Financial woes affect employees at work, new survey says

A significant percentage of people say they are distracted by financial worries while at work, according to a survey released Wednesday by Indianapolis-based Your Money Line.

Your Money Line offers financial wellness benefits for employers. Its clients include hundreds of companies, school districts and health care systems across the United States that offer Your Money Line’s financial wellness technology, coaching and education as an employee benefit.

In the survey—part of Your Money Line’s 2025 Employee Financial Behavior Report—61% of respondents reported constant financial anxiety and 84% said their financial concerns contributed to feelings of exhaustion and burnout.

In addition, 82% said they believe money worries limit their ability to enjoy daily life, with more than 43% saying they experience frequent financial stress. And 32% indicated that financial concerns have a significant or severe impact on their mental health.

“It shows employers that their people are distracted—that you’ve got a large swath of people saying they just walk around with financial anxiety all day—which is not exactly what you want to hear,” said Your Money Line CEO Peter Dunn, who is also known as Pete the Planner and writes financial columns regularly for IBJ.

Among other survey findings, 17% of respondents said financial worries distract them at work daily. Another 16% said financial worries distract them at work weekly, while another 17% said such distractions happen monthly. However, 51% said they either rarely or never have such distractions at work.

The percentage of respondents who said financial worries are a daily distraction remained fairly consistent among different age groups. That percentage was 19% for both Generation Z (defined as those born between 1997 and 2006) and for millennials (born between 1981 and 1996). Among Generation X (1965-1980), 17% reported daily distraction. Among Baby Boomers (1946-1964), it was 9%.

Also in the survey, 19% of respondents said they often spend time at work thinking about or managing their personal finances, including doing things such as paying bills or checking account balances. Another 38% said they sometimes do this, while the remaining 44% said they rarely or never do this.

The report also asked questions about the impact that financial worries have on respondents in other aspects of their lives.

For instance, 46% of respondents across all age ranges said they had delayed taking a vacation because of financial concerns or uncertainty. And 30% said they had delayed buying a home, while 23% said they were delaying retirement. Among Baby Boomers, 59% said they were delaying retirement.

“These struggles, driven by financial concerns, are quietly reshaping workplace dynamics in unexpected ways,” Dunn said. “This isn’t just an individual challenge—it’s a collective one, impacting team morale, productivity, and job satisfaction.”

Dunn said the survey reinforces the reality that people can feel anxious about their personal finances even when the economy is strong in most areas. And his hunch is that those anxious people may not be significantly invested in the stock market.

Average market returns have topped 25% each of the last two years, Dunn said, but people not invested in the stock market aren’t benefitting from those gains.

“If you don’t get the glory of the good times because you don’t participate with those sorts of investments, then you’re faced to just view things like inflation and prohibitively high housing costs and things like that,” he said.

The Your Money Line survey included responses collected by a third-party research firm Nov. 6-8 from 500 U.S. workers. None of the respondents worked for a Your Money Line client or had any other connection to the firm.