Showing posts with label 403bwise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 403bwise. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Dan Otter, 403bwise and What's Next for Educators and Advisors
Dan Otter, of 403bWise.com on a webcast with the Finance for Teachers Network. Enjoy.
Friday, May 13, 2016
Dan Otter Webcast on Finance For Teachers Network
In April, Dan Otter (403bWise.com) joined Dave Grant for a webinar hosted by The Finance For Teachers Network. Here is the video:
Enjoy.
Scott Dauenhauer, CFP MPAS, AIF
Enjoy.
Scott Dauenhauer, CFP MPAS, AIF
Friday, April 22, 2016
NEA Still Not Practicing What It Preaches
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| The NEA Valubuster Plan Is Up To 21x The Cost of Their Own 401(k) |
Fifteen years ago I exposed the National Education Association's (NEA) poor practices when it comes to the 403(b) in a piece titled "Does The NEA Practice What It Preaches?". Very little has changed. The NEA's wholly owned subsidiary NEA Member Benefits Corporation continues to operate, market and profit from the selling of 403(b) products to their members, all the while installing a top notch retirement plan for themselves.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
TRR Podcast #26: How @NTSA403B + @NEAToday make saving in #403b hard
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| Podcast #26: NTSA & NEA |
As a follow up to my recent posts regarding the NTSA and the NEA, Dan and I discuss the latest developments in the 403(b) world. You can find our latest podcast here.
Reference materials:
Monday, April 18, 2016
403bWise Launches Site Re-Design and Expansion
Since 2000, 403bWise.com has provided unbiased information on 403(b) plans to our nation's educators. In addition, the site has helped advocate for better 403(b) plans. 403bWise is the best known 403(b) site on the internet (much to the consternation of the insurance industry) and today it just got better, with promises of additional improvements in the future.
Monday, February 01, 2016
Inga Chira on CSU Transistion to Single Vendor - Fidelity
I recently met a CSU Professor who has opened a Registered Investment Advisory firm to work with Higher Education employees, her name is Inga Chira. She wrote a short piece on the transition that the Cal State system is currently undergoing from five 403(b) vendors to just one, Fidelity.
Big changes are coming to the Cal State 403(b) plan on April 1st.
Right now, there are FIVE 403(b) providers. In April, there will be only ONE. And that will be Fidelity. You have probably been getting letters about this if you are enrolled in the 403(b) plan. If you are not sure how to feel about it, I am going to tell you right now: you need to feel GREAT. This is especially true of people who are not currently participating in a voluntary plan but are thinking about doing it in the future. Your life will become so much easier as the result of this consolidation.
Back in November, I was wining about how I love Fidelity but how I had to decide against them, and go for the Savings Plan 401(k) because of the expensive investment options within Fidelity. Well, my friends, that is changing. This is a big enough change to make me wish I got hired about a year later and you should appreciate this big moment. A few things you need to know about the change and what it means to you:
A. Here is the link that will give you more info on the transition: https://nb.fidelity.com/public/nb/calstate/transition-home
B. If you are a current participant in the 403(b), you will get information sent to your house in February.
C. There will be workshops and educational resources available on campus between February and April and you better go!
D. The investment choices are getting expanded and for someone (me), a passive investor who believes that a 403(b) account is not the place to do active management, this is really exciting. Starting in April, there will be 5 index funds you can use to build a really good diversified portfolio. All the available choices are on the website I mentioned above. Take a look and celebrate (just make sure you press the investments tab to see all the choices).
E. This consolidation is REALLY good for you because now, instead of getting sales pitches, you will be getting education advice. The 403(b) market is pretty messed up because the “advisors” you see on campus are really salesmen trying to convince you to choose their provider over the other bunch (see more on this on #4). When you only have one provider, it is so much easier to do what is best for employees. Fidelity will no longer have to put its efforts into snatching you as a customer from Voya or MetLife. Instead, it can focus on helping you understand what is going on in that 403(b) of yours. This is really good news.
F. On a related note, next time when you are power walking, listen to this podcast: http://teachandretirerich.com/podcasts/2015_13_fidelity.m4a in an interview with Fidelity going through the consolidation for 403(b) providers in the marketplace in general and it can explain many of the things you will be experiencing soon. I don’t want to hear that you don’t have time for this (there is always that one hour of Real Housewives of Atlanta you can trade for some 403(b) fun)!
G. The crazy idea that the more providers you can offer within your 403(b) plan, the more diversified your retirement plan is, can finally die. Having 1 or 55 providers is irrelevant; the choices you have within the provider is what matters and now you got good choices.
How Do We Survive All These Investment Choices... and a BONUS: Upcoming 403(b) Changes
By Inga Chira
Right now, there are FIVE 403(b) providers. In April, there will be only ONE. And that will be Fidelity. You have probably been getting letters about this if you are enrolled in the 403(b) plan. If you are not sure how to feel about it, I am going to tell you right now: you need to feel GREAT. This is especially true of people who are not currently participating in a voluntary plan but are thinking about doing it in the future. Your life will become so much easier as the result of this consolidation.
Back in November, I was wining about how I love Fidelity but how I had to decide against them, and go for the Savings Plan 401(k) because of the expensive investment options within Fidelity. Well, my friends, that is changing. This is a big enough change to make me wish I got hired about a year later and you should appreciate this big moment. A few things you need to know about the change and what it means to you:
A. Here is the link that will give you more info on the transition: https://nb.fidelity.com/public/nb/calstate/transition-home
B. If you are a current participant in the 403(b), you will get information sent to your house in February.
C. There will be workshops and educational resources available on campus between February and April and you better go!
D. The investment choices are getting expanded and for someone (me), a passive investor who believes that a 403(b) account is not the place to do active management, this is really exciting. Starting in April, there will be 5 index funds you can use to build a really good diversified portfolio. All the available choices are on the website I mentioned above. Take a look and celebrate (just make sure you press the investments tab to see all the choices).
E. This consolidation is REALLY good for you because now, instead of getting sales pitches, you will be getting education advice. The 403(b) market is pretty messed up because the “advisors” you see on campus are really salesmen trying to convince you to choose their provider over the other bunch (see more on this on #4). When you only have one provider, it is so much easier to do what is best for employees. Fidelity will no longer have to put its efforts into snatching you as a customer from Voya or MetLife. Instead, it can focus on helping you understand what is going on in that 403(b) of yours. This is really good news.
F. On a related note, next time when you are power walking, listen to this podcast: http://teachandretirerich.com/podcasts/2015_13_fidelity.m4a in an interview with Fidelity going through the consolidation for 403(b) providers in the marketplace in general and it can explain many of the things you will be experiencing soon. I don’t want to hear that you don’t have time for this (there is always that one hour of Real Housewives of Atlanta you can trade for some 403(b) fun)!
G. The crazy idea that the more providers you can offer within your 403(b) plan, the more diversified your retirement plan is, can finally die. Having 1 or 55 providers is irrelevant; the choices you have within the provider is what matters and now you got good choices.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Wild West: Providing Fiduciary Advice To Public School Employees | Now Available
After working with teachers for almost two decades and finding very few competent, fiduciary-based advisors working in the space I decided to write a book to help the industry better learn how to work with this great niche.
I titled the book Wild West due to the conditions that most teacher retirement plans operate under. The products sold and the statements made to teachers and their colleagues would be criminal if done in an ERISA plan, yet teachers are not protected by ERISA and are taken advantage of every day.
The goal of this book is to create a much broader community of fiduciary advisors serving this market. I'm not asking you to (fiduciary advisors) to work exclusively with public school employees, simply to expand your knowledge base and be part of the solution they need.
The book is less than 150 pages and only 20 short chapters. It mixes the technical with the personal and issues a strong call to action that I hope many of you will follow. Many non-advisors have asked if they should read this book (teachers, administrators, etc.) and my answer is that they should consider Teach and Retire Rich by Dan Otter first, then perhaps my book.
The Table of Contents follows:
Chapter 1 Mini-Memoir
Chapter 2 The Fiduciary Opportunity
Chapter 3 The State of the School Employees Marketplace
Chapter 4 Business Models
Chapter 5 The 403(b) Retirement Plan
Chapter 6 403(b) Products
Chapter 7 Stable Value
Chapter 8 The 457(b) Retirement Plan
Chapter 9 Other School Employee Plans
Chapter 10 Compliance Third Party Administrators
Chapter 11 Enrolling into a 403(b) or 457(b)
Chapter 12 Defined Benefit Plans
Chapter 13 Social Security & School Employees
Chapter 14 California-Specific Laws
Chapter 15 Odds & Ends
Chapter 16 Pension Maximization
Chapter 17 Professional Organizations
Chapter 18 Unions: Good, Bad and the Ugly
Chapter 19 Dan Otter
Chapter 20 A Call To Action
Buy at Google (coming soon)
The book is $14.99 but all the proceeds goto charity and I will make the book available to colleges and universities at no cost.
I've created a website for the book at www.wildwest403b.com and a LinkedIn group here.
Thank you to all who have helped me over the years get this book out, you know who you are.
Scott Dauenhauer, CFP, MPAS, AIF
Thursday, November 05, 2015
Warren Commission: Villas, Castles, and Vacations
Senator Elizabeth Warren began an investigation of insurance company non-cash compensation methods several months ago, what she found will be shocking to most people, but not to those of us who've been following the unethical sales practices of the annuity industry for decades.
Titled Villas, Castles, and Vacations: How Perks and Giveaways Create Conflicts of Interest in the Annuity Industry, the document outlines some of the incredible perks that insurance agents receive in addition to commissions when they sell annuity products. Warren hinted at some of these perks in a Senate Banking Committee back in April, you can watch her below:
In this report Warren attempts to discover the entirety of non-cash compensation, though she isn't entirely successful, here's an excerpt:
"Kickbacks pose an especially dangerous problem. When companies can offer kickbacks to agents for recommending high-cost financial products, and when those kickbacks are hidden from the customers, the likelihood that consumers will be duped into buying bad products increases sharply.
To explore the prevalence of this type of conflict of interest, in April 2015 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) opened an investigation, asking fifteen leading annuity providers for information on whether they offered non-cash incentives such as lavish cruises, luxury car leases, and other perks to annuity sales agents to promote their products and whether their customers were aware of the agents’ compensation arrangements."Reading this report one wonders how the insurance industry continues to get away with such unethical and clearly conflicted business practices, it's a testament to the power of that industry and Warren is confronting them head on.
Dan Otter of 403bwise.com and I recently did a podcast on such compensation practices and you should be able to listen to it soon by going to www.teachandretirerich.com and clicking the podcast link.
I encourage you to watch the above video and then dive into Warren's report.
It's time to put a stop to these unethical compensation practices.
Scott Dauenhauer, CFP, MPAS, AIF
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
403bWise Webinars - Can You Teach and Retire Rich?
My friend and co-author is hosting a webinar for school employees on September 21st, 2013. If you've never heard Dan present, you won't wont to miss it. $15 is a steal and the best investment you'll ever make for retirement. Click the picture below to register.
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