Anthony Isola

403(b) on a Card

Teachers finances are intentionally made to be unnecessarily complicated and expensive. This is the result of the toxic combination of  conflict driven salespeople combined with  mass financial illiteracy. Helaine Olen and Harold Pollack just came out with a great book that reinforces the fact that personal finance does not have to be complicated. In fact, so called…

Desperately Seeking Powerball

2016 is just a few weeks in and I’m already tapping my toe, and feeling a little anxious. No, it’s not the fact that the stock market is off to a rocky start, or that I didn’t win Powerball (I didn’t play).  It’s the fact that this is all everyone is talking about. Call it…

Teachers’ Pensions need F.B.I. Protection

Being a former public school teacher for twenty years, I know how God-awful the average 403(b) plan can be. Now comes the not so stunning revelation…the state- run pension plans can be even more diabolical! Rhode Island teachers have called upon both the S.E.C. and F.B.I. to investigate some very serious allegations. Several hedge funds are…

Investment Lessons from Genghis Khan

Teachers and other small investors need to look at the investment landscape as a financial battlefield. Conflicted armies of salespeople, brandishing lawyer-produced camouflage are an imposing enemy. The corpses of educators’ decimated investment portfolios are strewn throughout a fifty-state battlefield. Who better to learn the ways to combat a potent enemy than from the greatest…

The Devil’s Financial Dictionary for Teachers

Teachers are often misled with financial jargon meant to obscure the truth. Here is a quick translation of these ten innocent sounding terms. Pull it out the next time an insurance salesperson tries to sell you the financial equivalent of The Brooklyn Bridge. My inspiration for this post was Jason Zweig’s instant classic, The Devil’s…

Holy, My 403(b) Plan Is Not Free, Batman!

The reason most teachers do not have low-cost index funds in their 403(b) plans is because they are too inexpensive. Financial salespeople have little incentive to sell a product when they will receive a small percentage of a number like 0.10%, the cost of a typical total market index product. On the other hand, provide…

Some investing lessons from Julius Caesar

Waking up this morning to see my name on Michael Johnston’s  50 Best Investing Insights of 2015 was a pleasant surprise. Seeing my name with my colleagues, Josh, Barry, Mike, Ben and Kris is quite flattering. The rest of the list Bill McBride, Cullen Roche, James Osborne, Jason Zweig, Morgan Housel, etc., speaks for itself.  Especially when I thought…

Only the Paranoid Teachers Survive

Friends do not sell friends overpriced investment products or  expensive insurance that they do not need. Unfortunately, too many teachers equate “nice guys” with being a good financial advisor. Using this as the sole criteria for choosing someone to manage your finances is a recipe for disaster. After reviewing dozens of horrendously expensive, ill-constructed, and…

Breaking Tax News for Teachers

“This highly popular write-off allows millions of K-12 teachers, and others who qualify, to deduct as much as $250 of unreimbursed expenses for classroom supplies. The law expands the provision to include professional-development costs and indexes it for inflation.”- The Wall Street Journal 12/18/15 Teachers just received a welcome holiday surprise. They will now be…

Gate Keepers from Hell

The investment options contained in most 403(b) plans, in the words of the French, are ‘garbage’. The majority are chosen by conflicted Compliance Third Party Administrators (CTPAs) who are paid by the vendors or, incredibly, even owned by them!   Pseudo “preferred provider lists” are created and teachers become cannon fodder for greedy, large insurance companies…