Hi all,
Wifey and I are intending to hang it up @ 55. We could probably do so now... but we have decide to wait on company health care (available @ 55) which is available to both of us from both of our companies. Also, we are still figuring out what we want to do... We are thinking about traveling quite a bit in the years of 55-65. Plus, we are currently helping elderly parents so we are a bit teathered to home for now... We figure we might as well work for now.
We are in a little of a rare situation now days. We both work for companies that are over 100 years old. Both companies are very strong with great balance sheets and revenues. I have a traditional pension coming (but will have less than 20 year with the company), she has over 25 years with a PST.
Both companies offer retiree health benefits. There is a reduced premium cost for each plan. However, I have not identifed the costs (premiums/benefit mix) yet which is an important factor in making decisions regarding selection of plan. But we are fairly sure that the cost of each will be south of $2k/yr for each plan in 2011.
My question to the forum is --- given a 2011 cost of $2k for premiums on each plan, should we each choose our respective companies health plans and place the other on each plan as a spouse (redundancy) or should we try to pick the plan/company that appears to be the best/strongest to try to reduce costs instead of paying for the redundancy (kinda like insurance against a plan being dropped). The savings would be $2k and rising a year. I suspect that @ 65 when Medicare is available to use we would consider making changes that make sense at the time... possibly dropping the spouse option which might save some $ on premium.
Thanks all :