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The wonderful folks over at 403bwise.org just dropped two bonus episodes to their mini podcast series, Learned by Being Burned. In the bonus episodes, we get a chance to hear the personal stories behind the narrator and writer/reporter of the series, and why this project was so important for them to work on. Next we hear from financial advisors that actually have their clients best interest in mind, and discuss why the “fiduciary” declaration isn’t enough to ensure the best advice is being given to educators when they are working with someone on their financial road map.

In the final episode of this mini-series podcast, we hear from folks that have navigated their teaching career, and discuss their time investing during their career and the pitfalls of dealing with bad insurance options being offered by their district.

Thankfully, there are many success stories for some districts, and as more teachers become aware of the situation, those same teachers are getting educated on their options, and make better choices for their future.

If you have listened to the mini-series podcast, I highly recommend it as a way to help educators understand the issue with most 403b’s and what can be done to get teacher’s out of those poor 403b’s and get them in better 403b options.

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.

In the most recent episode, the fine folks at 403bwise.org asks the question, “Why are most 403b options bad or terrible?” Answer – Fees, hidden costs, and surrender fees that enrich the insurance companies, and take the hard earned money from teachers.

Teachers are pretty much on their own when navigating their 403b/457b selection, the school district, union, and regulatory authorities typically do little or nothing to protect teachers from being sold terrible 403b’s. There is no fiduciary requirement when selling teachers these products, unlike other retirement plans such as 401k which require the best interest of the employee be considered when recommending investment advise.

So, how can teachers protect themselves? Education of course! There are resources available to teachers to help them navigate their retirement. But how to find them? A great place to start is at 403bwise.org. There teachers can find information about 403b resources, links to the 403bwise Facebook Group, and contact information for individuals willing to help teachers get the help they need to plan and invest for their best retirement. Best of all, the help teachers get from the 403bwise is totally free. Why are they doing all of this great work for free, because they are teachers, former teachers, or like me, married to teachers.

If you are a teacher in Ohio, please reach out to me, I am willing to help you with your questions. I don’t charge anything for my help, and I don’t sell any investment products or give specific advise about investments. I did write a book for Ohio teachers, and if you are interested in reading it, you can find it here. However, you need not buy the book to talk with me. Please contact me through this website, or on Facebook through my page.

Early in a teacher’s career they are often approached by someone to “help” them with their retirement. This person often is meeting with the teacher in their classroom after a long day of teaching. Teachers are often overwhelmed by the stress of teaching, welcome the help to make sure their retirement is taken care of, and why wouldn’t trust this person, obviously they can be trusted otherwise the school district wouldn’t give them access to the teachers, right?!

If you are a teacher, or know a teacher, this story will sound familiar. Almost every school district offers 403b/457b options to their teachers and staff. The 403b/457b plans are the 401k equivalent that most Americans have access to through their employers. However, unlike the 401k plans which are highly regulated to protect the employees from predatory options that benefit the person “selling” the plans, the sales persons selling the 403b plans are not. Most 403b plans are insurance annuity products that prey on teachers, administrators, and school staff.

You might think this seems unlikely or even impossible, but it is happening in classrooms across America everyday. These salespeople are costing these teachers 40% of their lifetime returns on their investments. That’s 40 cents on every dollar invested. So if a teacher invests $6,000 per year for 35 years with a 8% annual return, they would have $1,033,900.82 at retirement. If the same teacher invests with an insurance agent for the same amount, time period, and annual return, however, the insurance product has a 2.0% administration fee per year, the teacher would only have $668,608.68 at retirement. This is roughly 40% opportunity costs to the teacher.

If you are a teacher, or know a teacher, and have questions about this, you are welcome to reach out to me. I am happy to talk with folks about how 403b/457b, and it’s at no cost to you. But unlike Insurance Agents, I don’t get paid to have you sign up for garage annuities. Now to be clear, I am not a financial advisor. But I do understand how the Insurance companies prey on teachers, and I want to help those teachers find a better, low cost alternative to invest their retirement funds. Why am I doing this, because I have been married to an awesome teacher for the past 13 years, and she too was taken by an insurance agent early in her career. Thinking of my wife, and her coworkers, I want to help any teacher who asks for help make better retirement decisions.

Following is a link to the first episode from 403bwise.org about teachers and their 403b: Learned by Being Burned: Episode 1 – Someone walked into my room. The short series that explores the dysfunctional world of supplemental retirement plans, the maddening industry behind them, and the growing movement to fix what is broken.

I received a call from a friend earlier this week, asking if they should make changes to their investment portfolio. I knew the answer was that they should do nothing. They had a plan that they were following, adding additional funds to their retirement accounts every pay day. Their asset mix was set to their risk tolerance. Technically, they were all set, but emotionally they were unsettled. I knew the feelings that they were having, as I have the similar feelings in the past when facing previous volatility in the market.

What do I do when faced with market volatility, I go for walk. Do I go for an actual walk, sometimes, but I do separate myself from the situation by not thinking emotionally about our investment. My wife and I have our plan for our financial future, and we stick with the plan. We review the plan occasionally to make sure our life goals haven’t shifted or changed. Today we are in an investment phase and will continue in this phase until my wife retires from teaching. Something we don’t do, we don’t change our asset mix because the market did something. Why? Because the market is always doing something! Sometimes it’s going up, sometimes it’s down, but it never stays exactly the same. It took me two financial crashes to learn the lesson. First was the DOT COM bubble, and then the housing bubble to learn to no react market events. In both instances, I sold holdings on the way down, and waited for them to come back up to buy those holdings back. Why did I do that? I was scared, I was acting on emotion, I committed the cardinal sin of investing. I sold low, and bought high… I did this because I wasn’t actually investing, I didn’t know how to invest. But I did finally figure out that I needed to learn about investing, not just go through the act of investing in funds.

Do you need to become a knowledge investment expert to be successful, no, you don’t. You can invest and be successful doing the following:

Save/Invest a portion of every dollar you earn in an target date fund from a reputable company such as Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab. This is the set it, and forget method. Seriously, you don’t need to check your account, you don’t need to think about your asset mix, it couldn’t be simpler.

If you have questions, comments, or just want to discuss money, you are welcome to contact, and I will be happy to discuss. It won’t cost you anything to talk, but your time.

Thank you for reading… Share with anyone you think it might help.

So I am reflecting on the past 10 days with some amazement. Not long after the book release, I found myself contemplating teaching a high school Cisco class. The irony is that I am a lifelong opponent of the Cisco ecosystem, much as I am of the fruit company, so the thought of teaching bright young minds how to utilize the bane of my existence gave me some pause. Eventually I decided to accept the position, and after 5 days in the classroom, I am really glad that I am doing this.

So, now I am a long term substitute teacher, and participating in the craft of opening young minds to help them learn how to learn. It’s a humbling experience to say the least. Telling someone what you know, is nothing like teaching someone what you know. I have yet a new appreciation for all of the teachers that I have had in my life, the formal and unformal alike.

I still want to help people with their financial lives, but this adventure will certainly take a bit of my attention for the near future. I will be instructing for the rest of this school year, and potentially the first half of next school year.

This will be a short detour, but I look forward to helping folks with their personal finances for many years to come.

If you have found my tiny corner of the internet, then there is a good chance you are a family member or friend, and I appreciate you showing up. This project that I am embarking on is a passion project for me. During my time in public service, I knew I wanted to continue to give back to my community in retirement. When I met Lisa, again, in 2007 and then marrying her in 2009, best decision ever, I was also starting my journey into personal finance. As we blended our lives, I soon realized that I was very fortunate to have several mentors in my life that taught me about investing for my retirement. I also learned that Lisa wasn’t as fortunate. Being a teacher, she spent so much of her time thinking about her students, and living her life, that she hadn’t spent time on herself, and her retirement. She had been signed up by an Insurance Agent to contribute to a 403b plan, but it was a high fee annuity that she had been sold. I knew there had to be a better option, so I started looking around the internet. During my investigation, I started to realize that this was a systematic issue for educators, in Ohio and across the country. I found great resources that continued to foster my curiosity in learning about investing and personal finance, develop my interest in financial independence, and what it means to have a good life.

This has led me to want to pursue helping educators’ find their good life, and a good life in retirement. So, I will be posting here regularly about personal development, personal finance, investing, and retirement. This will be a place for me to explore ideas, and help those who are on a similar journey or are curious about these topics. I hope you will email me with comments and questions. Also, I am happy to help you with your own personal development, personal finance, investing, or planning for retirement.