What We Do

The Teach & Retire Program provides pension, retirement, and financial education and assistance to school employees. It involves confidential, one-to-one meetings between teachers and program volunteers via Zoom or other web-meeting software for their safety and convenience.

Why We Do It

The Teach & Retire Program  was created based on conversations we had after reading the New York Times article “Think Your Retirement Plan is Bad? Talk to a Teacher.”

This article pointed out how many teachers chose the wrong retirement options because they were not educated properly on the benefits and risks of very complex policies offered by a multitude of companies.

We also spoke with teachers, people in the financial services industry, and salespeople who gave us the inside scoop on why a lack of education and poor service exists including:

• Teachers do not have enough time for retirement planning.
• Meeting locations and times are inconvenient.
• School districts are often served by inexperienced sales people.
• Companies prefer to sell plans that have high fees.
• Retirement savings are exposed to stock market risk and not adjusted as teachers near retirement.

We thought we could do something about these problems because…

Steve Carter had worked with teachers and in the retirement planning industry for over 35 years and had observed these problems first hand.

Sam Ingersoll had great respect and appreciation for educators as a result of years of non-profit work with schools and the experience of his children (one of whom has Down syndrome) in public schools.

As a CPA for over 27 years, Frank DeLuccia had done tax and financial planning for many educators and had analyzed many policies that were not appropriate.

So we designed a process where school district staff could get retirement education and personal assistance with whatever issues they faced.

After piloting the program in 9 school districts and helping over 3,100 school employees during the last three years, we think it is worth expanding.

The people who educate our children across our country deserve our support. This is particularly true now that public school funding and public employee pensions are increasingly under attack. The stock market is booming now but many analysts believe a crash or at least a market correction is coming. Public employee retirement plans at risk.

Program details are on this website. Please let us know if you or your school district would like to participate.