TL;DR: Financial Literacy for Employees of New Jersey Public Schools: Optimizing Financial Decisions Based On Your TPAF/PERS Benefits

TL;DR: Financial Literacy for Employees of New Jersey Public Schools: Optimizing Financial Decisions Based On Your TPAF/PERS Benefits

Updated December 2025. You know you need to learn more about personal finance in order to make financial decisions, but you just find it too overwhelming, too intimidating, and too time consuming. This book was written for you, giving you the basics in an hour or two, and then directing you to further resources ( fischlearning.com/tldr-nj ) if you’d like to learn more. It’s about 130 pages and should take only a couple of hours to read, so instead of TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) it will hopefully be JR;DR;KM (Just Right, Did Read, Know More). This book isn’t about “getting rich quickly” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but it’s about gaining knowledge and building your capacity in order to live a good life. What’s a “good life”? We don’t know, everyone’s definition is different. What’s important is that you take the time to define what a good life is for you, and then align your financial decisions with that. The goal of this book is to help you think about your finances in such a way that you have the independence to lead the life you want to live; to give you as much control as possible over your financial situation so that your finances don’t prevent you from living the life you want. We say “book” because that’s what Amazon calls it, but it’s more like a series of blog posts. We wrote it because finances and financial decisions are such a huge part of everyone’s life that they should take the time to thoroughly educate themselves. Since many folks won’t do that, this book is an attempt to quickly give them the basics and hopefully encourage them – and give them the confidence – to learn more. Part 1 of this book is applicable to everyone, but Parts 2-4 are specifically for employees of New Jersey public schools. These parts take a medium dive into both your TPAF/PERS and your school district benefits, and how you can optimize your finances based on those benefits. Most New Jersey educators are not fully aware of their TPAF/PERS benefits and how that should impact almost all of their other financial decisions throughout their adult lives. This book will help you make those decisions. Full Disclosure : We are not financial planners. We have no formal training in personal finance or investing, and no certifications. We are simply lifelong learners, constantly curious, and have been interested in personal finance since working in a credit union during high school and college (Karl), and since teaching a financial literacy course in high school (Diane) in 2014. We are certainly not tax advisors or lawyers, and any advice we give is simply coming from folks who think they know a little bit and want to help. You should be skeptical of any advice you receive, including from us, and should do your due diligence before making any decisions. While it would be nice to make a little bit of money from this, that’s not really our expectation or our goal. We much prefer this book helps make you rich rather than make us rich. This is a passion project for us. We hope you find it useful. So, about 130 pages. About two hours. Let’s get started.