vtsnowedin
Elite Member
There is about twenty different plans and results in this thread and the message has to be that everyone has their own best course of action.
I'll add in mine here just for reference.
I took a state government job at age 20 in late 1975 that had a guaranteed retirement plan. I didn't think much of it at the time as I did not think the job would last and was living pay check to paycheck. But a wife , three children and thirty years later there I was looking at the rules of the system and quite tired of the job frankly. It paid one sixtieth per year of service times the average of your three highest years and healthcare for you and your spouse was paid fully after thirty years of service. But if you were not sixty years old at retirement they deducted three percent for each year you were younger. And all your unpaid leave was paid out in the last year and added to your last years income.
I had three very good years with lots of overtime ( that nobody else wanted to do including night work) so had no time to take any leave and had all those balances up to the maximum. So I had three years with over IIRCC 500 plus hours of OT per year plus had $27,000 of leave paid out when I left. But then because I was only 51 years old I took a 27 percent cut and then a bit more to make it last until the last of my wife or myself and I cashed in and I ended up with just about half of my base pay which was low considering that I had always worked some overtime, often 300 hours a year or more.
Shortly after I retired they changed the rules and started donning me for a couple of hundred per month on health care and the COLAs that used to happen yearly have stopped but all in all I'm a lot better off then most and in ten years have got back every dime I paid in and then some.
I had my house and everything else paid for and looked at it like this. Of my old pay checks six percent went to retirement and eighteen percent went to federal tax and four and a half percent went to state tax, and I was spending twenty-one and a half percent on transportation and meals during the work day so at fifty percent I was just as poor (Or rich) as I ever was. After retirement I have worked at least part of every year doing what I used to do only for private firms (sometimes working for my old employer) at rates that used to be my overtime rate so have done quite well so far and have a few toys (Tractor) to show for it.
I'm planning to draw early social security a year from now as the math works for us as I have diabetes and my younger brother has already passed away (smoker with diabetes) and my mother passed at age fifty (diabetes). The earned income limit for me $13,500 IIRCC is annoying as I could not commit to doing a job start to finish but then again I've done this work so long I wont miss it.
Back when I first told my wife that I was planning to retire she got in a huff and said that we were not old enough to retire. I answered " What is this WE Stuff you're talking about. She is still working making us twenty percenters and all the children are fully employed at levels where they could " Support us in the manner to which we have become accustomed".
I'll add in mine here just for reference.
I took a state government job at age 20 in late 1975 that had a guaranteed retirement plan. I didn't think much of it at the time as I did not think the job would last and was living pay check to paycheck. But a wife , three children and thirty years later there I was looking at the rules of the system and quite tired of the job frankly. It paid one sixtieth per year of service times the average of your three highest years and healthcare for you and your spouse was paid fully after thirty years of service. But if you were not sixty years old at retirement they deducted three percent for each year you were younger. And all your unpaid leave was paid out in the last year and added to your last years income.
I had three very good years with lots of overtime ( that nobody else wanted to do including night work) so had no time to take any leave and had all those balances up to the maximum. So I had three years with over IIRCC 500 plus hours of OT per year plus had $27,000 of leave paid out when I left. But then because I was only 51 years old I took a 27 percent cut and then a bit more to make it last until the last of my wife or myself and I cashed in and I ended up with just about half of my base pay which was low considering that I had always worked some overtime, often 300 hours a year or more.
Shortly after I retired they changed the rules and started donning me for a couple of hundred per month on health care and the COLAs that used to happen yearly have stopped but all in all I'm a lot better off then most and in ten years have got back every dime I paid in and then some.
I had my house and everything else paid for and looked at it like this. Of my old pay checks six percent went to retirement and eighteen percent went to federal tax and four and a half percent went to state tax, and I was spending twenty-one and a half percent on transportation and meals during the work day so at fifty percent I was just as poor (Or rich) as I ever was. After retirement I have worked at least part of every year doing what I used to do only for private firms (sometimes working for my old employer) at rates that used to be my overtime rate so have done quite well so far and have a few toys (Tractor) to show for it.
I'm planning to draw early social security a year from now as the math works for us as I have diabetes and my younger brother has already passed away (smoker with diabetes) and my mother passed at age fifty (diabetes). The earned income limit for me $13,500 IIRCC is annoying as I could not commit to doing a job start to finish but then again I've done this work so long I wont miss it.
Back when I first told my wife that I was planning to retire she got in a huff and said that we were not old enough to retire. I answered " What is this WE Stuff you're talking about. She is still working making us twenty percenters and all the children are fully employed at levels where they could " Support us in the manner to which we have become accustomed".
