On this week’s episode of Learned By Getting Burned: Why can’t we do this? – We find that Insurance companies are actively fighting schools districts from pursuing low fee retirement investment options. Those same Insurance companies are required by law to provide their own employees retirement options that protect their employees. In plain English, the Insurance company is prohibited by law from selling their crappy insurance policies to their own employees, but will happily sell them to teachers. How does that make any sense?!
You might be thinking, if it’s so bad, why doesn’t the school district change it? I wondered the same, and learned a lot while looking in to it further. The Insurance Companies have been exploiting Federal Law to their advantage for decades. A new law would need to be written to fix this, however the Insurance companies have very strong lobbying in Washington and the NEA is getting kickbacks for it’s endorsement of these terrible products. So, teachers are left to fend for themselves.
So, what can teachers do? Get Educated, of course!
The great folks at 403bwise.org offer tons of information and resources, all for free! It sounds too good to be true… Maybe? But it is true… Dan and Scott at the 403bwise have been on a twenty year mission to help teachers with their 403b’s. Dan was a teacher, and Scott is married to a teacher. So they, I like do, have first hand experience with issues that face teachers when they are trying to figure out how to invest in their retirement.
Hopefully the 403b will be changed in the future to ensure bad actors are prohibited from preying on teachers, until then helping teachers find their best retirement investing options is the next best option. If you are a teacher or know a teacher that could use help with their retirement investment, please reach out to me. I am happy to help.