Nearly half of Americans are beset with financial stress, but some parts of the country suffer more from it than others. Those are some of the results of a survey from Salary Finance, which also finds that among the 48% of workers who report being affected by financial stress, the risk of anxiety and panic attacks is tripled and depression and suicidal thoughts are quadrupled. Naturally enough, considering that they don't make as much as men, women suffer more; 56% of working women say they're stressed about finances, while 63% say they don't make enough money to save anything. But it's not just people with small paychecks who suffer from financial stress. According to the survey, 40% of Americans earning more than $100,000 per year are financially unstable and have less than three months' savings on hand. And from gloom to doom: it also finds that one out of four Americans who live paycheck to paycheck with no savings actually gets more than $160,000 in annual income. Employers should pay attention here, since some of the study results affect them. In fact, the report says 22% of stressed employees can't complete daily tasks, and 24% have a tough time getting along with their coworkers. Money worries actually cost employers nearly a month's worth of productive days annually per financially stressed employee (who is more than twice as likely to be hunting for a new job anyway). When you add it all up, those glitches cost American businesses $500 billion per year. Employers can help, according to the survey, which says that 79% of employees trust their employers with their financial information and 68% feel their employer cares about them and their wellness. And it cites a Harvard study that found such bennies as salary-linked loans can actually help cut employee turnover (more than 70 percent of workers use such loans for debt consolidation, by the way). Not convinced? Just wait — it gets worse. There's the little matter of retirement saving — or, rather, the lack thereof. Employees who can't retire, don't. And that leaves employers with no way to advance other workers — as well as stuck with higher expenses for older employees who, if financially stressed, will be spending more on health issues in addition to sticking around whether you want them to or not. According to CheatSheet, here too, some states do worse at retirement saving than others. But in their list of the top 10 (actually, considering their lack of savings, shouldn't that be the bottom 10?) states with low retirement balances, people are really going to be in for it in a very short time — particularly since, despite longer lifespans, their savings will only finance a matter of a few years (in the worst cases, a matter of months) of retirement. The slides above show the 10 states doing the worst at saving for retirement, as well as the 10 states with the highest level of financial stress. It's interesting that they're not necessarily the same. The first state listed in each entry is the one with the most financial stress, along with the percentage of people suffering; the second is the state with the least retirement savings, how much they need per year to be comfortable, and how long their actual savings will last. When data was provided on how many have nothing saved or have saved less than $10,000, that was included. This story first published at benefitspro.com.   See also: |

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