Recent content by Sandman62

I haven’t gotten through this whole thread yet. But for now, I’ll share that I did reduce to 30/70 a year or two before I retired last year. My philosophy is that I don’t need to make another $x+y when the $x we already have is plenty. OTOH, $x-y would’ve meant working several more years. My...

I find these pretty close to GS thin mints, but cheaper. Of course, we’ve also often bought from GS too, to support their efforts. I just bought some of these today on sale at Stop & Shop. [emoji39] https://www.keebler.com/en_US/cookies-and-more/fudge-shoppe/grasshopper-cookies.html

Your situation is very similar to ours. But you didn’t mention if you’ll also get SS? We will, so we opted to get a $300k life insurance policy on my DW, as her survivor benefit would’ve cost her 10% of her pension. We plan to keep the life insurance until one or both of us get SS to fill the...

Congrats! I've been out a month now and it's so liberating. [emoji4]

I'm officially retiring from my IT Architect position at an insurance company on Dec. 1st at age 55. Running out some vacation time puts my last day of work at Nov. 3rd. Can't wait!

Substitute "Social Security" for "pension" and see how most people who expect half, 3/4 or more of their eventual SS benefits would be screaming. :( What if the federal government decided they'd rather not pay the people who paid into this their whole lives? Would that make the entire US...

Counting both of our pension values - 1.1m and 1m (per www.immediateannuities.com) - plus retirement and savings accounts, our home value is about 11% of total net worth. FWIW, DW's pension is from state (teacher) and mine from a very stable private company. I'm retiring in a few months (age...

I hear ya. My MegaCorp changed our plan about halfway through my career too. But they locked in what we'd earned til then, and only changed it going forward. I'll still get almost 60% (non-COLA) of my final salary amount when I retire later this year, and I never paid a dime for it, so I...

Ok, so as often happens with analogies, they easily fall apart. :) Let's say the plumber was hired by the CITY to repair a public facility. Can the city tell the plumber they don't want to pay? Or would they have to put the cost on ALL citizens? And I'm not sure that all companies or states...

Then suck it up and cut spending, as well as raise taxes - whatever it takes to pay the bills incurred. But it shouldn't be an option to just not pay contracted debt. Fix pensions going forward. But it's pretty unfair to put the burden mostly on those who did nothing wrong and held up their...

Bingo! That's because the rich lobby and the poor organize. The rest of us complain on forums and social media.

Thanks JPG. AS much as I try to tackle this mathematically/scientifically, I do realize it's a lot more art than that. Adaptability will be our friend, I hope. Good luck to you too.

We've been doing this the past couple years and I'll explain why it made sense for us. YMMV, but here goes... I hope to ER from Megacorp late this year at age 55 when I will get my non-COLA pension - from a very stable company at which I've worked my whole 30-year IT career. 54YO DW could...

You're right that it was "go-forward" as far as the money. But her retirement age went from 28/30/35 years of service - by which she could've retired at the earliest at age 50 - to a new formula that pushed her to a minimum age 59. :mad: This was when she was already age 48+! Talk about being...

Fine. Then substitute "social security and Medicare" for pension, and see how the shoe feels on the other foot. Oh wait though, that will never happen simply because the majority of citizens would be impacted. So it's ok to vote away anything the majority doesn't benefit from. Gotcha...