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:
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