Personal Savings Rate Numbers Cause for Concern, According to ShareBuilder CEO

BELLEVUE, Wash., April 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States Commerce Department reported today that the first quarter personal savings rate was negative 1 percent. This figure continues an alarming negative trend, says Jeff Seely, chairman and CEO of ShareBuilder Corporation, parent company of one of the nation's largest online brokerage firms.

"The amount of money Americans save as a percentage of their income has been declining for almost two years, and the March figures clearly demonstrate that we're not making any headway," Jeff Seely said. "A recent ShareBuilder survey found that over half of America does not have a financial game plan for their future. In fact, one in four Americans have no savings at all according to the latest retirement confidence survey from EBRI*. Combined with the negative savings rate, this lack of planning for the future could have severe consequences for the average American's retirement security."

The Commerce Department releases savings rate data quarterly as a way to measure the difference between total income and total expenses for all Americans. As recently as the 1980s, Americans' savings rate was stable at around 10 percent. In 2005, it sunk below zero. This marks the eighth consecutive quarter during which the U.S. personal savings rate was negative. The only other time in U.S. history when the savings rate has been this low for such a sustained period of time was during the Great Depression.

Seely says his interest in the savings rate helped shape ShareBuilder's corporate vision: to increase the savings rate of Americans, and was the inspiration for launching the investing service back in 1999. The company's mission is built on the premise of eliminating the barriers to investing by providing people with affordable, easy-to-use, and reliable financial services.

"Our goal is simple: make it easier for people to automatically save and invest money," Seely said. "When putting away money every month is easy and automatic, ShareBuilder customers become better savers and investors without even thinking about it. "

ShareBuilder customers have opened approximately 2 million investing accounts since 1999. With no dollar minimums required to open an account, no investment minimums, and no inactivity fees, ShareBuilder's core service appeals to Americans seeking an easy way to get started investing today. Over 50 percent of ShareBuilder's customers say that this is their first brokerage account.

ShareBuilder offers the traditional array of investing services such as real-time trades, option trading and margin borrowing, but what makes it unique is letting customers create automatic monthly investing programs using any dollar amount to purchase fractional shares of stocks. Using a ShareBuilder automatic investing plan, a customer can invest $100 a month in, for example, Google, Wal-Mart, GE, the S&P 500 or thousands of other stocks or exchange-traded funds. The company is dedicated to make investing easy and to helping even the smallest investor gradually accumulate shares and steadily build long term wealth.

The company has made its service available through a wide variety of partners since the beginning. ShareBuilder partners with more than 150 companies from credit unions and banks, including Wells Fargo and SunTrust, to consumer-focused companies such as Costco, Sallie Mae, Barnes & Noble, and Delta Airlines. These partnerships work to make investing easy for their customers by integrating the ShareBuilder service into the partner web sites.

About ShareBuilder

ShareBuilder (http://www.sharebuilder.com/) is an online brokerage dedicated and designed to make investing in the stock market easy for long-term investors. ShareBuilder does not require any account or investment minimums, offers low fees on transactions and automatic, dollar-based investing programs. ShareBuilder Corporation also offers, through another subsidiary, ShareBuilder Advisors, a flexible and affordable 401(k) plan for small business owners with fewer than 50 employees (http://www.sharebuilder401k.com/). ShareBuilder Corporation is a private company based in Bellevue, WA.

ShareBuilder Securities Corporation, a subsidiary of ShareBuilder Corporation, is a registered broker-dealer and member NASD/SIPC. See http://www.sharebuilder.com/ for complete brokerage information, including full fee schedule. ShareBuilder Advisors, LLC, a subsidiary of ShareBuilder Corporation, is a registered investment advisor.

*Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute, EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey (April, 2007)

  Media Contacts
  Kathy Schanno, ShareBuilder     Ann Marie Ricard, DDB Public Relations
  425.467.7469                    206.287.7136
  kathys@sharebuilder.com         annmarie.ricard@sea.ddb.com