Last updated on November 7th, 2023 at 04:33 pm
You’ve decided to leave teaching. You’ve got your legal i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
Before you throw up double peace signs to your campus forever, it’s time to meander over to the Human Resources department.
(It’s for your good– I promise!)
Double-check your paycheck timeline
Some teacher salaries are divided into even paychecks spaced out throughout the course of a 12-month calendar year for completing a contract term. Others have payments only for 10 months. Check your contract for this information, and be sure to find the start and end date. You can check with someone in human resources about this as well. Don’t deflate what will shape up to be a sweet summer of freedom with paycheck (or lack therof!) surprises.
Determine your insurance plans timeline
Find out the exact date when your health insurance plans will end. If you’re not sure about your future in regards to health plans, it doesn’t hurt to make those appointments before the clock runs out. (How I wish I scheduled one last teeth cleaning before my low-cost dental plan ended!) Just because you plan to shift to a new employer, doesn’t mean they necessarily provide a great or low-cost plan. Your insurance package at school may be better– so make good use of it before you head into another arrangement.
Decide how to proceed with retirement accounts
If you contributed to retirement accounts while working, that account is still yours to contribute to. The thing about quitting is, however, that you can expect your employer match to stop, so be aware of that. You could leave the money where it is, and it will still be yours to access, but (and this is a very big but!) with contributions no longer automatically funneling from your paycheck, it’s easy to forget about it! One study estimated that there were about 24 million 401ks just left forgotten in 2021. That’s a lot of lonely money.
I totally get that doing nothing with your account is the easiest path– but it won’t do you any good if you forget about it! On top of this, employer-sponsored 401ks typically incur fees like expense ratios and administrative fees. There are other options to keep that money but to direct it somewhere else:
- Rollover the money into an individual retirement account (IRA)
- Rollover the 401k into your new employer’s 401k if permitted
- Cash out the account (may also include fees)
This is not financial advice— please go to the pros on this one. But trust me when I say it’s worth looking into. Daphne at the Teacher Career Coach has a great informative podcast episode with investing teacher and content creator Jeremy Schneider. You can also head to his Instagram page, personalfinanceclub. I actually sat down and read every single one of his posts like I was taking a class with him. It felt great to be the student again, and I learned a lot.
Logistics I wrapped up when quitting my teaching job
Once I cleared the mental and emotional hurdle of deciding to leave teaching, a job I’d invested over 6 years in, and tinkered with the math (and double checked my work!) to see if it was financially doable, there were still some logistics to take care of.
Luckily, the HR end of cutting ties with the profession proved to be pretty simple.
I ended up rolling over my 401k into an IRA. The process was relatively painless, (I believe it involved about 3 phone calls, 1 form filled out, and a form faxed) and I’m happy with the decision.
Other leaving teaching tasks included: letting my principal know my plans, packing up the room, asking for references, and even managing to preserve some cherished keepsakes that I could look fondly back on.
Leaving behind a career that involved so much of you and your life can be difficult. But there are people who can help you make this transition. Start with human resources to check that simple task off first. Reach out to other teachers or friends who understand. I wrote up a whole leaving teaching guide to walk you through this process, step by step.
(And as usual, know that I’m rooting for you!)
