Special Report July 22, 2009, 11:57AM EST

Weyerhaeuser's Financial Education

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Getting significant others involved the retirement planning process is a smart move, experts say. "To have a good life after you retire, you might have to make some changes," Rest-of-Life's Vernon notes. "The best way to make changes is to have people who care about you on board and on the same page."

Peer Education

Weyerhaeuser's educational efforts are homegrown, which means employees handle much of the teaching and discussion of retirement and health benefits as opposed to outside consultants. Weyerhaeuser employees and retirees run nearly all of the planning sessions. (Consultants are used for select topics, such as legal issues.)

Participants usually say that their favorite part of the "Healthy, Wealthy & Wise" program is the retiree panel, featuring four to six Weyerhaeuser retirees and their spouses. It's an open forum, and retirees field questions on everything from who handles their investment portfolio to working in retirement. These veterans offer an unfiltered look at works and what doesn't work in retirement, notes Trimble, who now participates in these panels as a speaker. Roger Hunt, another panel participant, warns would-be retirees to consider unexpected eldercare responsibilities, noting that he and his wife initially spent about 20% of retirement time caregiving for older family members.

Weyerhaeuser's educational efforts have paid off. Employees at the company are less likely to load up on company stock, which makes their portfolios more diversified and less risky. The typical employee retirement account allocates less than 14% to company stock. By contrast, asset allocation to company stock was 22% at companies with more than 5,000 employees in 2007, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute. The number of Weyerhaeuser employees who have an all-company stock portfolio is only 3%, Landis says. (It's about 12% at the average U.S. company.)

That doesn't mean that Weyerhaeuser is immune to the recession. The company's profile has changed dramatically since last year, when Weyerhaeuser sold its cardboard box division to International Paper (IP) in August and cut its U.S. head count from 31,000 to less than 14,000.

Out of economic necessity, Weyerhaeuser suspended its retirement match in May. The company had previously offered a match of nearly 5% of a worker's salary. Workers, however, aren't fleeing from their retirement accounts—few have taken hardship loans. In fact, participation in the plan rose from almost 62% in April to 68% in May. "After the match was suspended, more employees signed up for 401(k) participation. Wow!" Landis says triumphantly.

Young is a Personal Business editor for BusinessWeek .