Kevin Benson & Danny Kofke - Southern Education Retirement Consortium: Financial Planning for Retirement. This is episode 697 of Teaching Learning Leading K12, an audio podcast. Kevin Benson serves as Executive Director for Cooperative Purchasing Agency (CPA) and the Southern Education Retirement Consortium (SERC). In his CPA role, Kevin oversees a warehouse that provides office supplies, janitorial supplies, furniture, and USDA commodities, directly to 35 school systems in North Georgia.  Kevin also provides all school systems in Georgia access to national contracts through the Association of Educational Purchasing Agencies (AEPA).  Most recently, Kevin created the Southern Education Retirement Consortium (SERC).  In this role, Kevin strives to provide school systems and their employees, regardless of size, with unprecedented pricing, oversite, and control in the 403b and 457 markets. Kevin has been an educator for over 25 years as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and safety director. Kevin began his tenure at CPA in 2017 and has increased yearly profits tenfold. In 2021 Kevin won the AEPA Outstanding Sales Growth Award with a 745% increase in sales.  Kevin has a Bachelor of Science from Kennesaw State University, a master's in education from the University of Georgia, and an Educational Specialist degree from Liberty University.   A little about Danny Kofke After being an elementary school teacher for 18 years, Danny Kofke recently left the classroom to work with Mentoro - a financial education company.  His love of teaching and personal finance led him to write five personal finance books including The Wealthy Teacher: Lessons for Prospering on A School Teacher’s Salary. Danny’s everyday approach to handling money has led him to appear on numerous television shows including Fox & Friends, The CBS Early Show, CNN’s Newsroom, the 700 Club and The Clark Howard Show.  He has also been interviewed on over 600 radio shows and featured in a number of publications including USA Today, Yahoo.com, The Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine and The Atlanta Journal Constitution.  He wants to show others if this former schoolteacher can do well financially, they can too! Our focus today is the Cooperative Purchasing Agency (CPA) and the Southern Education Retirement Consortium (SERC). So much to learn about retirement planning. Great conversation! Before you go... You could help support this podcast by Buying Me A Coffee. Not really buying me something to drink but clicking on the link on my home page at https://stevenmiletto.com for Buy Me a Coffee or by going to this link Buy Me a Coffee. This would allow you to donate to help the show address the costs associated with producing the podcast from upgrading gear to the fees associated with producing the show. That would be cool. Thanks for thinking about it.  Hey, I've got another favor...could you share the podcast with one of your friends, colleagues, and family members? Hmmm? What do you think? Thank you! You are AWESOME! Thanks so much! Connect & Learn More: Kevin Benson; CPA / SERC Director [email protected] https://sercsolutions.com/   Danny Kofke: Run with the Bulls [email protected] https://blubrry.com/runwiththebulls/ https://www.mymentoro.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannykofke/ Length - 59:02