Some of you may know that I have been working on my doctorate for the past four years. On Friday, December 4, 2009 at 3:21 pm Mountain Time, I got the following words from my committee, "Congratulations, Dr. Otter." Who? Come again? While proud of my accomplishment, I am simply not all that comfortable with the Doctor moniker. My brother-in-law who delivers babies is a Doctor. The physician who recently told me I was in great shape for a 44-year-old, but that it's all down hill after age 50 is a Doctor. A frank one, for certain.
 
Anyway, titles aside I am proud of my work at the University of New Mexico, much of which I see as an extension of my 403(b) advocacy work. Encouraged by my superb committee chair, Dr. Penny Pence, I focused on financial literacy, a topic we both see as one of the core social justice issues of our time. In looking at recent efforts to improve student financial literacy, it seemed to me we were omitting a key ingredient to success: the classroom teacher, which research suggests is central to both student achievement and policy implementation success. Much of the effort to improve financial literacy has been pushed by the financial service industry and elected officials with minimal input from the classroom teacher. And much of these efforts are well intentioned, particularly the work of the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. I wanted to learn teacher attitudes and beliefs about financial literacy instruction. After all, who is better suited to identifying both barriers to successful implementation, and opportunities for successful implementation? My survey of 181 classroom teachers revealed some unsurprising findings (teacher strongly support the inclusion of financial literacy instruction in the curriculum) and some surprising findings (teachers believe personal finance instruction should begin in elementary school with the grade most chosen to begin being kindergarten). Lack of suitable curriculum, lack of classroom materials, lack of classroom instruction time, and lack of teacher subject matter knowledge were identified as barriers to successful personal finance instruction. Similar results were found in a modified survey of more than 2,400 California classroom teachers I recently conducted in conjunction with the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). You can read my dissertation here: Teaching Financial Literacy in K-12 Schools: Teacher Attitudes and Understandings (note: paper has yet to undergo final proofing). I will be writing about the findings from my CalSTRS investigation in the next few months.
 
So what's next? Good question, Mom and Dad and all my relatives who think it is high time I did something tangible. My research also revealed that teachers' preferred format for personal finance professional development is a workshop that also increases their own financial literacy. To that end I am developing a professional development initiative that does just that: instructs teachers on methods for teaching personal finance concepts and improves teacher financial literacy. Called "Pollinate: The Teacher Financial Literacy Project," you can learn more here. Feedback on this concept would be appreciated.

Many of you — visitors to 403(b)wise — are in the accumulation phase of retirement planning. Hopefully you are dutifully putting away money in low-cost, well-diversified investments (no such thing in many 403(b) plans, many of you are saying — a point we concede but a point we and many others are working to rectify). I purposefully used the adverb hope to start the last sentence. This is because at the accumulation stage, you (we) are relying on a whole lot of hope. We hope we are saving enough. We hope we are investing in the right type of assets. We hope we have enough to retire on. But what happens when retirement hope, becomes retirement reality? What happens when we actually have to live on the money we saved for retirement? Longtime teacher and 403(b) advocate, Dr. Steve Schullo, recently did just that. In July 2008, on the cusp of what is now being called The Great Recession, Steve joined his longtime partner in retirement. They share their retirement reality — warts and all — in a multi-part story for 403(b)wise. I think for those of us in the accumulation stage, much can be learned from those living the retirement reality. Steve writes in a refreshingly honest way that I think you will enjoy.
 
Read the first installment of this series »

Things are not so good in my former state: Record unemployment, rampant home foreclosures, huge budget deficits, huge cuts to education, raging wild fires, and the Los Angeles Clippers. Despite the grimness, California teachers and school employees have two reasons to be thankful: the California State Retirement System (CalSTRS), and 403(b) advocate and financial planner, Scott Dauenhauer, CFP (fans of the Lakers, of course, have three reasons to be thankful). I was reminded of this again from a Discussion Board post announcing vendor changes in the 403(b) plan CalSTRS operates in partnership with TIAA-CREF: CalSTRS Pension2.

A little history: some of you may know that 403(b)wise was started more than nine years ago when I was an elementary school teacher in Southern California. Together with teacher John Moore, we started the website because of the horrific 403(b) investment choices available in schools, and acute lack of participant-friendly plan information. Fast forward to 2009: California school employees are still plagued by too many poor 403(b) investment choices and lack of clear employer provided plan information. However, thanks to the Herculean efforts of very good people at CalSTRS, the state teacher pension fund, and plan consultant Scott Dauenhauer, many California school employees now have access to superb low-cost 403(b) investment choices from well-respected firms like DFA, TIAA-CREF, and Vanguard to name a few (see investment choices).

Real estate and social choice offerings, and a unique risk-weighted target date approach known as Easy-Choice, are also available in Pension2. Scott Dauenhauer estimates that about 80 percent of California school districts make the plan available. Two questions: (1) Why don't ALL districts make the plan available?; and (2) isn't Seattle looking for a basketball team?
 

403(b)wise Doings

If you haven't yet had a chance, please take a moment to participate in our short Visitor Feedback Survey. Your input will help us make 403(b)wise even better. Finally, I am thrilled to announce that original 403(b) advocate and now-retired educator, Dr. Steve Schullo, will be writing stories for the site about life in retirement. His insights and expertise should be a benefit to investors at all stages of the savings cycle. Look for Steve's first piece in a few weeks.

I had the distinct pleasure recently of speaking to more than 200 classroom teachers and school employees about the concepts from my book, Teach and Retire Rich.

The setting was the beautiful UCLA campus in Westwood, California. The event was part of the California Teachers Association's annual (CTA) Summer Institute for their member leaders. The union was kind enough to not only bring me out to speak to my favorite audience — public school employees — but also provide attendees with a copy of my book Teach and Retire Rich (a book I strongly believe every school employee should read).

Here is what always strikes me about school employees: As crappy as the climate is, and it's crappy in California (metaphorically speaking; we all know California weather is pretty damn nice), it is so uplifting to interact with those working in our schools. My talk took place about a week after the state announced $5.9 billion — yeah, BILLION — in cuts to public schools.

As some of you may know, I taught elementary school in Southern California (Corona-Norco Unified School District) for eight years. During this time, I was more than taxed by the enormous class sizes (34 in my fourth and fifth grade classrooms). I can only imagine what will happen to class sizes now (50 fifth graders, anyone?). Still, my audience at UCLA was upbeat and very appreciative of the ideas and concepts I shared. Which is really no surprise. My experience with teachers often leads me to the same conclusion: they are by and large greater good type folks we are so lucky to have.

 
403(b)wise Doings

Lots of things going on at 403(b)wise... We recently created a Visitor Feedback Survey to measure the 403(b)wise user experience. If you have not yet had a chance to answer our short 10-question survey, please do. Also, an updated version (fifth to date) of our popular book Teach and Retire Rich is now available.

Behind the scenes we are working on several new initiatives: (1) making selected content available in Spanish; and (2) a financial literacy initiative that will strive to both improve the financial literacy of teachers, and improve financial literacy instruction in the schools.

I recently was part of a conference call with representative Allyson Y. Schwartz (D-PA), a legislator interested in improving financial literacy. More details on our efforts will be forthcoming.

In an effort to help fund site improvements we have for the first time added a donate feature to the site (visible on interior pages). Interested parties can donate to the 403(b)wise mission of education and advocacy any amount they see fit via a safe and secure PayPal payment: