Mountain_Mike
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2005
- Messages
- 239
A different reason to ER
I was talking to a person who ERed last May, and he had a reason to ER that I do not believe I’ve heard on this board, or anywhere else.
He is in the PERS system, and had 35 years of service. At his age, his pension would nearly equal 100% of his salary for as long as he lived…AND for his wife as long as she lived.
He said the push that made him ER was the fact that he’d seen too many people “die on the job.” If he were to die while still working, his wife would only get the contributions he had made into PERS—no lifetime pension.
I got to thinking, his situation isn’t that much different from mine. Using round numbers, if I were to die today, my wife would get my contributions--about $150,000 in cash. If I were to retire today, I (and my wife) would get $50,000 for life. This would make the pension worth about $1,250,000, right?
I had been planning to stick around for a couple years more, because the pension would go up to $60,000. But in light of the risk of losing (for my wife) the lifetime pension, isn’t it a more sure thing to take the $1.25M guaranteed pension value rather to risk losing $1.1M for the sake of holding out for another $10K per year? To me, it seems cheap “life insurance” to retire today!
Has anyone else considered this? Are my facts or logic flawed
I was talking to a person who ERed last May, and he had a reason to ER that I do not believe I’ve heard on this board, or anywhere else.
He is in the PERS system, and had 35 years of service. At his age, his pension would nearly equal 100% of his salary for as long as he lived…AND for his wife as long as she lived.
He said the push that made him ER was the fact that he’d seen too many people “die on the job.” If he were to die while still working, his wife would only get the contributions he had made into PERS—no lifetime pension.
I got to thinking, his situation isn’t that much different from mine. Using round numbers, if I were to die today, my wife would get my contributions--about $150,000 in cash. If I were to retire today, I (and my wife) would get $50,000 for life. This would make the pension worth about $1,250,000, right?
I had been planning to stick around for a couple years more, because the pension would go up to $60,000. But in light of the risk of losing (for my wife) the lifetime pension, isn’t it a more sure thing to take the $1.25M guaranteed pension value rather to risk losing $1.1M for the sake of holding out for another $10K per year? To me, it seems cheap “life insurance” to retire today!
Has anyone else considered this? Are my facts or logic flawed