Did everyone get their SS cola letter today? I just got mine.
Every penny counts!
Iām expecting to see an announcement from the state teachers retirement fund. Hopefully word will come shortly after the new year, and I am guardedly optimistic that my benefit will increase.
In earlier versions the increased payments were retroactive to the beginning of the year, but I havenāt seen the wording that of the bill that passed.
The President has promised to sign it.
They donāt administer your social security benefits. Social Secority Administration does that. Iām expecting some kind of notification regarding my SS benefit fromā¦Social Security.
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I want to say that Iām not talking about my retirement and my planning.
My parents made mistakes. They didnāt understand the WEP/GPO. They have high school educations and my parents worked blue collar jobs where they didnāt make much money.
I understood that others made different choices, understood the situation. My parents didnāt. My dad died early, my mom was left not understanding the circumstances.
Iād rather that people not talk about how they figured it out. Because it wasnāt me.
Iāll leave this conversation, it sounds like there is resentment for the bill that will literally change a lot of peopleās lives.
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@thumper1 , you are right of course. I just expect that the notice will pop up on the TEA website informing people about what to expect.
I rarely sign into my online SS account but I might start checking weekly.
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Hmmā¦ I see an opportunity for financial advisors to study up on these new rules. They already coach a lot of pre-retirees on SS strategy. The WEP situation may be highly customized and state dependentā¦. not sure there could be websites (like opensocialsecurity for SS estimations) sophisticated enough to capture all the variables. Good luck to those impacted - hope the result is in your favor.
From the Congressional website regarding the bill.
āThese changes are effective for benefits payable after December 2023.ā
We have shown time and time again here in CC how complicated the retirement/insurance/Medicare system is. Plenty of educated people. (
) struggle to understand all the pieces.
Iām sure your parents made the decisions they thought were best or were best for them at the moment. I hope that many like your mom are treated fairly with this change and I hope it may make a difference in her day to day $.
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My husband has a PhD and itās hard for him to figure out tax and other federal financial stuff, using TurboTax. (Heās messed up our Roth conversions, for example, and I paid double tax on them. Not sure I can correct it - it may be too long ago).
I really feel bad for people who donāt speak English as their first language, or for other reasons donāt navigate the āsystemā well.
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Hereās What Retirement on a Pension Looks Like in America
Retirees open up about their finances and how they spend their time
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While I agree that life with a pension is definitely less financially stressful than life without, it seems like the authorās concept is that if you have a pension, you donāt have to worry about your retirement accounts, the investing, tax strategies and disbursements. That doesnāt make sense to me, because the least stressful thing would be to have both a pension and retirement accounts, and you certainly have to deal with all of those issues whether you have a pension or not. None of these retirees seem to have a significant amount in their 401Ks for their ages, and it makes me wonder if they just counted on having a pension instead of saving. As stable as a pension may feel, I donāt know that I 100% trust that they will be there in the form one had planned for, forever.
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These people are all well off compared with the average retiree. I live in a very socioeconomically diverse area, and I live by & go to church with many retired people who donāt have a combination of pensions, SS and savings that covers their needs. And their needs total less than most of the retirees cited in the article spend. They live month to month, and an unexpected bill is a huge deal. The article is a snapshot of some retirees, but I think that they are some of the fortunate ones.
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Curious what your view or point is in posting this very article.
Itās a very narrow picture of pension workers in general.
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This is a thread about retirement funds. I donāt know much about pensions other than people contribute to them like social security. I was surprised that people who do might not save for retirement in other ways. Why is that? One takeaway from the article for me was that pensions payments can be much larger than SS payments for the same salary. Also as a comparison with the articles that have been posted about people who are retiring using only their own retirement accounts plus SS payments.
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I appreciate the article. i always like seeing how others live.
Dh and I both have pensions. He has started drawing his; I have not. I donāt have to take mine until 72 so Iām letting it grow and not take it for a while as the monthly amount isnāt much right now.
Pensions can mean things are different in other ways not mentioned, such as less need for a large emergency fund. Itās nice knowing/hoping that more of your need in reitrement is guaranteed.
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Pension payments can also be much smaller than SS. I believe something like 28% of our retirees make $1000/month for their pension. Almost everyone is under $2000/month. Thereās a formula but usually one gets around 35-40% of the average of their highest 3 year salary if you are at full retirement age with 30 years of service. You lose about 5% for each year you retire early. You gain a little more each year if you stay longer. And retirement is not adjustment for COLA. This is for a local govt.
H as a teacher got roughly 50% of his highest 3 year average after 32 years of teaching until I got 50% survivorship.
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Iām planning on taking SS when Iām 62 or 63. Some of my reasons are echoed by this gentleman.
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That was one thing that really stuck out to me. The examples the article used were of people with stable and good paying jobs, who worked in their industry for decades, yet their savings didnāt seem very high for their ages. One guy didnāt even start saving for retirement until age 53. I would be interested to know how they decided what to save for retirement and did the fact that they knew there was a pension impact their savings rate.
After the great retirement heists of the past, itās hard to feel completely secure that theyāll exist in the future.
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Are there still companies offering defined benefit pensions to their new employees? I live in an area dominated by manufacturing, and defined benefit pensions are not being offered to newer employees. Even local government and education jobs offer much less rich retirement benefits than they did in the past. I think fire and police may still have them.
We live in the same area and do not see defined benefits pensions for new employees. My kids each work or have worked for fortune 50 companies and neither offer pensions for new hires. My husbandās company stopped in 1995, I think they might have been one of the last.
The other thing that weāve found is that benefits such as retiree healthcare can be changed at any time. They did for us, they did for my mom. Iām somewhat sympathetic because healthcare costs are very expensive. So what you think you have when retiring or thought you would have, doesnāt mean they will be.
The article was a slice of well paid, long term employees. Who had large pension payments.
As Iāve mentioned, my husband has a pension. We also saved in our 401k so have both income streams. I donāt want to argue about this but our FA has said that since we do have the pension and will have a healthy social security check, that we can draw a bit more from our investments now because our income later will be higher than average.
Our children who do not have pensions but do have good jobs with a good income are saving more than we did at the same age. Because they will need more without the pension. But they are lucky that they can. They will be fine.
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