Get the real deal with the ERS Discount Purchase Program

It's not all cruises and flowers (although those are nice, too!). Beneplace's Tom Murphy talks about how to save an average of $5,000 per year on regular household items and also those big-ticket purchases. Topics include:

• Popular ways to save with the Discount Purchase Program
• Deals popular with State of Texas employees
• How shopping habits change with the economy
• The benefit of discount programs to employees and employers
• Shopping success stories
• Fun Life Rewards

Mentioned in this episode: discountprogramtxers.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Intro: I love how it can help support your employees just live a better and more fulfilling life with their family and friends outside of the office, which is The most important part, right? Really getting out there and living life to the fullest.

We know Money Talks listeners love a deal. That's why today's guest is here to talk about the Discount Purchase Program and how you can use it to save on everyday household spending, as well as when you're ready to splash out on a little something extra.

Crystal Olvera: Welcome everyone to the ERS Money Talks podcast. I'm Crystal Olvera, the editor of our retiree newsletter, Your ERS Connection.

Suzanne Krause Hi, and I'm Suzanne Krause, one of the editors of the Money MattERS newsletter.

CO And today we're going to talk about one of our programs, a very popular one that everyone uses. It's the Discount Purchase Program. Now this program, it's one of your benefits if you're a state employee. We're talking about how to maximize using it today. We want to help you discover some of the things that you can find on there you probably don't know about. What kind of savings you can find product, services and things like that. So, if you're a state employee and you're listening in, you are eligible for this program. A lot of people forget about it, but I like to talk about it a lot with friends. It's a perk of working with the state. So if you're an employee, full time, part time, a retiree, or you have immediate family that is looking for discounts, they can make use of this. So today we are talking to Tom Murphy. He is the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions at Beneplace. Beneplace might sound familiar to you because that is the administrator of the discount purchase program. So welcome, Tom. 

Tom Murphy: Thank you. Thank you for having me today. I'm really excited to talk about my favorite topic, having fun and saving some money. So, thank you for having me on the podcast. Well, I, I live and breathe this every single day. So, I'm in the product and in the services all the time, but one of my favorite questions to ask when I meet new members is how are you all using it to help yourself save and day to day expenses or something fun.

SK: I've definitely used it to buy a big ticket item, an appliance. I bought a washing machine and I found the platform really easy to use and offer discount that I didn't find in other appliance retailers, so I had a really good experience. 

CO: Yeah, I, I really like it, especially because I travel a lot. I visit family. My mom can’t pick me up from the airport, so I'm always looking for car rental discounts. I'm with Enterprise all the time, so I like to jump on there and kind of search and see what I can find. And most of the time it's it's really a much better price than the actual enterprise site. So, yeah, I, I really enjoy it. 

TM: Yeah, those are the two great ways. Suzanne funny that you had mentioned about appliances. We recently were talking to one of the members, and they were telling us a somewhat funny story. They kind of were ready to just sign on the dotted line with their builder for this remodeling that they were doing in their kitchen. And they, they thought twice and they said, wait a second, ERS has the savings platform. They took the three minutes that it took to open the site and look at it and they saved on all the kitchen appliances that they were just going to kind of give the money over to the builder. And so they were able to make meaningful savings. Um. I don't know how they spent those savings. Maybe when it's a 401(k), maybe you went to a big vacation, but, just making that that one quick change much like you with the washing machine. It was a, it was a great way to save money. 

CO: I love that you're getting feedback from people who are making use of it and saving. That's great. I mean, it's something that you want to hear because you're providing this and you're helping people out every day. I know you had mentioned that you yourself have actually benefited. How have you benefited? Uh, has your family been able to save?

TM: Yeah, so, I mean, so I've been with Beneplace now for eight years and so I use it regularly. I actually used it before I became to before I came over to Beneplace because my employer had it. That's how I was aware of the job opening and the company. And so, I live in New York City. So right in our backyard are, some of the most famous Broadway shows, MSG being one of them, obviously Madison Square Garden. So I tend to use the savings on the live events because I can just walk to the live event from my apartment. But I most certainly have used it on vacation for hotels. Hotels are some of our best discounts on site. I travel a lot for work because I'm always meeting with clients and so I, I will say I'm a loyalist historically to one hotel brand. But when I'm traveling on a personal level, with my family, I make sure to check and Beneplace out, that's our savings marketplace. You all obviously have the savings marketplace. And I check out the hotel prices and they're even better than my brand loyalty. So it's been fun to be able to save on travel as well as culture within New York. 

SK: That's really cool because I think there's so many places people can find discounts and so seeing that there's value like above and beyond other sites is something we really want to promote during this discussion.

CO: Yeah, definitely. And Tom, I was actually in New York and I went to a Broadway show and I did not know Broadway was on the website. So now when I go back, I'm definitely going to look it up. I went to see Hamilton. It was amazing. 

TM: Yes, yes, well, definitely 100% Broadway is, you know, we had originally started in, the Florida area, mainly around the tours and attraction. So that's I think why people think of us first, but about a decade, maybe even a lot like twelve years ago, we really recognize that there was a need for savings in the cultures and so Broadway was the first place that we expanded into and now you have access to, what we call preferred access and it has every live event. I'll say every in air quotes, but like, it's 99.9999% of every live event in America that you can go and easily on your experience, you can check that out. So, you're able to see sometimes they're exclusive. Sometimes, it's just the best rate for secondary market, which we all know with these sold out shows, we have to. Sometimes buy on the secondary market and so we have price guarantee there as well. Right? 

CO: Yeah. And in Texas, I have seen some of the discounts for things like the rodeo, the livestock shows and things like that. Which are local and I think that's pretty cool, you know, especially for everyone here in Texas, who is always looking to find tickets to things like that. 

TM: Well, speaking of the rodeo, I know we have a lot of important stuff to talk about, but if you come back to New York. Try to come back to New York when PBR is at Madison Square Garden, which is a professional bull riding. There is nothing like watching a bunch of city slickers pretend like they're cowboys. It is one of my favorite events in New York. I mean, Madison Square Garden is right in the middle of Manhattan people who have maybe never even seen a blade of grass out in the wild or all of a sudden decide that they are. We love that really, really fun, fun New York event. So, and we, you can get tickets on your ERS site. So, that's great. 

CO: Fantastic.

TM: Come to New York for that. 

SK: Well, I think we wanted to start out by kind of getting to the heart of probably what listeners are interested in and talk about some of the most popular discounts that you guys are seeing among our State of Texas employees and retirees, so I know you have some data about what our members in particular are interested in where they're saving.

TM: Yeah, of course. One thing that we have been watching over the last couple of years. But in particular, the last couple of quarters is how not just the employee’s their utilization has changed, but just the average American’s utilization has changed. So, you know. Where, especially in a post pandemic world where we had been locked up in the house for so long. We were all looking for the fun and the camaraderie that we deserved, right? We had been locked up and that we wanted to go out. We wanted to celebrate. We wanted to be with friends and family. And so, of course, those are always some of our most popular items, whether it be Disney, Universal, local live events. That is concerts those are always a top item, but really what we're seeing is that people are using the savings platform for more. What we would call everyday expenses or monthly bills that are going to come no matter what. And so, uh, whether it's buying or, you know, you need to replace your, your iPhone. So it's the Apples and the Samsung's of the world and. Electronics, getting a wireless phone provider. We all have to have a provider. Can you get a better price on that? So, exclusive deals on mental health and physical wellness obviously became extremely important during the COVID period and they remain top of mind and so we have gym memberships that you all take advantage of as well as mental health apps that can be downloaded at a discount instead of just going directly to the Apple store or the Android store, and then household shopping, of course. So that relationship with Sam's Club, getting a discount on your Sam's Club membership. Which then opens a wide array of everything, right? I think Sam still has TVs to toilet paper to, you know, getting your groceries. So it runs a total array and your employees and your community are really taking advantage and figuring out how this can help decrease their monthly expenses. 

CO: And so interesting to see what people are looking for, you know, immediately I think vacation packages, but when you talk about mental health applications, that's very, very interesting to me. I don't think about using the Discount Purchase Program for things like that. So I'm really happy that's able to help folks who are looking for. Something like that to help them maybe get through a tough time. 

SK: In addition to their amazing health benefits

TM: That's right. We're always looking for add-ons and, you know, stacking the benefits, right? That's when they're that we have that synergistic effect of one plus one equals three and so using your great health benefits and then seeing what else is out there on the marketplace. And if I can take just a second, you know, the mental health, category when COVID happened, we recognized that people were struggling and that we needed a way in which we could help them and so that's really when we started to explore the mental health space. But I think it also just speaks to that this marketplace is living and breathing. And so we are constantly learning how the how the average American is changing what they need help with and we have an entire department that their entire job is to find out what is the next thing that someone needs support with and how do we get the best deal for that? So. You, you know, come back regularly and you will see new offerings, because we want to make sure that, we're a needed solution and maybe what was needed and necessary a decade ago is not needed and necessary now. 

CO: Yeah, things are changing; you mentioned that things are shifting. Do you think that has a lot to do with the ebb and flow of the economy and things like that? 

TM: You know, when people are looking at their household expenses. Yeah, well, I think that's why I was trying to highlight earlier that we've seen the shift in utilization and where people are pointing their dollars over the last two quarters and that. You know, we've all heard the funny egg stories, but eggs are expensive and so, we have to every household has to stretch their dollar in a different way than maybe we had to do. Nine months ago, a year ago, two years ago, and so what we've actually done is, we found this fascinating and we found this important and so we've done work with our data scientists here and so we looked at, for an average American, what their credit card bills were over the course of a year. And, and so, you know, some areas, and some expenses, we, we, that's not, that's not our wheelhouse. So obviously, like some people are actually paying their mortgage through their credit card. Now, that's not something that we. We supply, but we what we did do is we looked at everything that's on our site against everything that is being spent on the average credit card bill. And what we found is that, if you were to use the savings marketplace to the full capability, one would save over $5,000 a year and just going there first, whether it be to get that washing machine when something goes out. So it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. 

CO: Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah, 5,000 is a lot of money.

TM: It is a lot of money. It is kind of eye opening and the thing is, is that again, when we're thinking about these big ticket items to travel one they're very important. I think having fellowship with friends and family is important. But one could argue they're not necessary. So these weren't the necessary bills that were on the credit card. So this is not saving 20, 40% on something that you may or may not need. This is you are paying your cell phone bill. That's a necessity. And so this is a savings on that on top of what you already have. So it's meaningful.

SK: I thought it was interesting that you said there were things like streaming services and, you know, loans, things like that. Can you give the listeners some tips on kind of how to use the site and find these deals for the everyday savings? 

TM: Yeah, so I think, you know, we have built, we own and all of our R and D, so we're constantly updating the tech on what the experience is, and so it is a typical ecommerce or membership-based site and so up at the top in the right hand, you'll always see a search bar. So you can just go ahead and type in either the category. Or specifically, you can type in the brand or the product that you're looking for and the results will show up. We also have a left hand navigation. Categorized by brands categorized by themes and then we have our main ticket items at the top navigation. So around travel around car rentals, around shopping, around health and wellness. And so the site is very, very intuitive. And then also for all those TikTokers or Instagrammers, you can just endlessly scroll. So if you if you have the time and you just kind of want to sit there and look at the beautiful pictures and look at the beautiful savings, you can just endlessly scroll and find something that tickles your fancy. 

CO: Yeah, one thing I did want to actually say out loud to those of you listening, maybe you're at work and you want to check out the site, want to give the address. So it's discount program txers.com. So everything that Tom just talked about, you can go check it out. And yeah, scroll. So it's an endless scroll. You'll never get to the bottom. 

TM: No, I haven't and I've been here for a while. And then also, you know, one thing is when we do these scrollings, we tend to do it on our phone. And so all the technology is built to be mobile first. And so it's, we actually find that a majority of the member base, whether it be or for all of our other, partners, they're accessing on their phone and it, the design is built to make that a great experience. 

SK: Are people able to search for deals for either in-person shopping or local businesses, or is this purely an online shopping experience? 

TM: Yeah, the answer is yes to all the above. And so when I was talking about the top of the website, that's persistent, there actually is a tab for special deals that have been curated specifically for your employees and their friend group. When you click into that, you'll be able to see, the local deals as well as these can be both, taken advantage of. Obviously, in an e-com fashion, but also, at the vendors. 

CO: Yeah, I've actually come across that little section. There's like a discount on Cavender's boots. One question I had was how often are these discounts updated? How often do new ones come in? 

TM: Yeah, so as I was mentioning earlier, so it's daily. Is the answer for reasons, because we have very deep relationships with our major partners and so when they're doing price updates or savings updates. We actually to get a technical for a second, we have APIs with them. And so they are there's they're actually porting them into our system on the back end. So it's not like we need thousands of individuals keying on the keyboard to update these prices. But then we also do have an entire department that is sales account management to work with these vendors to find new vendors and to work with the vendors to update, not only the ticketing, the offering and the savings. 

SK: And what if somebody doesn't see something that they'd like to see? Is there a merchant nomination possibility? 

TM: That's exactly right, we call it nominate a brand it's on site as well, and so when they go to their account they're able to see the button that says nominate a brand and there's a form that they can fill out which and it's anything right so it's hey, I, I heard that of a small little brand Nike you and you might not have heard it, but can we get a deal all the way to my local locksmith that we all live in this neighborhood has said that she or he will give a discount. They put that information in; we go out, we confirm that that is true that Bobby at Locksmith Incorporated does want to give that discount. And then that's where it will be populated on the specials brands and then for the larger national deals, like this tiny company called Nike what that would do is we would go to our product team, and they would negotiate, they would say, hey, our membership base is really excited about this. They'd love a deal. And so we would negotiate a larger contract with them for a discount.

CO: So one thing I did want to bring up is this is a very unique benefit. I like to boast about it to my friends who don't have it. It's a perk of being a state employee here in Texas, and I feel like a lot of people don't know about it or don't make use of it, but I you know, I think people need to know that we have this benefit. I also wanted to ask, can you tell us why these kinds of programs, um, that are offered at workplaces, like what is the benefit to these users? 

TM: So what we have found is that, employers, at least the best employers like yourselves who really are investing in the holistic employee and so what we've done and what we found is following employers like yourselves who are doing a great job. The way that it is manifested itself over the last couple of years is it's really focusing on holistic wellness and there's actually four pillars of holistic wellness. No matter who we interviewed, they might have called it slightly different things, but it's mental, social, physical and economical wellness. And so if a company is investing in that supporting that for their employees, it's not only arguably the right thing to do, and it's the feel good thing to do. But the truth of the matter is, is that the employee comes to work every single day ready to get the job done. Ready to help the organization move forward in the best way possible. I once heard one of my favorite speakers say, it's not just good. It's good for business. Like, let's just be honest. We want people to be refreshed and supported. 

CO: Yeah, it's good for morale, too. 

TM: Yeah. Yeah. And so and so but what the other part is to layer this on. So we all want to do this or the right people want to do this and you all are part of that group. It's not so simple because we're all super unique, right? So the days of our parents’ generation, our grandparents’ generation, where you got four options and you just need to be happy with it. That's not who we are nowadays. We all experience a world outside of the office where we have optionality, right? We can we can have whatever we want for dinner. We can go wherever we want to go on vacation. That is something that the human experience is expecting celebrating our individuality. And so that has made it hard. Over, you know, the last decade or so for benefits departments is, how do I support everyone equally and also individually? Right? It's either a Herculean task to get it done or it's next to impossible. So what benefits departments have really leaned into is, yes, I want to celebrate the individuality. Yes, I want to support holistic wellness. But I need to find systems and services that allow that to be done in a universal fashion. And so that's what the savings marketplace allows for, because there are so many offerings, no matter what stage of life you are in, no matter what generation, there's five generations in the workforce right now. It's never happened before. We all have wildly different needs. Um, and where you are, um, you know, in like I mentioned in your stage of life, just what personally excites you? You wanted to see Hamilton. I'll tell you a dirty little secret. I don't like musicals. I love plays. I don't like musicals. I know. Yeah, but we're different, but guess what? We both should be able to get to experience culture. We both should be able to have a great experience and be able to say that. And so, you know, with implementing this program and offering this program, every single employee is going to be able to find something that excites them and supports them. 

CO: Thank you so much, Tom. That's yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with you. Like I said, it boosts morale. I think it's a fun program. It's our most popular clicked link on our website.Every time we get reports on what people click on, it's, it's always Discount Purchase Program.

CK: People really want a discount, a deal. 

CO: Oh, yeah, definitely. And we do promote it in our newsletters as well. What I liked that you mentioned is, so I am the editor of the retiree newsletter. And so when I'm promoting it, I'm looking for discounts for people of a certain age. So I run a lot of AARP and things like that. So I'm always trying to promote that. And I like that there's a variety that I can choose from. It's not all, you know, Beyoncé tickets, even though I will go see Beyoncé when I'm 60, but, you know, it's got something for everyone and I think that's a great benefit to all of our employees. 

TM: And you're talking about retirees, so we're even adding an extra layer, but five generations in the workforce, it has never happened before. And that's a high five to humanity because we're living longer. Maybe we're also working longer. I don't know if that's a high five to that, but to have so many individuals in the workforce and to be able to serve them and so, I had my family over my house for the holiday weekend a couple weeks back and so I had my nephew who is just starting his career. I had myself who and my sister and my sister is we have different life stages. I don't have any children. We're both, I think we'd say we're middle age. I think that's what we are now, but she was raising three kids and she has a dog. And she lives in suburbia. And then I have my parents that are living their golden years, right? They are retired and they're out there. And so, what I did is I asked them to log into their, you know, their bank account statements on their mobile phone and then I had them I logged into my account and I had them look at what we had to offer and just say, okay, I bought this. Could I have found it on our marketplace that we use here, and, you know, over 50% for all three I guess, four groups, because my sister has a different life stage than me or life experience. I mean, all four of us were able to find at least 50% of what was on our bank statement, we were able to find a deal on the site. So, I think that is the retirees most certainly, like, you earn these golden years, like, go out there and do something great with it. Spoil the grandkids or spoil yourself. 

CO: Oh, yeah, definitely. I think we all deserve to spoil ourselves to treat ourselves every now and then definitely. You mentioned Broadway tickets and concert tickets. Have you heard any stories of how people have been able to save on these kinds of things?

TM: Yeah, actually, one of the members wrote in. It's always great when the members write in and tell us these stories, we kind of get really excited to read them here, but this one in particular, a lucky gentleman was able to be celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary, which is an accomplishment in itself. And he wanted to make that a great experience for his wife, and he was able to find discounted Broadway tickets, maybe Hamilton, maybe not. I don't know. And because of that discount, he was able to, as he said, celebrate his wife and their thirty years of marriage in a way that he probably wouldn't have been able to. So it's, it's great to not only get those appliances, but also to use it for those celebration to maybe celebrate even bigger. 

CO: That's so nice. Love it. 

SK: And since this is the Money Talks Podcast, we're always recommending people take a little audit of their finances and, you know, do their periodic reviews. So I think. It's a great reminder to kind of encourage people to build the habit of checking the Discount Purchase Program when they're about to do some shopping and see where they can save and maybe save that savings in their retirement accounts. Also when they're just going through their, you know, annual audit of comparison shopping for their insurance premiums or their wireless service, things like that. Just, check the Discount Purchase Program when you do that and see where you can save. 

CO: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us, Tom. Before we ended, I did want you to highlight the Fun Rewards Program. That is something new that's popped up that I hadn't seen before. Maybe you can tell people how they can use that. 

TM: Yeah, thank you. Fun Life Rewards. We launched that a little bit over a year ago, and it is a loyalty program. And so it's an additional way to save. And so when you're shopping on the savings marketplace, you'll see, It is an orange star next to the products, and it will tell you how many points you're going to earn when you purchase that product. And then much like any other loyalty program out there, you accumulate points. And then when you go to that to the checkout experience on your, your next purchases, you'll see that you'll be able to use those points and so it's an additional discount on top of the already large savings that you're getting and it's a great program. We've we have seen that over 8M points have been earned over the last the last year. So, yes, that's very much right. And you're instantly enrolled. It is just because again, we own the technology and we're constantly updating the technology. You don't have to go through any separate enrollment period. You don't have to enter any information. It's just there and you'll just automatically be accumulating points for the usage. 

CO: Perfect. Great. That's another perk of the program. Well, thank you so much, Tom, for joining us. It was a pleasure to have you talk to us. I know you're behind the scenes on this very popular program, so we're happy to have you here. We hope you take advantage of the Discount Purchase Program. The URL is discountprogramtxers.com and you can also call them. They have an 800 number. It's 800-683-2886 And you can also find it on our website. We have a direct link to the discount purchase program site, so you can go there as well. And our, of course, our website is ers.texas.gov. 

SK: We also want to mention that ERS does not endorse or sponsor any of the Discount Purchase Program Services or the service providers. And we also don’t benefit from when you participate in the program. But we do recommend that you research the linked vendor websites and offers to make sure you understand the terms and conditions of any of the purchases, and also we aren’t responsible for the information, software, products, or services offered. 

CO: So thank you so much, Tom. We hope to have you back. 

TM: Yeah, thank you very much for having me. Next time, maybe I'll come in studio with you. I always love a trip to Texas. Maybe not in the middle of the summer. 

CO: Yeah, we're awaiting our long summer.

SK: I want to say let's all get on DPP and get some vacation deals so we can make some summer plans away from this heat. 

CO: Somewhere more cold, preferably. 

TM: Or buy an air conditioner. Buy an air conditioner, yeah. But thank you. No, this has been great. As you can tell, I'm real, I love this. I love it because I, I love not only what we've built here, but what it serves and how it can help support your employees just live a better and more fulfilling life with their family and friends outside of the office, which is the most important part, right? Really getting out there and living life to the fullest. And so we are very grateful to be a tiny part of that. 

CK: Well, I second, that. We all need to get some savings and also take a break when we can. Yeah, and so, everybody feel free to explore the website and also if you want to send any stories to us, as we say contact us through story underscore ideas at ers.texas.gov because we'd love to hear your thoughts on Money Talks. Thank you. 

CO: Bye, everyone.

Disclaimer: This materials is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide investment, legal or tax recommendations or advice.