Buying additional pension credits?

[Chuckanut]

The price didn't exactly go up. You became a year older. The further you are from retirement, the lower the price. I'm not sure why your pension amount would decrease by $200 a month.

That is a yearly number. The extra amount went down $200 a year. Of course, the initial number was an estimate, not a commitment. Overall, not a bad estimate.

 

[Chuckanut]

After a lot of thought and a lot of number crunching I decided to go through with purchasing the service credits. What pushed me over to that side of the fence was the partial COLA that came with the credits. That makes a big difference going out 15+ years.

Of the three legs on my retirement stool the strongest (most money, good potential COLA) is the one made up of my personal saving and investments over 40+ years of work. The next strongest is SS due to its full COLA and its coming from the guys who own the money printing press. The weakest leg (least money and shakiest COLA) was my pension. This strengthens that leg at relatively small cost to my personal savings leg.

Overall, the stool should be in better balance in the long run. Time will tell, of course.