Teachers’ Retirement Plans

This article discusses a topic that needs more attention. It talks about the retirement plans offered to most teachers around the country. The plans often aren’t very good. There are a few companies that have established themselves in the industry and offer poor quality annuities with high costs.

Along the way, he had set aside his own money in a succession of 403(b) plans that were mediocre or worse, sometimes at the behest of sales representatives bearing candy and dispensing hugs who put other young adults into annuities paying low fixed rates. Then, he ran into brick walls while spending hour upon hour trying to extract people from those accounts.

None of it needed to happen. When the teachers trying to turn around the city’s troubled schools end up feeling like they’ve been punished financially for their efforts, something is wrong. It raises the question of whether the complex 403(b) plans were erected for the benefit of the very people who built the systems.