Morningstar's HelloWallet Unit Introduces Free, Personalized Emergency Savings Calculator, Examines Most Common Emergency Expenditures

CHICAGO, March 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- HelloWallet Holdings, Inc., a leading provider of online financial wellness and a Morningstar (NASDAQ: MORN) company, today introduced the HelloWallet Emergency Savings Calculator, a free tool that provides personalized guidance about the savings levels households need to handle different types of emergencies, from minor car repairs to an extended job loss.

"Emergency savings are a critical component of financial wellness. In fact, many bankruptcies and premature retirement withdrawals are the result of families being unable to come up with relatively small sums of money for healthcare or other emergencies," Matt Fellowes, founder of HelloWallet and chief innovation officer for Morningstar, said. "We undertook research to examine emergency spending and created the Emergency Savings Calculator because there is no commonly accepted methodology to determine how much an individual or family should save for an emergency, despite its importance to financial health."

To develop the Emergency Savings Calculator, HelloWallet examined the millions of daily financial transactions its users made from 2013 through the beginning of 2015 to observe the different types of emergency spending. HelloWallet researchers found that unexpected expenditures typically fell into one of three categories—minor emergencies, major emergencies, and job loss. The most common minor and major financial emergencies involved car and home repairs and healthcare incidents. The researchers examined the frequency and cost of these expenses across the HelloWallet user base to develop the recommendations for the new calculator.

To personalize the savings guidance, the calculator considers a number of factors, such as an individual's home and car ownership, current savings, monthly expenses, household income, marital status, and healthcare benefits. It then provides specific savings goals for covering minor emergencies, major emergencies, and job loss.

Fellowes added, "In order to pursue any financial goal, like retirement or home ownership, individuals need to achieve financial stability first. This calculator provides workers with clear, personalized guidance on how much they need in reserve for emergencies, which will help them weather life's storms and stay on track."   

To read more from HelloWallet about how much workers should save for emergencies, please visit http://hellowallet.com/research/emergency-savings.

About HelloWallet Holdings, Inc.
HelloWallet Holdings, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN), works with employers to provide independent, personalized financial guidance to employees through web and mobile-based software applications. Using behavioral and consumer research and analytics, HelloWallet helps employees make the most of their salary and benefits. HelloWallet operates a double bottom line business model: for every five subscriptions sold, HelloWallet donates one subscription to a family in need. HelloWallet is headquartered in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.hellowallet.com.

About Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, and retirement plan providers and sponsors. Morningstar provides data on approximately 500,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 14 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries and had approximately $170 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Dec. 31, 2014. The company has operations in 27 countries.

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Media Contacts:
Alexa Auerbach, Morningstar, 312-696-6481 or [email protected]

SOURCE Morningstar, Inc.

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