I am not an educated man, so please take it easy on me.
I am 56 years old.
I am of full retirement age for my government employer's retirement plan. I am fully vested in the retirement plan, although I have only been "on the job" for about 13 years, so if I retire at this point, my pension calculation would result in a more modest pension amount. I also get free medical insurance for life, and a 2.5% COLA.
I was injured in the line of duty about a year ago, and have basically been off work ever since. I had reconstructive surgery, and I'm about half way through the six months of rehabilitative physical therapy that they think I'm gonna need. I'm currently drawing a full paycheck, but that will come to an end at some point.
In the meantime, my wife was recently diagnosed with cancer, at the age of 41. When we found out, she asked me for two things- she asked me for a dog (to replace one that passed from cancer last year), and she asked me to retire to spend more time with her. She needed two surgeries, and they were both supposed to have been done by this Summer.
So we started looking at 08/01/19 as a potential retirement date for me.
Her first surgery caused an infection. That resulted in an emergency surgery (surgery #2) to clean it all out, with one more surgery (surgery #3) that will be needed just to get her back to where she was supposed to be today. Plus, they need her to heal for 3-4 months before they can perform surgery #3. And then she will still need her final surgery a month or so after that. So our timeline has been pushed back by approximately 6 months.
My wife and I are currently covered under my employer's Kaiser group medical coverage. But that would end if I retire to spend more time with her.
At this point I should explain that our situation is complicated by some debt that we are carrying. We have good credit, and almost all of our debt is at low interest rates. I can make all of my monthly payments just off my base pay. But my base pay was only about half of the money that I was making prior to my injury- in my job, there is as much overtime available as I want, and for years I have made a habit of working a lot of overtime, nearly doubling my pay. We were paying down our debt at the rate of several thousand dollars a month above and beyond our monthly payments, with the goal of paying it all off...until I got injured. We paid about $150K in debt down to $71K by the time I got injured. Now, with no overtime, the best I can do is to pay down our debt at the rate of about $2,000 a month, which means that we're still gonna be carrying about $63K of low-interest debt if/when I retire in August.
I can't service that debt on a modest pension, so we're looking at pulling a portion of my contributions out of my retirement (my employer's contributions stay in). This would allow us to pay off all of our debt, so that we would be able to afford life on my modest pension. But it would also reduce that pension further, which would mean that we would need to relocate to a less expensive part of the country and/or a less expensive lifestyle (full-time RV life until my SS kicks in at 62). We're okay with that.
But we don't know how to have insurance that will pay for her last cancer surgery, after I've already retired.
I am 56 years old.
I am of full retirement age for my government employer's retirement plan. I am fully vested in the retirement plan, although I have only been "on the job" for about 13 years, so if I retire at this point, my pension calculation would result in a more modest pension amount. I also get free medical insurance for life, and a 2.5% COLA.
I was injured in the line of duty about a year ago, and have basically been off work ever since. I had reconstructive surgery, and I'm about half way through the six months of rehabilitative physical therapy that they think I'm gonna need. I'm currently drawing a full paycheck, but that will come to an end at some point.
In the meantime, my wife was recently diagnosed with cancer, at the age of 41. When we found out, she asked me for two things- she asked me for a dog (to replace one that passed from cancer last year), and she asked me to retire to spend more time with her. She needed two surgeries, and they were both supposed to have been done by this Summer.
So we started looking at 08/01/19 as a potential retirement date for me.
Her first surgery caused an infection. That resulted in an emergency surgery (surgery #2) to clean it all out, with one more surgery (surgery #3) that will be needed just to get her back to where she was supposed to be today. Plus, they need her to heal for 3-4 months before they can perform surgery #3. And then she will still need her final surgery a month or so after that. So our timeline has been pushed back by approximately 6 months.
My wife and I are currently covered under my employer's Kaiser group medical coverage. But that would end if I retire to spend more time with her.
At this point I should explain that our situation is complicated by some debt that we are carrying. We have good credit, and almost all of our debt is at low interest rates. I can make all of my monthly payments just off my base pay. But my base pay was only about half of the money that I was making prior to my injury- in my job, there is as much overtime available as I want, and for years I have made a habit of working a lot of overtime, nearly doubling my pay. We were paying down our debt at the rate of several thousand dollars a month above and beyond our monthly payments, with the goal of paying it all off...until I got injured. We paid about $150K in debt down to $71K by the time I got injured. Now, with no overtime, the best I can do is to pay down our debt at the rate of about $2,000 a month, which means that we're still gonna be carrying about $63K of low-interest debt if/when I retire in August.
I can't service that debt on a modest pension, so we're looking at pulling a portion of my contributions out of my retirement (my employer's contributions stay in). This would allow us to pay off all of our debt, so that we would be able to afford life on my modest pension. But it would also reduce that pension further, which would mean that we would need to relocate to a less expensive part of the country and/or a less expensive lifestyle (full-time RV life until my SS kicks in at 62). We're okay with that.
But we don't know how to have insurance that will pay for her last cancer surgery, after I've already retired.
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