DIY, Financial Wellness at Work, Silver Edition

 

Photo Credit: Benold Financial Planning

 

Republicans are taking aim at Social Security and Medicare; employers are struggling to fill jobs. What better time to talk about phased retirement? It has a win/win quality that deserves serious attention from both employers and older workers.

I knew I wanted to delay drawing on Social Security until I turned 70. I also knew that while I had been a steady saver, my 401(k) was not as plump as it needed to be to support my husband and me for what could be as much as three decades. I had planned to talk with my employer about phased retirement, but as a result of an informal merger, my intense, nonprofit COO position was eliminated a few years before the time was right. Having my job disappear both accelerated & complicated my plans.

I was lucky. 

I found a great job as a Finance Director at a smaller nonprofit. It was a new position; a less-than-full-time schedule worked for the organization as well as it did for me. For the organization, it was a chance to experiment with adding a new level of expertise. For me, it was a chance to begin phased retirement.

Three years later, I'm still working part-time, even though I've taken on a larger scope of work. There are challenges both for me & for the organization, but--so far--we've dealt with them successfully. The benefits continue to outweigh the disadvantages for both of us.

If you are nearing retirement age, phasing is something to explore. Ideally, you'll be able to do it with your current employer, but if that doesn't work, don't give up! 

Photo credit: superguide.com.au

One thing I did do differently than what is outlined in the linked articles below: I enrolled in Medicare when my full-time job ended. In my opinion, if that is an option for you, it's worth considering. Being able to waive the company's health insurance can be an attractive bargaining chip.

And...a caveat. While these articles rightfully report that if you are collecting Social Security before you reach your full retirement age and you are also working, your Social Security benefits will be reduced. What they don't mention is this: If you've reached your full retirement age--currently 67 (if you were born after 1960)--there is no reduction to benefits, no matter how much you earn.

Since 1984, when Ronald Reagan was President, Social Security benefits have been subject to federal income tax. If you live in one of eleven states (Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont), they are also subject to state income tax. However, in most states (like California) Social Security isn't taxed. So, depending on where you live, you get a bit of a tax relief, too.

Beware, however: One of the things likely to be put on the table in the fight over the debt ceiling is raising the full retirement age from 67 to 70 & the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67.

Resources:

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveparrish/2021/11/29/phase-into-retirement-with-a-phased-retirement-plan/?sh=3ffec6f8297a

https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/money/money-planning/retirement/what-is-phased-retirement

https://amberriver.com/phased-retirement/benefits-and-challenges-of-a-phased-retirement/

 

DIY - Financial Wellness at Work

 Recently, I set up a Slack channel at work descri

Photo Credit: Benold Financial Planning

bed thusly: "An information and learning commons to jointly develop the financial acumen we fear we don't have."  I did it because the issue of not knowing where to start had emerged as a theme in a number of random discussions and on our annual employee survey.  After a lifetime spent managing the financial affairs of small businesses and nonprofits, I figured I'd learned enough to lead self-help discussions. I don't think of myself as a financial expert, just a knowledgeable amateur. 

 

The experiment is still new. That said, it's been fun so far and early reactions have been positive.  To get the conversation going, I've tried to post about subjects of interest once a week. These are my first two. 

 

She Works Hard For A Living

It's  not easy to come down from a sixty hour work week. The deadline is past--things went either well or poorly. Most likely, they fell somewhere in between. The work piled up for next week isn't at such a boil--yet--that you can't have a little bit of a weekend. For the moment, life should be good.

But there you are, vibrating like a plucked harp string, your mind whirring, your inner eye ceaselessly scanning, trying to locate the thing you forgot, replaying the trajectory of the just-finished project, following an endless loop of couldda/wouldda/shouldda. The maze of next steps fans out in all directions. Metaphorically, you've run as far and as fast as you are able, but--damn--that horizon isn't even close.

"Relax," everyone says. "Enjoy the weather, take time to stop and smell the roses." You would if you could. But just like in the aftermath of those ancient acid trips, you're not quite returned to what we are pleased to call reality. You can't quite focus, but you're not quite unfocused either.

It's not an entirely terrible situation. There is a slightly bizarre sense of pride--in your stamina, your ability to deliver, maybe even in the results themselves. "I've still got it," you think, even as you lie awake staring at the ceiling, too tired, too revved up to sleep.

Others may or may not appreciate what you just pulled off. Really, it makes only a passing difference whether they do or not, because you do. Making a way out of no way--that's what you'd put on your coat of arms, if you had one. I think of this phase of decompression as the adrenaline after-glow.

What makes this particular ending different from the many that have gone before? Two things, really.

The first is that my organization has a pretty good and pretty well-deserved reputation for honoring work/life balance. We work hard and there's always way, way too much to do. But we also acknowledge that our staff have lives outside of the office. Even though I've got two other projects ready to pop and a mountain of day-to-day work screaming for attention, I can count on getting the response I got when I declined a meeting set for late next week. "Of course you should take time off!"

The second is more subtle, more personal. It's where I am in my career curve.

I've been in this fugue state before, but when I was marooned here in the past, I always knew the road ahead was endless. This just completed project would be followed by another and another and another. Rinse and repeat...for decades. There were undertones of Sartre's No Exit to the space between.

That's not the case any more. There are still years stretching out before me, yes, but no longer decades. Retirement--the thing older workers are never supposed to admit they think about for fear of being labelled tired and spent--is out there. Being able to see it is adding a kind of exhilaration to moving from the altered reality of the deadline to the more rational reality of the interlude between this one and the next.

There's nothing golden about retirement, not in twenty-first century America. But the fact of it, it's new reality, it's unexpected tangibility--I find those things change the horizon in surprising ways.

Instead of feeling myself to be on a forced march from one mountain top to the next, I'm beginning to be able to imagine there is a wide, broad valley beyond these jagged peaks. I'm beginning to be able to imagine rolling hills. What will that be like, I wonder.