Personal Finance for Educators

In my last post, The Pension Path , I outlined the basic details of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) and how it works. I started writing a follow-up post unpacking some examples, but I realized there was another conversation I needed to have first—about my perspective on teaching as a lifestyle. At the same time, I attended the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators ( https://amte.net/ ) Conference and heard a powerful opening session by Dr. Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, Dr. Nicol Howard, Dr. Lateefah Id-Deen, Dr. Carlos Lopez Leiva, and Dr. Farshid Safi titled “Moving Beyond Transactional Relationships in Educational Spaces.” As often seems to happen, the ideas I was thinking through in a personal finance context were deeply connected to conversations within in mathematics education. I'm grateful to these colleagues for eloquently discussing and unpacking the critical need for centering supportive, constructive, and humanizing relationships in our classrooms, communities, and ...

Hi Readers! It has been a bit since I last posted. Just a result of the normal ebb and flow of the semester that comes with education and the logistics of break, holidays, etc. Now that we’re working into the second semester, I’m finding my thoughts returning to personal finance and trying to support educators out there looking for resources. I want to focus this post on a benefit of teaching that, at least for folks within Wisconsin, should be front and center in terms of how they think about their financial stability and wellness: The Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS).  This post is part of my path series. If you want to learn about the series, check out my post  Charting Paths to Financial Stability and Freedom . My goal is to describe paths that: Are accessible to most folks in public education in Wisconsin. Do not require complicated financial structures. Do not require complicated behavior. Provide flexibility to adjust direction as life circumstances change. The Pension...

In my last few posts, I’ve discussed some of the bigger ideas in personal finance, offering general guidance with fewer details. I started this way because I believe that as educators  navigate their personal finance journey , we must balance experience and efficiency ,  focusing less on numbers.  At the same time, I think it is important to acknowledge the obstacles that can prevent teachers from achieving financial stability and independence including low salary, student debt, affordable housing, and health care. We cannot and should not ignore that folks within education are poorly compensated for their work. The choice to work within education comes with an acceptance of certain financial limitations.  These challenges withstanding, I think we need to do a better job making the argument that it is possible to achieve financial independence and stability as an educator. Doing so requires thoughtful planning, strategic action, and patience. This is a...

September marks the start of a new semester, making it a fitting time to reflect on a benefit of our profession that might be overlooked at first glance: the predictable academic calendar. After 20 years in the classroom, I see the academic calendar as akin to a fringe benefit of the job. Before diving too deeply into this, I want to outline some assumptions for this discussion. For most teachers in the United States: The school year begins in mid-August and ends in early June. There is an unpaid summer break lasting seven to nine weeks. The contract day typically starts around 7 AM and ends around 4 PM, Monday through Friday. Classes are not held on most holidays or weekends. The calendar includes a winter break in late December/early January, a spring break in March/April, and a few other breaks based on context. The academic calendar for the following year can be reliably predicted based on previous years. Of course, there is variation in these statements since schedules are shaped ...

Valuing your time or the dime. As we  navigate our personal finance journey  by setting out goals, managing behavior, and determining mathematical paths, we will inevitably start to think about how these components interact. Ideally, the three will work together and we can maintain behavior that keeps us on the path and leads us to our goal. But in reality there are bound to be tension points where we need to decide which idea takes precedence over the others. For example, are we set on the destination (goals) or will similar destinations suffice? Is a particular path (math) the only one that we will consider or might we take detours if they present themselves? How flexible are we willing to be with our mode of transportation (behavior) given the different options available?  To continue on the journey metaphor, let's say we are say we are planning a trip from Wisconsin to New England (my wife and I were fortunate to do this in 2023). There are a lot of places we could vi...

Where are you headed? One of my favorite quotes as of late is “All models are wrong, some are useful,” which is generally attributed to a British statistician named Dr. George Box. I take it to mean that in our desire to understand things, humans inevitably try to create a model of the phenomenon under study. Although models are useful, they are simplified approximations of a thing. At best, they describe or predict facets of the phenomenon. But I think e very model will eventually have a point where is ceases to be useful.  Please keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post. In order to focus my discussion of personal finance, I'm going to consider a model  that focuses on the interplay of three things: behavior, goals, and mathematics. Together, these three are components of one's personal finance journey. Goals set the destination. They are where you think you want to go right now. Goals might change along the way as you experience the journey. Mathematics outl...

You are not a number My daughter Caroline's popsicle stick me and her. As a mathematics educator, I think a lot (probably too much) about how numbers influence the way we see the world. I see the influence of numbers all over in my professional and personal life. Folks take a complex and nuanced phenomena and try to simplify or reduce the thing by assigning a number. Assigning the number isn’t really the problem though. It’s how quickly folks can lose sight of what the numbers represent. They then operate on the numbers as if they were context free and not connected to complex people, ideas, beliefs, etc. It’s easy to get fixated on making big numbers bigger or making small numbers smaller. When bigness or smallness becomes the focus, we can lose sight of ourselves and values in pursuit of efficiency. I also see folks reason passionately about quantities that are familiar (e.g., ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, quarters, halves, tenths, hundredths) and get hand wavy about numbers w...