This Nurse Reveals The Truth About 403Bs - Ep. 29
I have always been under the misconception that the 403b and the 401k were created equal until I met Nancy. Nancy Bachety is a public school teacher based in the northeast. After discovering her 403b plan considerably underperformed the market, she went on a mission to get answers. What she discovered was unexpected and unacceptable. Teachers, healthcare workers, clergy and non-profit employees alike are stuck with costly inferior options throughout their 403bs. Nancy is on a mission to change that and to help other participants make sense of their 403(b) plans. Her goal is to prevent others from falling prey to the system designed to make hard-working public employees overpay.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: 00:00 All right. Welcome back to the Nurses on FIRE podcast. I have the honor of having Nancy Bachety joining me to discuss 403Bs. And the reason why I wanted to bring Nancy on this show is because she's been a teacher and she discovered something in her 403B plans that was pretty disturbing. And like nurses, teachers have 403Bs that they have the option to save the retirement funds. And, I wanted to bring Nancy on to impart the knowledge that she has learned in her own self-discovery, about 403B plans and what we should be looking out for to make sure that our investments and our retirement is protected. So, thank you so much Nancy for joining us on the Nurses on FIRE podcast. I'll give you a moment to tell us what you're all about and then we'll dig in deep into your story.
Nancy Bachety: 00:55 Oh great. Thank you for having me, Naseema, my pleasure. So I, like you said, I've been a teacher for 16 plus a few months years and recently left my job. I retired earlier than I was expecting to planning on it. A couple of things happened to that kind of allowed me to do that. Mostly it all came from when I discovered that my 403B plans had a lot of fees in them as of, let me go back a little bit because as a first year teacher, when I started at 41, I was late in the game beyond late in the game. We had made some financial errors. Well, sum it up as my husband and I and we were raising four children and one income combined with these financial mistakes. I started at less than zero and I immediately started to save in the 403B because that was the investment vehicle that teachers had an access to and it was sold to me as a 401K except it's different because it's for teachers.
Nancy Bachety: 01:53 As somebody in my twenties when I was working, I had a 401K so I understood that. I also had an IRA when I was a teenager because I understood the value of saving and compounding. But what I didn't know is that the 403B is really not like the 401K at all which most people are familiar with and it's sold to teachers and nurses and public employees like nonprofits as well, and other administrators in school and anybody in the healthcare systems have access to a 403B and they are primarily sold to teachers. I don't know exactly the percentage of that are sold to nurses, but they're sold to teachers as an annuity product. 75% of 403B plans in teachers' accounts are annuities. And I'll contrast that with about 5% maybe that are in the 401K holdings or in annuities. And that's a big difference. 401Ks are governed and protected under ERISA laws and that is not the case at all. There's no governing agency that protects teachers in their holdings in 403B plans.
Naseema McElroy: 03:02 Because they're under the annuity umbrella. Right. So yeah, unlike 401Ks.
Nancy Bachety: 03:09 Right. It's not because they're sold as annuities. Annuities would be protected, I suppose, if it was like a 401K because 401Ks are governed and protected. But the 403B plans when they started, we're not governed and protected. And that is allowing the insurance companies and the banks that market and sell to teachers, it's allowing them to come in there and sell higher priced products that would ever be accepted in the 401K worlds. Otherwise they'd be opening themselves up for a lawsuit, which can and has happened. But you're not allowed to sue for bad plans in a 403B world because there's nothing to sue. There's nobody stopping the high fees from being placed upon the teachers in the 403Bs.
Naseema McElroy: 03:56 So let's just stop there and dive into why would somebody want to sue their 403B.
Nancy Bachety: 04:02 Well, good question because when they find out that the fees are excessive and I say excessive only because I think they are excessive and the worlds in the 403B are great, they would come to realize that the employer should have been able to offer them a better plan that wasn't as expensive. Oftentimes, there are no low cost index fund options in a 403B and oftentimes they're only sold as annuity products or custodial fee mutual funds. And as a result, you have fees such as commissions for the salespeople, aka advisors, they're not often advisors.
Nancy Bachety: 04:46 You have expense ratios which are common in any funds, but oftentimes the funds that are sold to teachers have high expense ratios like 1.5 or 2.0 or anywhere is up to even 5% and oftentimes in the 403B plans, you have other fees such as front loaded fees and you have something called a cap where the funds are capped at earning a certain maximum. And if your index funds traditionally over course of since the lifetime of the stock market investing have returned 10% 11% whereas these fund, these fees, these caps will stop the investor from earning anything beyond say 5 or 6% and the insurance companies pocket the difference.
Naseema McElroy: 05:39 So like what that actually means for your money is that when you're investing, a lot of your money that you're putting in is being eaten up by fees. So that reduces the amount that you're even exposing to the market. And then in your investments in themselves, they're limited in their growth because there are these caps in place. So, you're missing money on both sides. So that would make you kind of angry enough to want to take action against somebody. But the thing is most people just aren't aware of these things. Right? Is that what you're finding? I know for nurses, most nurses are just like, you know, they're lucky enough to even invest in their retirement accounts, you know? Is that the same that you're seeing with teachers?
Nancy Bachety: 06:24 Yes. And you summed it up beautifully, very eloquently too. That is the case. And to make matters where sometimes they wouldn't know, but then they might be told what's a percent or it's 2% of your investment amount. That sounds like pennies to a lot of people. 1% of a dollar is a penny. So oftentimes it's just ignored as being insignificant and nobody does the math to see how it would compound. But if you did the math over one's lifetime, maybe a few decades of working and investing, it will amount to over $200,000 less. At the end of the day when you're ready to cash out less in your account. And that's with a very modest contribution every month, maybe oftentimes not every year, $200,000 imagine that just being the difference of your balance. So yeah, you summed it up.
Naseema McElroy: 07:15 You know why I find this especially troublesome is because nurses and teachers are, you know, this is a female predominated workforce. And so, not only are we coming in with this income gap, so we're getting paid less upfront, but then when we try to invest our money to have some savings, we're getting hit on that in as well with these fees and these caps. And so it's pretty disheartening. Like to see what the financial services industry is doing, you know, to this female predominant workforce. Like it's, you know, so this is why I'm bringing this podcast because we need to wake up and we need to understand that these things matter. Yes, you know, it's awesome that you've actually started to invest, but now like you really need to take control of your money and really understand where your money is going. Because if you don't, people will find ways to jip you.
Nancy Bachety: 08:17 People will find ways to take advantage of you and we have to be more conscious when it just comes to where our money is going, how it's being spent, and what fees we're incurring. And so thank you so much Nancy for, you know, just highlighting this and I mean like I am like in awe that you are able to even, you know, pick up on this on your own. Like what prompted this for you to be like, hold on, like there's an issue here. Like when did this start? Was this right when you first started working or was it over time?
Nancy Bachety: 08:50 I wish it was right when I started working, but it wasn't. I had been investing in a fund then a fee then an annuity for about 10 years and maybe a little bit less because I met another advisor who told me that I could be spending more than I needed to. And so he put me in another account, which had a lot of front loaded, which means that if I contributed $100, maybe only $95 went in because he got 5% and that was only one fee. So it took a little while for me to get the message and it had been in front of me. I just ignored it because I expected 1 or 2% was not a lot. And finally after reading a few different articles, I realized that it didn't have to be this way and that my neighbors in the 401K world was paying ridiculously lower fees that I thought was not fair or was wrong.
Nancy Bachety: 09:42 I felt very wronged and fortunately I didn't feel like I made a bad decision. I felt that I was sold a bad product and that those products should never have been offered to me in the first place because I've come across many teachers. Once they became aware that felt stupid, felt ignorant, felt like they should have known better, and women especially are kind of pushed to feel that way. When I went to the advisor that was on the account and it wasn't an advisor, it was a sales rep and they're mostly men, made it sound as if I was asking questions that were silly and gave me an answer in another language basically that made it awkward and made it uncomfortable and made me kept feeling like, why didn't I understand it? So it wasn't until I did a lot of reading on my own and I feel angry about that because I've considered myself pretty smart.
Nancy Bachety: 10:40 I should understand these things. And I did. And once I did, then I understood what they were doing. The manipulation, I understood that the 400 page prospectuses given to us are meant to make us quit from trying to learn. And when I tried to withdraw from that account, not only was I paying all those fees, but now my head something called a surrender fee. And the surrender fees come into play because the salesperson earns a commission on every dollar that goes in. And so the company has to recoup if I'm going to withdraw my money because they already paid out that commission. So now they're charging me excess fees to take my money out. And it's not like I'm taking it out to spend, I'm taking it out to put into another better 403B plan. So it just was too much and it made me angry and it made me want to voice it out so other teachers don't fall into this. And really significantly this movement with the 403B plans has kind of caught on. And Tara Siegel Bernard from the New York times wrote a wonderful series back in 2016 to highlight it and Tergesen from the Wall Street Journal is doing the same thing and new articles come out. It's in the media now, but it's still being pushed down and squashed because the big banks and the big insurance companies are heavy, heavy lobbyists. And the people that we elect in Washington DC, they have access to TSP plans that have an index funds in them and they have fees of 0.001 so while they're enjoying low cost retirement plans, they're allowing this to take place. You could see how it could be upsetting and infuriating to a teacher or a nurse or any health care or nonprofit employee once they find out about it.
Naseema McElroy: 12:30 So before we talk about actionable steps that nurses can take to make sure that they're protecting their assets, what were some things that you did once you found out that you were paying these crazy fees?
Nancy Bachety: 12:42 Wow. There were so many things. I could go so many ways with that. I probably, in fact, I stopped contributing to the high cost provider. I'm going to call them a vendor. I could name names. That's fine. AXA was the first one and Ameriprise was the second one. So I stopped and I did a couple of things. I researched ways that we could bring in a better plan into our particular school district. I found out that there was a vehicle called Aspire. They would be our way in to be able to invest directly into Vanguard, which had the low cost funds, so I wasn't able to directly invest in Vanguard. We had to go through this company called Aspire. So anytime somebody gets involved, there's money that's lost, but the money lost to Aspire was so, so, so much less, and I wouldn't even call it loss. It was money well spent to be able to invest directly in Vanguard and I'm talking about $40 a year. So it was not a lot, but we couldn't have Vanguard on our platform directly because they weren't on the third party administrators list of preferred vendors because Vanguard doesn't pay to get on the lineup like the other companies do.
Naseema McElroy: 13:57 Right. So let me just reiterate that right there. Like how does an investment company get on the preferred vendors list for these companies?
Nancy Bachety: 14:05 Well that's a good question. So I called our third party administrator, the ones that serve as our state in New York is Omni. And on their website it says that they have preferred vendors and that they have them screened. They're vetted from an advisory committee. So, of course, I called them and said, well I'd like to get on that advisory committee because I don't think that it's fair. And I was told, well, you know, it's not really an advisory committee that meets, but you know, they met at the beginning or they met at one time. So that was the walk around of, well they're on the list and they paid to join. They pay to get in on the list and they'll turn around and make their money from us, the participants. And that's why these banks are willing to pay.
Naseema McElroy: 14:52 So let me just zoom in a little bit and just like if somebody is listening and they're like wondering like what lists are you talking about? We're talking about the list of the investments that you have within your portfolio. So you have your 403B as this house, right? It's just kind of that the house that your investments live in and then you have a list of investments to pick from. The investments are invested in different things. They have different expense ratios or different fees associated with them. And so they're all different. And usually what happens is that your company kind of throws you in some kind of mix that they just pick because of, like some survey that you filled out when you first you joined your 401K and they just kind of throw you in there and you never really look at it.
Naseema McElroy: 15:36 So they never change it. But you at any time can go into look at this list and change your investments. However, what Nancy is saying is that unlike a 401K, which we're told 403Bs are exactly the same as except it's for our public sector. It's for our teachers, it's for nurses, it's for our firefighters. You know, it's just for that our public sector. So it's the same but it's different. But like in a 401K, they are obligated to have at least one index fund available for you to pick from, which means that you have lower fees. And the FI world we're a big fan of index funds becauseof the built in diversification and all those kinds of things. But this is not even an option in some 403B plans because it depends on if that vendor, like a Vanguard, we all love our Vanguard funds.
Naseema McElroy: 16:31 Vanguard isn't about to pay you. Vanguard has a very awesome philosophy about how their company is run. They don't even take affiliates. And so they're not about to pay somebody to be on their platform because they're all about bringing value to their members. To everybody who has Vanguard funds is basically an owner in the company. And so they have a unique structure. And so this is what we're talking about. Like when you look at your funds that you have available to invest in, they are limiting your options to these funds with high fees and with surrender charges and with high expense ratios often front loaded. And so our ability to have our money invested, be invested in grow in the future is really, really limited. And so just to kind of bring it back and summarize, because I know it can be a little bit confusing, especially if people are like, hey, I just figured out how to invest in this thing. Now you're telling me that their taking all my money. Yes we are telling you that, but we're also giving about to provide you some alternatives. So Nancy, you were saying that you stopped contributing, you tried to get on this invisible advisory committee that basically they just, and then that's how you found out that people were paying the play.
Nancy Bachety: 17:47 That's correct. And when you are working in a company that has a 401K, you know and can expect that the business personnel, let's say the human resources person in charge of the 401K plan and its administration, let's call her Mary. Mary has done her homework. Mary knows the vendors and chooses from among vendors. They might even put a request for proposals from different vendors. And when I say the word vendors, what I mean is companies like Vanguard or Fidelity or Ameriprise or Voya or AXA. And Mary's job as a diligent employee is to find the best plan that it can offer for its employees. So Mary will say, well, this plan is very expensive. Voya's plan is very expensive. It has funds that have high expense ratios in them and expenses and Ameriprise is always selling annuity products. But Vanguard's plans and Fidelity plans look wonderful. I'm going to choose between those two.
Nancy Bachety: 18:49 And then they choose one and all the employees that come along are happy paying low fees in their Vanguard fund that Mary vetted. Let's contrast that in a 403B plan, the human resources or the business staff, let's call him Joe. Joe says, I can't tell you anything. We have these 200 vendors are all lined up. Go. Good luck. And that's what they do. And they allow those 200 vendors, which includes the Voyas and the AXAS and the Ameriprise and the Oppenheimer's and the etc. Fill in the blank. California has 200 vendors on their lineup alone. So not only aren't they vetted, but in most cases, they're not the best option for you, the participant.
Naseema McElroy: 19:32 But even if they aren't the best option, like when somebody is, even if they are good options, if somebody is presented with a list of like 200 things to choose from, like especially just coming into the workforce and they're just like, I just want to get my retirement accounts started, they're just going to ask their neighbor or they're going to ask the, you know, HR person. So which one should I pick? Or if there's a rep there you know that has a nice suit on and there's somebody that's presentable, they'll probably pick that company. Like there's no real due diligence done when vetting these companies because people honestly just don't know that picking one company or the other can cost them multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which is really, really sad. But again, this is why we're sharing this. This is why I'm having Nancy come on in top. I'm not exactly sure for me and my 403B, we have just one company to choose from. Like we don't have any option and it's actually a good company. Me and Nancy actually did the back end analysis and our plan is okay, but I don't know if other hospital entities that have 403B eligibility have multiple vendors. I'm not sure. But teachers have all these multiple vendors to choose from. And so, is it really interesting that they would make a teacher coming into a job signing up for their 403B make this kind of choice?
Nancy Bachety: 21:01 I know and one of the reasons is because they are not allowed to be construed as giving advice. They're not protected, they're not protected under the non Erisa laws. So they're not protected. So they don't want to be seen as that. And what you just said too is that you have, who are you going to turn to? You're going to turn to the person in the suit. Most cases it's a male, or you're going to turn to your neighbor who's also been sold these plans by that suited man. And so that's what would happen. And that's where they're going to get their information so then they go down that rabbit hole.
Naseema McElroy: 21:34 But we're going to teach them to do better. So yes, let's talk about what someone needs to arm themselves with to make sure that their 403B is working for them.
Nancy Bachety: 21:47 Great. So when you and I spoke, I said, well, just go out and ask your sales rep, your salesman, your advisor, what his fees are or how he gets paid. And I also said, if you don't see that sales person just call the 800 number on your statement. So that's exactly what you did. And you asked, well how do you get paid? And you had such an awesome answer that I think you understood well and your plan is definitely a better one than I've ever seen an education. And so that's exactly what I would say. There are steps to take and that is it to call the 800 number because you might not ever see your salesperson and ask that hard question. It's easy if you're on the phone especially, but there are steps to be taken and can be taken to change it.
Naseema McElroy: 22:35 So if you have this list of like, you know, I'm in California, obviously, so 200 vendors that you can possibly go with and you find out that your vendor is super horrible charging you high fees. How do you go about using another vendor?
Nancy Bachety: 22:51 So in education, you would simply stop contributions, go online and stop those contributions. We use a third party administrator and direct your moneys into another vendor. So your question is how do you find out who the better vendor is? Well, I would say you go to 403bwise.org and you look up better vendors. Join the Facebook group for, it's called Teach and Retire Rich Facebook group. Anybody though you have to be a teacher, but they might let nurses in if you're a part of the 403B plan and ask that question because there'll be plenty of opportunities on people that were in your shoes previously to go ahead and say, well let me see the list of vendors that you have. These are your best options. And in addition to that, so you don't have to rely on anybody else in particular. There are simple explanations of fees that we can understand and then you can learn and make that decision yourself and identify the best vendors that are out there or find one to bring in.
Naseema McElroy: 23:55 You also have the choice to bring it in, bring in another vendor. And that's the same for everybody. As I understand, like if I really found that my 403B was unethical charging all these fees, I could go to my HR department and be like, listen, this is what I found, these are the fees, this is what we're paying, you know, like can we look at another vendor or these are some vendors that I researched and recommend. Can we look at these other vendors? If not, you know, I have the choice to take my money out of that fund and use it and put it somewhere else. Correct?
Nancy Bachety: 24:32 Yes, that's correct. 100% it's your money.
Naseema McElroy: 24:35 Yeah. So we have more power over our money than we think and I know it can be intimidating, especially like I know I was telling you about Craig, he's this big tall like husky wild white former football player guy and you know, nurses are oftentimes intimidated to talk to him. There is his female counterpart that's there. So people will go to her over him. But like it's already pretty intimidating a lot of times for us to talk about this. But in order for us to get ahead, and if you're listening to this podcast, I know you want to do better with your money, you're going to have to get uncomfortable sometimes and understand that you have to take control of your money. There's no one else that's going to do it for you. So these are things that you really have to look into and take action on. So yeah, this is really good, Nancy.
Nancy Bachety: 25:29 Yeah, well, it's really wonderful that you're highlighting this and bringing that to nurses and anybody working in health care that has 403B plans who doesn't understand or realize the funds. So kudos to you for bringing that out. Then it's a message that needs to be heard, broadcasted, yelled, screamed, and just changed. Really, the system needs to be changed.
Naseema McElroy: 25:49 Well, I really want to thank you for opening my eyes to it because like I said, I've only been exposed to my 403B through this job. And of all the hospitals that I've worked at, this is the first time I've actually had a 403B. Everywhere else has been a 401K. And I've always, and I've even been telling people that same thing, a 403B is just like a 401K except it's for a government entity and you know, and a 401K is obligated to have an index fund and I believe in index fund investing. And so I've always said that, and I didn't realize that this wasn't something that was widely available for 403B plans. So I was so happy. So I met Nancy at a CampFI. If you guys don't know what CampFI is, Google it. 'Cause It's an awesome experience to collaborate and, and just the fellowship with other people on the track to financial independence, just super low key and camps all over the country. But Nancy presented at CampFI. I was blown away because I love my 403B because I have the 457 option and I'm just like, this is bomb. This is the best thing. But then when I found out that it's not every four Oh three B is not created equally. I wanted to make sure that you guys knew that and you knew what to do to empower yourselves to make some changes. So thank you again, Nancy, so much for sharing that information with me for sharing that information at the camp and on the Nurses on FIRE podcast. Is there anything else, any tidbits, any extra things you want to share with the audience or you want to leave us with?
Nancy Bachety: 27:23 Well, you summed it up beautifully. I think the one thing that I would add is that it's kind of what you just mentioned, too. You have access to a 457 plan and that's similar. It's a retirement vehicle to the 403B and nurses and teachers could invest in both funds or both vehicles rather at the same time, and they have maximums, but your maximums is essentially doubled because if your contribution limits are $19,500 in 2020 in a 457 you could make the same dollar amount contribution in a 403B. So you can essentially have a wonderful vehicle to shelter and protect and to invest a lot more money. And in addition to those two vehicles, there's the Roth IRA feature too. And in many times for teachers and nurses, that might be a better low cost vehicle, but those three vehicles, it's not just 403B that's sold.
Naseema McElroy: 28:19 Yeah, and I fully recommend, especially for nurses working in California where we have really high salaries in order to lower your taxable income, make sure you're optimizing those 403Bs, maxing out those 403Bs, maxing out those 457s because there's no other way you can. I mean besides the solo 401K where you can divert $39,000 a year into non-taxable funds. And so yeah, I totally recommend taking advantage of that. But then on the other side, now that you know this information, making sure that you're understanding the fees that you're paying or if you have surrender fees and all those kinds of things, and empowering yourselves to make changes so that you are doing what's best for you. I did have a question though, actually. I just thought about it again. So when you stop contributing to that 403B, your funds have to stay there unless you want to pay the surrender fee, correct?
Nancy Bachety: 29:12 Yes and no. It depends on how recent you contributed those funds. My surrender fee went away after 12 years. It sounds like a long time. Which it was.
Naseema McElroy: 29:21 Because they collected their fees by then. Yeah.
Nancy Bachety: 29:23 Could you imagine 12 years of catching up for the commission fees that were paid out on day one? Day one. So yes, some plans are set up differently. Some surrender fees are maybe 7 years into the game or 12 years, even longer. Yeah, so that's what I did.
Naseema McElroy: 29:38 So if you paid the fees or not, then at point, can you roll those funds over into the 403B?
Nancy Bachety: 29:45 Exactly. Yeah. And I know I've talked about the fees, but I do want to say that if anybody is investing in a 403B, you've made the right choice. You've made a great decision to shelter some of your money and to save it for the future. That's awesome. You're a rock star just for doing that and it's a great thing to do.
Naseema McElroy: 30:02 Yeah, and I don't want to discourage anybody from investing. That's not the goal of this podcast episode. The goal of this podcast episode is for you to understand how your investments are being charged fees and how that's going to impact you in the long run. But even if you don't take any of this advice and you just invest, you're still doing a billion times better than most people, so please don't stop your investing. Just get a little bit more knowledgeable about how you're investing. Another tool that I want to recommend for people who aren't necessarily clear on the fees that they're being charged, there is a service called Blooom and that's like the Blooom, like a flower with three O's and if you know your login for your retirement account, they can do a free analysis of your retirement account and tell you what fees you're incurring and they can also manage your account for you if you want to in this less than the cost of a Netflix subscription every month if that's something that you're interested in.
Naseema McElroy: 31:02 But there are ways to look at your fees if you're not really savvy about opening up that prospectus and turn into that fee page and looking to see what your fees are or just don't understand it, they have a real easy to understand way to show you how much you're saving as a paying in fees and how much that's going to cost you for the life of your investment. And so I highly encourage people to check out Blooom. And then I'll have the other sources that Nancy mentioned in the show notes. So, thank you again Nancy for taking time to talk to the Nurses on FIRE community. We love our teachers. I feel like nurses and teachers are just hand in hand. As a matter of fact, my partner's in the education, so you know, if it wasn't for educator, you know, I'll probably be with a fireman so, you know. [both laugh]
Nancy Bachety: 31:54 It's always a pleasure. That's great. Great chatting with you. It's wonderful. Thank you for all your doing is Naseema.
Naseema McElroy: 32:00 Oh, of course. And thank you. And enjoy your time trotting around the world. And we didn't really talk about this much, but Nancy is living her best FI life, traveling around the world. She has multiple real estate investments, and so you guys want to definitely check out Nancy because she's doing her thing. So thank you again, Nancy. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast and continue spreading the word.
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