks for many investors is deciding how to divide their money among different fund options. To help with this, we’ve created a questionnaire to help identify which funds match your risk tolerance. Your responses to the questions determine which one of our five model portfolios might be appropriate for you. You can select those fund allocations or choose a different model.
We’ve also added an option for you to book a meeting online. The booking option is excellent for busy professionals such as lineworkers who are on the go during the day but can carve out time — maybe during a lunch break or right before dinner — to speak with a financial professional and get answers to their investment questions.
The asset allocation tool and predefined mutual fund portfolios are educational tools and should not be relied upon as the primary basis for investment, financial, tax-planning or retirement decisions. The tools provide a sample of possible mutual fund portfolios based on varying degrees of market risk. These portfolios are not tailored to the investment objectives of any specific investor. The predefined portfolios and model portfolio and asset allocations neither are, nor should be construed as, investment advice, financial guidance, or an offer or solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, or to engage in any specific investment strategy by Homestead Advisers Corp. or Homestead Financial Services Corp. The asset allocations for one or more predefined or model portfolios may change at any time and neither Homestead Advisers Corp. nor Homestead Financial Services Corp. will notify you when such changes are made.
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“Connecting Lines, Connecting Lives”
Lineworkers demonstrate concern for community — one of the seven cooperative principles —daily on the job. Still, many contribute even more time and effort to helping people who live without electricity in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
NRECA International was established in 1962 to share globally what had been learned through our efforts to bring electricity to rural areas of the U.S. The nonprofit, cooperatives and lineworkers who volunteer provide guidance and bring boots-on-the-ground assistance to underserved areas outside of the U.S.
Want to be inspired? Visit NRECA International for a list of lineworkers and other volunteers from co-ops across the U.S. who have taken time away from their families to help others in need.
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