Oregon Wants Everyone to Start Saving

Erick Marsh never expected to have a career. For six years after high school, he bounced from job to job at restaurants and food processors in Albany, Ore., never staying more than a year. Then at 24, he applied for an opening at an outpost of Del Taco, a chain based in Lake Forest, Calif. “I didn’t want to work fast food,” Marsh says. But with a baby on the way, he needed steady employment. Thirteen years later, he manages that same franchise and also works as the district manager for the family-run company that owns the franchise and four others along Oregon’s Interstate 5.

Despite landing stable employment, Marsh hadn’t planned for retirement. His employer, Cactus Enterprises LLC, decided a 401(k) program was too expensive to set up. And Marsh couldn’t bring himself to investigate the complex world of individual retirement accounts. “It’s one of these things I keep thinking to myself, I’ll do it next year, or I’ll do it next summer after the holiday, when I’m caught up with my bills.”