Episode 1: Someone Walked Into My Room
Transcript
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Dan Otter (00:05):
A woman poked her head in my door. I'll never forget what she said. She said, do you care about your financial future? That's a pretty jarring comment to hear anytime, but especially when you know your head down, trying to just survive these first few weeks of teaching.
Lisa McEvoy (00:20):
When I started started reading more about it, I realized that there was a lot that I didn't know.
Scott Dauenhauer (00:24):
I worked at a brokerage firm at this point in time. So I had seen plenty of bad products, but this took the cake.
Chris Nye (00:29):
They're not financial advisors, they're sales people. That's a huge thing that the average person just does not understand.
STEVE Schullo (00:35):
Chief of police said, I can't tell these people to get off campus. You know, I can't them. I can't do anything. So if he can't do it, nobody can do it.
Dan Otter (00:46):
We wanna be a place where teachers and school employees can come to learn about the 403(b) in a non-sales environment. We are a place that advocates for better retirement options for teachers.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (01:02):
Welcome to learned by being burned teachers and the K through 12 403(b) 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.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (01:23):
I'm your host, Barb Besal. I teach high school chemistry in Virginia Beach city, public schools. I'm 15 years into my teaching career and I truly love what I do, but that doesn't mean I want to do it forever. In 15 more years, I want the freedom to be able to choose whether to stay in my classroom. Take my hard earned retirement. When I look around, I see too many of my friends and colleagues who are at or near retirement age, but don't seem to have that choice. Is that my future too? When I found out that some of my well-intentioned financial decisions could actually be robbing me of my freedom to choose my future, I realized what I, a massive problem. We educators and public servants are facing when it comes to preparing for retirement at best, we get too little information too late at worst. We are actively pushed toward manipulative salespeople who masquerade as advisors, But with early access to opera information, through grassroots advocacy, I'm regaining my freedom to choose my future. And I'm hoping to empower you to do the same. In the kickoff episode of “Learned by Being Burned: Teachers and the K through 12 403(b)”, we will learn how K through 12 teachers are often misserved by a type of retirement plan known as a 403(b).
Barb Besal (Narrator) (02:57):
Episode one: Someone Walked into My room. Crystal Mendez teaches in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In 2002, Mendez was fresh out of college. And in her first year of teaching there, she sat having a quick lunch one day in the teacher's lounge.
Crystal Mendez (03:17):
I was approached by someone in the staff lounge during lunchtime. And she basically said, Hey, you know, we're here to help with, uh, retirement planning. And even though I was super young, I kind of remember having the realization like, Hey, this is something that I definitely wanna get started. So I met with her and she set me up with the 403(b) made a nice contribution, whatever I could could afford the time, um, and got that going. And it was all great, all blue skies until maybe a couple of years into it. My boyfriend at the time was looking at his retirement options and basically asked me how mine was doing to kind of compare. And when we looked at the statement, that's kind of, when we realized that I wasn't really making any money.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (03:58):
Lisa McEvoy is a 30-year veteran teaching, sixth grade language arts and social studies in Long Island, New York. Her story also begins one day as she walked into the teacher's lounge,
Lisa McEvoy (04:09):
There was a gentleman sitting there and he explained to me that, um, his company offered these investment funds and this was something beyond your pension, additional funds that you could put away. And so I, you know, signed up and started putting in, you know, a hundred dollars a paycheck or something like that. Last year I had been looking into, uh, kind of beefing up our contributions, and I really wanted to add more to it because, you know, we're getting closer to retirement now, and now we have more money to put towards that. So that's when I happened upon articles in (The New York Times) that were put out regarding the 403(b)s and the problems with them and the problems that teachers faced with high fees and them not being transparent. And the differences between 401(k)s and 403(b)s. And then when I started reading more about it, I realized that there was a lot that I didn't know.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (05:13):
And Chris Nye is a teacher in the Jackson, New Jersey district, specializing in business education and financial literacy. As a brand new teacher, he was approached on campus by you guessed it, a salesperson.
Chris Nye (05:28):
Someone walked in my classroom and started to talk to me about the New Jersey pension system and 403(b). And, um, I signed up, you know, it sounded like a pretty good deal. Um, and my background's in finance. So really shame on me for not knowing more at the time about how the whole 403(b) world works, but it really wasn't something we touched on in my classes in college, but I'd always been a subscriber to Kiplinger's personal finance. And I started to read some articles about expense ratios and how the corrosive effect of these fees can really drag down your retirement savings. And that's when I started to really dive into the company that I was using at the time, um, and realized that their expense ratios were off the charts.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (06:09):
See a pattern here? Named for a passage of the internal revenue code, like their better known relative the 401(k) plan, 403b(b)s are tax-deferred investment plans set up for use by churches and non-profit organizations, including eventually school districts. According to a 2018 survey by the National Tax Deferred Savings Association, approximately 27% of K through 12 teachers participate in the 403(b) plans offered by their school district. The average monthly contribution is $322. And the average account balance is almost $43,000, but 403(b) plans and related 457(b) plans are often unheard of outside of non-profit or educational goals.
Edward Siedle (06:58):
Indeed, I would say that most Americans don't even know what a 403(b) is.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (07:03):
That's Edward Siedle, a former attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. And self-described leading expert in pension looting who helped to pioneer the field of forensic investigations of wrongdoing in retirement plans.
Edward Siedle (07:18):
For most 403(b) investors. Their retirement mainstay is their pension, not their 403(b). So they pay less attention to their 403(b). And for example, when I met with the attorney general of Alabama, about 15 years ago, he showed me his retirement plan statement. And I said, uh, you do realize that you're invested in a variable annuity. And he said, no, I'm not. I said, yes, you are. And, uh, we looked in the fine print. Indeed it was a variable annuity. And he, the attorney general didn't even know that it was a variable annuity investment.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (07:54):
While the vast majority of 401(k) plans typically invest in mutual funds, 403(b) plans are usually dominated by the insurance products known as annuities. A variable annuity combines a mutual fund with a layer of insurance. It is typically much more expensive than the mutual funds usually found in 401(k) plans. But Alabama's former attorney general is hardly the only person who's ever been confused by this.
Edward Siedle (08:24):
These are plans that have not received a lot of regulatory or investor scrutiny and tend to have, uh, higher cost investment products, such as variable annuities, which are much costlier than they should be and perform consistently poorly in large part because of the fee drag related to them. Even 403(b) investors often neglect to pay much attention to their 403(b) because it's sort of the tail of the dog. They feel it's not their retirement mainstay.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (08:59):
Although public school teachers in 15 states are not eligible to participate in Social Security. Most receive pensions. Historically 403(b) plans have been used by teachers who wish to supplement the amount in their pension with additional retirement savings. However, financial pressures stemming from the Great Recession and the COVID 19 pandemic have prompted some states and school districts to deemphasize their pensions in favor of cheaper employee funded options like 403(b) or 457(b) plans.
Edward Siedle (09:33):
This is often an neglected pocket of money because no one's paying attention. There's less competition. They can charge higher fees. So it's the very lucrative niche, far more lucrative than traditional 401(k) type investments.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (09:49):
And who is paying for these profits? Unsuspecting teachers who think they are saving for their retirement, but often come to discover that they are really paying for someone else's. Aggressive salespeople, deceptive marketing, high fees, and equally high penalties for withdrawing your own money have combined to spawn a nationwide reform movement led by teachers who have learned by being burned. These teachers often come to the conclusion that there is no one who they can trust. Fellow teachers often know as little as they do. Financial salespeople are motivated to sell the products that earn them the highest commissions. School districts often won't provide any guidance whatsoever. Government regulations that require employer oversight of 401(k) plans often exempt 403(b) plans from compliance. Even unions don't often have teachers' backs. Instead teachers typically learn about 403(b) plans from the armies of salespeople who stalk the halls of their schools, peddling insurance teacher, Chris Nye.
Chris Nye (10:52):
They had signs around the building flyer stuffed in your mailbox, talking at faculty meetings during the faculty lounge, giving away free food. I see all these insurance companies in our building all the time. Whether it's roaming the halls or in the faculty room, or, you know, sometimes even after faculty meetings, administration will give them the microphone and they'll get to pitch their products. And because they're in these meetings, all the teachers just assume, well, this may us be good. There's no way that our principal would just hand the mic off to somebody who is giving us a product that doesn't make sense for us. And the sad reality is it's exactly what's happening.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (11:27):
While federal law gives registered investment advisors, a fiduciary obligation to act in the best interests of their clients, the salespeople who work in America's K through 12 schools typically have no such obligation says Nye..
Chris Nye (11:42):
They're not financial advisors. They're salespeople. That's a huge thing that the average person just does not understand. Basically the 403(b) world is really the last true wild west of investments. The person that comes in the faculty room in your classroom, they by no means have to provide you with investments that make sense for you. There are singular goals to extract as much money out of that person over the course of their teaching career. They don't have to put you in funds that make sense for you. In the 401(k) world, the person that runs your 401(k) has a fiduciary responsibility to the employees to do that. That is not the case in the 403(b) world. And it's a real shame.
Teacher (12:25):
Okay? It's time for you to settle down we're getting started.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (12:35):
If anyone has seen it all, it might be Steve Schullo, a retired Los Angeles teacher and perhaps the father of 403(b) activism who has been fighting for change since the early 1990s.
STEVE SCHULLO (12:48):
At that time nobody was doing this. Nobody was talking about the 403(b) with K12 public's school districts, nothing. I was learning this stuff piece by piece as I was digging into this.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (13:03):
But it was the same story. Sales agents given incredible access to sell a product that hardly considered the teachers best interest.
STEVE SCHULLO (13:12):
The agents are allowed to roam district territory at will. They come into teachers classrooms during recess to try and sell products. I think Apple Computer, I think they would love to have their reps go into teachers classroom and try and sell them computers or th book publishers. They make billions of dollars from school districts. How about them going into talking to principals and, and teachers about selling books? They can't do it, but the annuity sales people can. They're protected by the insurance commission to do that. We can't do anything. There is a policy Los Angeles Unified School District has a bulletin that on site presentations are not allowed. They break it.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (14:02):
Schullo recalls. The time that the issue of on campus sales reps was discussed during a school district committee meeting.
STEVE SCHULLO (14:08):
This was really amazing. One of the members, committee members invited the, um, chief of the school police to come to the meeting to talk about this. And the chief of police said, I can't tell these people to get off campus. I can't tell 'em, you know, I can't arrest them. I can't do anything. And so if he can't do it, nobody can do it.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (14:34):
And once they're in the room, they have their game plan. Consider this 2015 YouTube video titled "Networking within a School and Referrals" in which two sales agents, JM and Terry discuss successful sales strategies. There's nothing secret here. The seven-minute clip is available on YouTube for anyone to watch.
JM (14:57):
So Terry we've seen for many years, our most successful agents, yourself included, have done a really nice job with referrals. And what I'd like to share today is kind of what your strategy was and how did you do it in the schools?
Terry (15:09):
Well, I'm glad you asked Jim, the power of our system is in, uh, being in "work site marketing." That's really what we do. Uh, public employees are about 19 million today. And those people are all in buildings as 80 and a hundred, 200 at a time. And if I knew that if I could get in those buildings, I'd be able to go from one, buying unit to the next. I wouldn't have to waste time telemarketing 'em I wouldn't have to waste time driving out there. So if, if I, if I was able to go from door to door to door, then I would cut out all that driving time, all that phone time, all that stuff. And so that's where I focused my time. And once I learned to do that, then I learned that, okay, now they're friends, they're, they're coworkers. They're right there. And so I came up with some very interesting scripts and, uh, they work really well. You want me to show you one?
JM (16:05):
I'd love to. Yeah.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (16:05):
Here, Terry walks JM through his approach with some role playing.
Terry (16:10):
I want to get my referrals. Right. So then I'm gonna say, you know, uh, JM has been really great meeting you. Uh, we're gonna take care of you and your family. And, uh, but one thing before I leave, I have my company gives me, uh, five Starbucks cards that I have to give out before I leave this building. Okay. Now, rather than me just walk around and find some people, I found it best us that if I ask you who, you know, you would like to have these, and then I go tell them that you sent me with this card for them. It's a way for you to pay it forward. And for me to meet more people.
JM (16:47):
We drink a lot of coffee, Terry. So that sounds like good idea.
Terry (16:50):
Right. So who do you know that has, uh, that you would like to me to give this to?
JM (16:56):
Down this line, literally door 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and eight.
Terry (17:01):
Excellent. I'm gonna let them know that you said to come by and give him this card. How's that?
JM (17:05):
Sounds great.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (17:07):
JM likes what he heard. The numbers add up.
JM (17:10):
Uh, everything you showed was amazing and it's, it's something that I think everybody can take to the field. A couple things I want everybody to remember. We know today that we close at a much higher percentage, about 80% of all the referrals that we meet with, 30% higher than just meeting them off the street. We also know that an average size deal is three times the size. So it it's the reason for that is we were break down the barriers of trust and they, you know, JM's an okay guy. So they're willing to help you out a little bit more with that.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (17:41):
Walking into the classroom is just one of the tactics increased involvement in the community. Sometimes with lavish gifts to give away is another here's Terry again.
Terry (17:51):
I've done a lot of, uh, school functions and events. A lot of our people have, um, a lot of the, uh, PTA events. Um, the schools have all sorts of events going on all the time. Um, we've, we've even done as much just given away cars. Now I know that that's a, a big task, but, um, we've, we've rebuilt playgrounds. We've given, uh, big giveaways for gift cards and paper, and anything that anything that will help the schools will typically have some sort of event around it. And that's where you get to network with a lot of people.
Teacher (18:37):
Don't forget. Your project is due next class.
New Speaker (18:37):
Barb Besal (Narrator) (18:45):
Scott Dauenhauer is a financial advisor in Murietta, California, who has immersed himself in 403(b) advocacy. Even today. He notes with COVID 19 having limited the access of sales agents to schools, they still figure out how to pedal high-cost, low-quality retirement plans.
Scott Dauenhauer (19:03):
There are all these little Trojan Horse techniques that these agents use to get in and trying to at the teachers to think that they're associated with something that has credibility, whether it's the union, the retirement system or the school district. And oftentimes, actually since the pandemic started, even more. So we see this with emails.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (19:26):
Dauenhuaer became aware of the problem through his wife, Shauna who teaches middle school science in the Murietta Valley Unified School District. One day early in Shauna's career, a man stopped by her classroom supposedly to explain her retirement benefits.
Scott Dauenhauer (19:42):
So my wife being married to a financial advisor, uh, said that, you know, she would like to have her husband involved. So we made an appointment for me to come. And so I came down to the classroom, um, one day after school and completely thought it was somebody from CalSTRS, the California state teacher's retirement system just thought it was a representative, and this is how they did things. Um, and it turned out that it, it about 5 minutes into the meeting, I realized that this guy was just a salesperson. He was an insurance agent. So I, I realized this after a few minutes and I just directly asked him, I said, do you work for the school district? He said, no. Do you work for the California State Teacher's Retirement system? He said, no. I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave. And that was my first introduction to the world of 403(b).
Barb Besal (Narrator) (20:35):
Dauenhauer is still offended by the way, that salesman and hundreds of others, he has since learned about portray themselves to unsuspecting teachers.
Scott Dauenhauer (20:44):
This is what they say, oh, we were just meeting with one of your colleagues down the hall. And, um, the school district sends us out. They use these, these very loose phrases to insinuate that they are something that they are not we're sent by the school district, or we're, we're here representing your, your, uh, retirement system. They don't mean that the representatives of the retirement system, just that they can help you figure out the formula, but they make it sound like they're official. For me. I just, I thought this is completely crazy.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (21:18):
With his suspicions engaged down, Dauenhauer decided to do a bit more research.
Scott Dauenhauer (21:23):
So I called up the school district and they said, oh yeah, that's just how the, these, these agents work. Um, they, they walk around the school district and I thought this is so strange. I I've never been anywhere where this is allowed. So I asked him, I go, well, what is our 403(b)? Do you, do you have any information on it? And s said, oh yeah. Well, let me fax you something on it. So a little bit later, I get a fax it's this one page document. And it had a whole bunch of financial services companies on it. Some of them had the name crossed out. Some of 'em had a person's name next to it with a phone number. Sometimes the phone number was crossed out and another person's name was written in, but there was, there was no websites. There were no, some of 'em didn't even have phone numbers.
Scott Dauenhauer (22:12):
Like it was just like the name of a company. Some of the companies I had never even heard of. And I'd been in the business for a while. It's so weird. So I just thought, I don't wanna have anything to do with this. And I forgot about it. And then a colleague of hers asked if I could review a product that she had been sold in her 403(b) and I said, ah, yeah, sure. Why not? Let me take a look at it. And she gave me the contract. It was an annuity policy, which is a contract with a life insurance company. And it was a new product. It hadn't been around, it's called an equity indexed annuity. And the more I read this thing, and the more I read the claims that were made about it, I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (22:58):
The agent was claiming that annual returns would be 12%, but down Dauenhauer didn't see how the product could return more than two or 3%, even worse. There was an 18-year surrender period, which meant participants could not opt out of the plan and gain access to their money for 18 years without paying a penalty of up to 20%.
Scott Dauenhauer (23:21):
That was nuts to me. I mean, I worked at a brokerage firm at this point in time. So I had seen plenty of bad products, but this took the cake. This is the worst prodcut I had ever seen up to this point.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (23:33):
He found himself wondering how widespread such practices were.
Scott Dauenhauer (23:37):
What I was thinking to myself at that time was, is this normal? Do teachers normally get treated this way? Or is it just, you know, right here in Newport Beach, that was where my wife was working at the time. So I decided to jump online and do some research about 403(b)s. And that's where I found this little website called 403bwise.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (24:02):
403bwise was an advocacy website of humble roots. It was started by former teacher, Dan Otter in the garage of his Anaheim Hills, California house, after his own introduction to the strange world of the 403(b) plan.
Dan Otter (24:18):
It was probably the third month on the job the kids had left for the day. And like all first year teachers, I was at my desk frantically trying to get ready for the next day. That's what my sole focus was. And then all of a sudden, uh, a woman poked her head, uh, in my door. And I I'll never forget what she said. She said, "Do you care about your financial future?" Now that's a pretty jarring comment to hear anytime, but its, especially when you know, you're head down trying to just survive these first few weeks and months of teaching. And so I put my head up and she takes that probably as an invitation to come into the room and she walks in and she starts talking about all these investment products and how she helps the third grade teacher next door, the sixth grade teacher down the hall. She literally had the paperwork signed. Um, and alls I had to do was just put my signature on it. And I listened. I didn't know at all what she was talking about. I had some idea that we had a pension, but I knew nothing about these investments. These "TSAs" that she was talking about, so I listened politely and I finally said, look, I'll get in touch. If that is something I'm interested in, but I never did.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (25:37):
Instead over the next few years, Otter set out to educate himself about saving for retirement.
Dan Otter (25:44):
I kept hearing about the 401(k). You gotta save in a 401(k). Well as teachers, we don't have that. Now again, I knew we had a pension, but I wondered do we have another way to save? And so I had a friend who worked for a financial company and I asked him about this and he said, oh, you have something called a 403(b). That was the first time I had ever heard this term.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (26:07):
The saleswoman who first visited Otter's classroom had not ever mentioned a 403(b) plan.
Dan Otter (26:13):
The woman had been saying TSA (which means tax sheltered annuity). And that's a sales technique. She wants you to believe, the industry wants you to believe, that you can only invest in tax sheltered annuities which are super expensive. So my friend told me, no, you want invest in mutual funds. And so this is how I started getting wise to the problems with the K-12 403(b).
Barb Besal (Narrator) (26:40):
Pretty soon Otter was educating, not just himself, but his colleagues.
Dan Otter (26:46):
I subscribed to Money Magazine. I started watching CNBC and you know, I would sit in the staff lounge and I would hear my colleagues talk about their guy or their girl. And they're talking about the kind of person who came into my room and I started, you know, being able to ask educated questions. Well, how much are you paying in fees? And they would always say, oh, there's no fees. So right then, you know, the BS detector is going off. And so you're trying to be kind and generous. Well, are you sure about that? You know, every financial institution has to make money. All financial products have a fee structure. I'll never forget one teacher said, would you take a look at my statement If I brought it in? Now I had no experience with something like this. I had never looked at someone else's financial statement and tried to, you know, parse it for fees. But I said, yeah, bring it in. And I was able to show her look every month you're charged here, here and here. And she was like, I never knew this. My guy never told me this.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (27:51):
Otter gradually became aware that his colleagues hadn't been told a lot of things about their investments.
Dan Otter (27:57):
A lot of these products in the 403(b) world have surrender charges. So teachers get signed up. They're not only paying high costs, high fees. They often have surrender charges lasting 5, 7, 10 years. So when teachers find out they're in a really bad investment, it's almost like a double whammy. Wow. I've been paying all these fees. Plus it's gonna cost me 7% of my balance just to leave this product. So anyway, this teacher, who I helped, she said, look, you should do workshops. You should help teachers. And I have to admit, I was really starting to enjoy learning about saving for retirement. You know, reading about the industry, investing. I kind of felt like this was something right up my alley.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (28:44):
So Otter set out to inform and educate K through 12 teachers about better investment options that led to the founding of 403bwise in 2000. It was around that time that he connected with the sympatico Dauenahuer and brought him in as a partner soon after.
Dan Otter (29:03):
We founded 403bwise with two simple goals: education and advocacy. We want be a place where teachers and school employees can come to learn about the 403(b) in a non sales environment. The second goal is advocacy. We are a place that advocates for better retirement options for teachers. The other big goal of 403bwise is to build a community. And we think we're doing that, especially with the 403bwise Facebook Group, where we have teachers teaching each other and helping each other
Barb Besal (Narrator) (29:38):
More than 5,000 teachers to be exact 20 years on 403bwise and its website 403bwise.org have helped to educate an entire generation of teachers about retirement planning, but the problems remain as intractable as ever. That was made clear by two separate emails Otter recently from teachers concerned about their investments.
Dan Otter (30:03):
The first one is from a teacher in Pennsylvania. Most Pennsylvania, K12 403bwise vendor lists are awful. They're nothing but high-cost investments. And this is what this email was about. This Pennsylvania teacher was super frustrated. She was to go to the powers that be, the union, the school district to simply add one low-cost vendor. And she was asking if we had any suggestions for what to put in the email. So I was helping her sort of shape the message for these powers that be in an effort just to add one low-cost vendor. We're not even asking them to get rid of all the terrible ones. Just give teachers at least one low-cost choice. And then the second email was from someone who lives in Southern California, teaches in the Anaheim school district. And he was sharing with me. Uh, we call these phishy emails, the financial service industry, blankets, K-12 teachers nationwide with these nefarious emails, where they pose as financial professionals.
Dan Otter (31:12):
They're really just salespeople. They pose and act as if they have an endorsement of the school district. They say things like, oh, you are eligible to meet with a financial consultant. So it makes it sound like it's a benefit that the teacher has, right? Oh yeah. I have health care. Um, I might have, you know, money for school supplies. Oh, and here's another benefit I have. 100% false, but teachers fall for these even teachers that have been followers of 403bwise. We've gotten emails from them saying, oh my gosh, I almost fell for this. So anyway, here we are 20 years later and we are facing the same set of problems.
Barb Besal (Narrator) (32:03):
Why don't teachers know that their retirement plans are often loaded with high fees? Why don't they understand that they are investing in insurance and not mutual funds? How did insurance annuities come to dominate the 403(b) market? And what's so bad about that anyway? What's the financial difference between investing in a good retirement plan and a bad one? We'll answer all those questions in the next episode of "Learned by Being Burned: teachers and the K through 12 403(b)." I'm your host Barb Besal see you next episode.
Neal Weiss (Producer) (32:47):
"Learned by Being Burned: Teachers and the K through 12 403(b)" is created by fuzzyville industries in Culver City, California in partnership with 403bwise.org. The series is produced by Neal Weiss. Research, reported and written by Stephen Buel. Hosted by Barb Besal. Mixed and mastered by John Adams. Assistant audio editing, Jesse Mechanic and Kai Grady. Music by Neal Weiss and Brad Richard. Teacher voiceovers by Colleen Morrisey. The non-profit 403bwise.org is funded by the generous support of Tim Ranzetta, co-founder of Next Gen Personal Finance. Find out more about 403(b) advocacy 403bwise.org. Find out more about fuzzyville industries at thisisfuzzyville.com. Thanks for listening.
Teacher (34:11):
Please put your phones away.