Attend the Next UTLA Financial Literacy Workshop, Time and Date TBA!

This article is an example of what a financial literacy workshop presents for you! Don’t miss the next one. Sign up for my blog, and I will send you a notice about the next workshop.  Alternatively, you can monitor this yourself by clicking the link: https://utla.net/events/?

SALARY POINTS AWARDED! LAUSD teachers! For the first time in LAUSD history, or for the history of public K12, 4.5 hours of professional development credit will be awarded for attending this financial education workshop.

What does professional development credit mean? When you have accrued 30 hours of credit, you advance yourself on the salary scale! That’s always good. When I was a young teacher, I attended every available workshop and reached the top of the salary scale within five years. It makes a huge difference in income over many years.

A little history of these rare financial workshops in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

In a profession where no district or union ever talks about the 403(b) or 457(b) publicly, how and why did these workshops start?

A team of employees initiates these workshops, and we, the retired folks, attended. More than 500 have gone to at least one in the last five years. Way back in the 90s, another educator, Sandy, and I started an informal group and met at a restaurant, just to chat. People would leave their emails, and I would grow that list and keep people informed. This is way before the powerful social media tools we have today.

Our colleagues are begging for objective financial information and are fed up with annuity sales pitches from the sharks that roam our district with impunity. After all of these years, the word is slowly spreading that annuities are not a good plan, but it is still a MAJOR problem.

The topics of meetings:

1. Stay away from ANNUITIES of all types, except those offered by TIAA. Annuity contracts with any insurance company will never deliver the returns of the stock or bond markets.  Our pension plan, CalSTRS (along with endowments and foundations), never uses annuities because pensions have a fiduciary agreement to provide the best returns at the lowest costs, and annuities fall far short of those fiduciary standards.
2. Never pay commissions! This remains a problem for public K12 because the new Department of Labor regulations requiring fiduciary standards for financial advisers do not apply to 403(b) or 457(b) plans in public K12. You are not protected from the sharks who will sell you plans only because the salesperson gets a commission. Of course, every teacher has been told by the slick sales force, “The company pays my commission, not you.” Of course, YOU PAY OVER TIME with high expense ratios such as 12b fees, advisory fees, and insurance fees, which are all kept hidden in your monthly or yearly statement. ANNUITES ARE HORRIBLE RETIREMENT PLANS!!!!!
3. Showing your colleagues the low-cost investments that are available in your 403b or 457b plans: Vanguard, Fidelity, TIAA and the low-cost third-party administrators.
4. Here in California, we have the great statewide 403(b) CalSTRS’s Pension 2.
5. Finally, LAUSD employees are fortunate to have an award-winning 457(b) plan (UPDATE in 2025, we won a 2nd Award in 2024!). The 457(b) plan has genuine investment choices (NO ANNUITIES): index funds, no-load mutual funds, bond funds for balance and diversification, and, just to get started, the most popular are the Target Date Funds offered by BlackRock on the 457(b). The problem is that few employees know that it exists because the annuity sales force will never tell you. OH YEAH! They know it exists, and they know that more and more teachers and employees are taking advantage of the low costs and opting for genuine investments that will earn returns in the stock and bond markets just as CalSTRS invests.

Retirement Investment Advisory Committee (RIAC)

One of the most important facts about the LAUSD 457(b) plan is that an oversight/advisory committee (RIAC), composed of a representative from each collective bargaining unit, serves on the committee. You have representation, and our meetings are open to the public. We meet on the third Thursday of Feb, May, Aug, and Nov from 3:00 – 5:00 on Zoom. Public comments are allowed at 4:30.