I'm also a retired volunteer firefighter and will get a lump sum retirement next year at age 55. I deferred the maximum % that I could and invested it all in the equity option in their pension plan. It's about $30,000.
FWIW I'm going to have the Fire Dept. roll it directly to a new traditional IRA that I set up at Vanguard as soon as I am 55. I won't be using these funds for a while (at least til age 59.5) so they'll be 100% invested in one of their index funds, probably Total Stock Market.
I have never included these funds in any of my long term financial planning and have no short term plans on spending it. I'm thinking I'll give it to my children when they have a need in the future, they gave up a lot of time while I was on the dept.
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