For school employees
I spent fifteen years in your building.
Not as a vendor who set up a table at your in-service. As a band director, with a room, a schedule, and the same benefits packet you got.
What I watched happen, over and over
Teachers are careful people. You plan units months out. You read the material. And yet I watched colleague after colleague get within a few years of retiring and realize the plan they thought they had was thinner than they'd assumed.
It almost never came from carelessness. It came from this: you got a benefits packet during orientation week, at the same time you were learning a new building, a new roster, and where the copier was. Somebody talked at you for twenty minutes. You signed something. Then you taught for twenty years and never opened it again, because nothing ever prompted you to.
That is a completely reasonable way to end up under-informed. It is not a character flaw.
The two things almost nobody checks
Not the percentage on the summary sheet — the dollar figure, against what your life actually costs. Those are different conversations, and most people have only ever had the first one.
Most district 403(b) lineups were assembled by whoever showed up. Some are fine. Some carry fees that quietly eat a meaningful share of your return over thirty years. Almost nobody has ever looked.
I'm not going to tell you on a website what your numbers say, because I don't know them. What I will tell you is that you can find out in about fifteen minutes, and that most people are surprised in one direction or the other.
Why school employees get sold to badly
You are a known quantity to the financial industry: stable employment, predictable income, a pension that makes you feel covered, and limited time to scrutinize anything. That combination attracts a particular kind of salesperson, and if you've ever had one corner you in a hallway during your planning period, you know exactly the tone I mean.
I'd rather be the opposite of that. If your 403(b) is decent and your pension does more than you thought, I'll tell you that, and we'll be done in fifteen minutes.
Where an indexed policy might fit — and where it doesn't
- It's not a pension replacement. Anyone who pitches it that way is overselling. It's a separate bucket with different rules, and it should be evaluated as one.
- It needs consistent funding for a long time. If you're two years from retiring, this is almost certainly the wrong tool and I'll say so.
- Free money comes first. If there's an employer match you're not capturing, capture that before anything else.
- Summer pay matters. If you're on a 21-pay schedule, cash flow in July and August is a real planning constraint. It gets factored in, not glossed over.
Who this is also for
Paraprofessionals, secretaries, custodians, bus drivers, food service, administrators. Every one of those roles got the same twenty-minute talk during the same overwhelming week, and every one of them has a household that depends on the answer.
Let's have one honest conversation.
Fifteen minutes. You'll walk away understanding more than you did, whether or not you ever buy anything from me.
Would rather just talk? Call or text 269-341-1986. I answer my own phone.