The Answers to Your Financial Questions

We recently asked our Mastermind Group what questions they had about finances as TpT sellers. We received lots of questions about both personal and business finances. If you aren't already in our group we encourage you to join in the conversation at www.growwithusmastermind.com.

Today we brought a special guest on our podcast to talk about something that isn't discussed much among TpT sellers—finances. Josh Bannerman is a Certified Financial Planner at Bannerman Wealth and he is the co-host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast. He has 20 years of experience. And, he works with over 120 families in 30 different states. We were super excited to have him as a guest.

Josh did an amazing job of answering our questions. We are going to do our best to sum up his answers, but if you want to learn more about handling your finances we urge you to listen to the full podcast.

As current or former teachers our retirement planning has always been handled for us by the school district. When it comes to the money you make from your TpT business, it's all on you. That can leave a lot of questions.
What retirement planning advice would you give someone that's still teaching and currently has a pension?
Josh shared that this really boils down to what your end goal is for your TpT income stream. You need to think through if this is something you're doing to improve your lifestyle today or if you also want it for help improving your retirement, saving for your kids' college funds or something else. That answer largely determines what you do with your money after you earn it and pay taxes on it.

While you don't have much say about what happens with your pension plan, it's a different world when you're running your own business, even if it's just a side hobby. You can save for retirement through SEP IRAs, simple IRAs, 401ks, or you can even set up your own pension plan. It all depends on how much money you have to use for retirement on top of what you're already doing. You can contact online brokerage companies such as Schwab or Fidelity. It only takes a few minutes to do and your tax professional can tell you how much you can invest based on what your previous yearly income was.

If you are just getting started with earning money in your business, Josh recommends that you use some of the money for retirement planning and keeping some for lifestyle improvement.
What retirement planning financial advice would you give those that are completely on their own and no longer employed by a school?
Planning for retirement is a lot easier when your employer is automatically withholding a portion of your income for you. Now that you are working for yourself you need to set it up the same way. If you don't automatically have money going into savings and retirement lifestyle inflation is going to creep up on you and stake all your money.

Have you ever noticed that the more money that comes in the more money you think you need to come in? This is normal for most people. You think if you can just get to $X each month everything will be easier. But, then you get to that amount and get used to spending the extra and find yourself in the same place again.

So, when you leave the classroom, set up those automatic systems on your own. You can work with a tax planner or investment firm to get it set up. You are now in charge of your own retirement so you need to be proactive about it.
Do you suggest we take our money out of the 403b?
The 403(b) is nothing more than just a shell, it's a line item. What you have inside of that shell could be good or it could be awful. It all depends on the choices that your district had and the decisions they made when getting it set up.

Some plans won't allow you to take the money out or move it until you reach a certain age. If that's so, or if you feel that you have a good setup with the 403(b) plan then it's important to remem