More Media Clips with Danny Kofke

Thank you Campus Benefits for including Danny's article in this year's Leadership On Campus edition.  School district leaders - is your retirement plan a pre-Netflix model stuck in the year 2000? 

Former teacher Danny Kofke and fiduciary Eric Hansen are principals in the Southern Education Retirement Consortium, an investment collective that serves the K-12 market. They discuss the consortium model which allows small to medium-size schools to band together to get favorable 403(b) pricing and services.

• Southern Education Retirement Consortium (SERC)

Click here to listen.

 Bring it Clark Howard, Inc.  This is why SERC exists!  Something Clark mentioned is so mind blowing:

Let’s say a teacher contributes $250 a month to her 403(b) plan with an assumed 6% annual return. After 35 years, her total investment will total $185,391 if she invests in a variable annuity that charges 3% in annual fees.

By contrast, if she had invested in an index fund charging 0.07%, she would have 85% more—$343,474 in total.

The retirement plans many teachers are being offered HAS to change!

Danny talks with Winston Buckley from TRS and discusses how to budget, or create a spending plan.  Make sure to tell your money where to go, not the other way around!

Listen to GAEL UnscriptED!  

Danny was lucky enough to be on two episodes and this is the first episode.

Listen to GAEL UnscriptED!  On this episode Danny Kofke talks about SERC at mark 18:35 on episode II. 

Teacher-Author Focused on Improving Educator Financial Outcomes (#392) Sep 19, 2025

Our guest, Danny Kofke, is a jack-of-many-trades: elementary school teacher for 18 years, author of 6 books including Where to Spend. Where to Save. A Teachers Guide to Managing Your Finances, and Director of Training and Outreach for the Southern Education Retirement Consortium. 

• Danny Kofke
• Where to Spend, Where to Save: A Teacher’s Guide to Managing Your Finances
• Southern Education Retirement Consortium
• Learned by Being Burned (short pod series about K-12 403(b) issues)
• 403bwise.org
• Meridian Wealth Management

Nothing presented or discussed is to be construed as investment or tax advice. This can be secured from a vetted Certified Financial Planner (CFP®). 

 In this interview on the Teacher Retirement System of Georgia’s podcast, Danny discusses his teaching career, how he transitioned from teaching to helping others manage money, how the TRS benefit helps, and much more. 

 In this interview on The CBS Early Show, the crew came down from New York City to interview Danny and his wife, Tracy, on how they managed to raise their family on a teacher’s salary.  As an added bonus, CBS flew them to the Big Apple to continue this discussion.