hrj | Entries tagged with retirement

Ticked off two more things on the retirement checklist this morning: getting copies of the two paystubs that I was still missing, and getting my official "retirement gift" from the attaboy catalog. As usual, the catalog offerings were mostly either "already have one" or "no use for this" but in the end I settled on a wet/dry shop vac. You know, in the event that I ever get back to doing carpentry projects or whatnot. After you pick your primary gift, they roll you over into the gift card section, where you pick gift cards until you run out of remaining balance. So I currently have $250 worth of gift cards for Black Angus Steakhouse that I will be looking for a special occasion to use.

Most of the IRA activity is complete -- I have confirmation and documents for one of the annuities and for the managed fund (the "pretend this doesn't exist for now" fund). I should get the confirmation and paperwork for the other annuity shortly. I've updated my budget projections spreadsheet and concluded that the annuities are probably over-deducting for taxes, but I think I'll let it ride for now. This year is going to be completely weird for income taxes and I'd rather get a refund than have to pay. Next year I can fine tune things, and the year after that I should be able to predict fairly precisely.

Oh, and still waiting on Social Security to come through. I think on Friday I'll do another round of sitting on the phone to check in. (I check the website almost every day, on the chance that an approval will show up there before I get it in the mail.)

In the mean time, I'm continuing with an overstuffed calendar. Mon/Tues in Stockton to run medical errands for my dad. This morning recording an interview for the podcast, then working with the electrician who will be re-doing my electrical panel. In a couple hours I'll do a guest appearance by zoom for a college class that read one of my books. Tomorrow the electrician starts and completes the panel work, mostly while I'm out of the house for a combined bike ride and routine medical check-up. (I figure since they sent me a pre-work questionnaire about my exercise, I'll properly impress them if I show up in my bike togs all sweaty.) Online Wiscon is this weekend, then Monday the HVAC folks come to do my annual maintenance. And then I have nothing extra scheduled for a week and a half before the Nebula conference (which I'm attending virtually). June is pretty empty at this point, but the way things have been going, who knows?

Today I had a long, productive session with my Fidelity Guy. We rolled over my 401K into an IRA, then set up 4 different instruments to move the money into. I'm putting about half my money into two different types of annuity which, together with my Social Security (still waiting for approval) should cover my current monthly budget (which includes allowances for "special topics" and adding to my emergencies fund). Most of the rest goes into a managed investment fund that shouldn't need to be touched currently. Then a small chunk goes into a cash account that will be available for "topping off" my checking account, if necessary, to keep it at my safety target.

Let me explain "safety target". Currently my "ordinary" credit union accounts (i.e., separate from my IRA funds) include:

* A "pretend this doesn't exist" savings that is for major unexpected costs.

* A couple of smallish IRA accounts from previous jobs that are functionally part of my "pretend this doesn't exist" money.

* My "saving for special projects/trips" savings account. The plan is to have a "safety threshold" that it shouldn't get below, so the target is to keep it at "safety threshold + known projected special project costs". For example, for Worldcon the projected costs include transportation, hotel, and food budget (higher per diem than when eating at home). My planning spreadsheet includes the next year's worth of special projects with estimates of cost. When things settle out, the idea is that if I add a future special project I block out the projected cost and need to make sure I save for it.

* My checking account. This is where routine expenses come from. It also has a "safety threshold" that it shouldn't fall below. Right now, I dumped all my "extra payout" funds (bonus, vacation payout) because I need to be able to work from it until I have the Social Security and annuity money coming in. (The annuity payouts don't start until July. The Social Security will include back-pay back to February when it gets approved, but in the mean time I'm working from my existing balance.)

The take-home lesson for those of you thinking about retirement planning, is that when they say you should have X months of cash in the bank, that includes because there may be a gap between stopping your paycheck and starting drawing from your retirement funds. It really really helped for my peace of mind to get a big bonus check and a big vacation payout right around my retirement date.

And how does retirement feel? Well, I've been back from Kalamazoo for 3 days now and each day has felt like one of those weekend days when I'm running around getting things done that I don't have time for on working days. Still working on the daily routine, but so far the constants have been a bike ride, reading/writing for the blog/podcast, yard work, and housework/organization. Which leaves me fairly tired at the end of the day, but I've been trying to avoid going to bed early because somehow I've started waking up around 5am and I simply don't feel like getting out of bed that early.

I think the rest of May will play out similarly. I have non-routine events scheduled almost every day for the next week and a half. No chance to feel at loose ends yet.

This is it. I put in almost a full day's work today, though in theory all I had to do was turn in my laptop and badge. But I have a trainee and we spent several hours working on her third (and qualifying) investigation. Then I pitched in for some administrative work that needed a warm body entering data. I spent entirely too much time sending frantic emails to HR trying to pin down several things that I still hadn't gotten clear answers on. (Results: I didn't need a "Final Medical Evaluation", they *did* credit me with the entire year's vacation allotment for my payout, and I *think* they will be postal-mailing me my remaining paystubs. At least, this week's paystub wasn't available to me electronically when everyone else's were, so I presume they already had me switched over.)

Oh, and I got the proofs of the in-house article about my Hugo nomination for the company newsletter, approved them, and saw the resulting article on the website. (However it's the internal website, so I can't share a link. I'll put the text up on my Alpennia blog.)

And then I had a final chat with my manager, handed over my laptop, and went to Security in theory to trade my security badge for a "retiree badge" which would give me access to the company store and cafeteria. Except evidently I needed to put in an advance request for a retiree badge if I wanted to get it today. Which, of course, nobody in all my correspondence with HR had mentioned. So my (former) manager will follow up on that and presumably I'll get it eventually. (Access to the company store is very useful, if you remember that this is Bayer**, so I get big discounts on all manner of vitamins and OTC drugs.)

**While employed there, I've been rather careful about not naming my employer publicly, just to avoid having to do all the "I do not speak for my employer" stuff each time. But now that I'm retired, I figure I can lift that. (Which was only a personal policy, not a corporate one.)

Since I didn't leave site until around 4pm and then did my usual shopping at Berkeley Bowl, I was in peak commute traffic coming home. So I don't really feel retired yet, just tired. Tomorrow will just feel like another random day off. I don't think the reality will hit until I get back from Kalamazoo. Until then, I'm still in constant motion.

Only concrete progress has been setting paying my first 3 months of Medicare (after which they presumably will be paying my retirement benefits and can deduct it automatically) and sending in the paperwork for auto-paying the Kaiser add-on. Still no approval of retirement benefits. Still no exit interview appointment with the employer.

At my retirement party, everyone asked me what I'd do on my first day of retirement and the answer was, "Pack for two separate trips." But of course, me being me, I've already finished the packing. Because that's how I roll.

It's a bit fitting that my first "retirement activity" will be going to an SCA event (West Kingdom coronation). What's amusing is that of the two SCA events I've attended since I dropped out, both will have been at the same site, same event, and for the same purpose (attending a friend's peerage ceremony). Since I've given away all my camping equpment, last time I stayed at a motel. This time, what with working on reducing spending, I'll be sleeping in my vehicle (which is actually very well designed for the purpose -- I use it for regular camping on occasion).

I've been debating whether to start attending events again more regularly, if only because it would help with my "interact with people in person regularly" pledge. Site fees have really jumped since I was last active, though not unreasonably so. Still it makes it less of an impulse buy. I'll have to ponder on it. Find the things that bring me joy (which is *not* "generic SCA court culture"). And, of course, the writing will come first, in terms of time priorities.

Spending the day humming "One Day More" from Les Miserables.

My department has its weekly "everyone on site" day on Wednesdays, so yesterday was my last full on-site day. (Next Wednesday will be limited to "turn in the laptop and security badge" day.) So we held my retirement party in the afternoon and lots of people dropped by. I gave away all but one jar of the 2 dozen "Heather's Retirement Marmalade" I'd brought (which clearly was a big hit). The site head came by and we had a lovely chat which covered all the topics that I'd wanted to bring up in a one-on-one with her, so no need to schedule anything separate.

After that, I joined a multi-purpose cocktail hour at our default local bar and had a lovely time. (Past-me might be amazed to see me enjoying "getting together with co-workers for drinks." How we change.)

I've confirmed that Medicare has acknowledged my initial payment. Still need the bill from Kaiser to start my payments there (and receive the new member card). The basic-basic Kaiser Medicare Advantage plan doesn't have any additional expense, but there are a couple of options that do have a fairly minimal additional payment for extra services. I picked the one that gets me a pair of glasses every 2 years, expanded dental coverage, gym membership, and up to $60 of OTC drugs per quarter, all of which more than covers the monthly add-on. I didn't pick the option that has a somewhat larger monthly add-on that reduces co-payments, because currently I wouldn't have enough reductions to balance the cost. That may, of course, change at some point, but I can always modify the plan details later.

Still no movement on the retirement benefits, but the "follow up in 2 weeks" recommendation comes due on May 1, so I'm leaving it for now. (Other than checking the website every couple of days.)

My 401K has slowly been recovering from the asshole's tariff shit, though I'm going to end up with about 50K less than my projections were suggesting back before the election.

I still have 2 investigations to close, as well as two that my trainee is trying to close before I leave. Other than that, I'm twiddling my thumbs a lot.

Medicare Advantage (through Kaiser) is all set up. I've paid my first 3 months of Medicare B through the website, since they can't automatically deduct it from my retirement benefits until they're actually giving me retirement benefits. (Still waiting on that one.)

Sent out my retirement announcement (and celebration invite) at work. I've promised people jars of Heather's Retirement Marmalade as door prizes for as long as they last. (I made 2 dozen.)

Other than the SSA thing, all that's left is:
* last-day stuff at the job (turn in computer/badge, exit interview)
* convert 401K to IRA and select investment strategy (the exact details of which may depend on market details)

Oh, and close my last two investigations. One is in final review, the other is pending completion of some corrections.

(My "retirement checklist" also has some other items on it that aren't directly retirement related but it seemed useful to record them as official to-do items.)

This morning I confirmed that SSA officially has me approved for Medicare Part B. I emailed my Medicare Advantage contact at Kaiser to ask for an appointment to officially set that up. Since my retirement benefit is still pending (which is usually where the Part B payment comes from) I assume that I'll get a bill. The "pay your bill" function on the Medicare website is active, but I only theoretically know what the amount is. (And some online searching suggested that direct payment is normally done in 3-month lumps?) In any case, I'm completely confident that I'll have everything set up by April 30.

On the work front, I've put together a mailing list for my retirement celebration/contact email. I'll send that out Monday (celebration is next Wednesday). Closed out my "attaboy catalog points" by ordering something trivial and consumable. (I almost zeroed out my points to get the Lowe's gift card that paid for my new dishwasher.)

Other than my official "exit interview," everything else work-related happens on the last day. Retirement benefits still pending but not urgent. Rolling the 401K into an IRA can't happen until mid-May. So not much else to do at the moment.

I had a breakthrough today on the Medicare Part B issue. I finally had a day when I had space in my schedule to hang out on hold with the local SSA office, and by luck I wasn't booted off immediately for the wait time being too long.

So I talked to a human being, gave her my info about my Medicare Part B application, and she activated it right then and there. (Alas, she didn't have the power to do that for my retirement benefits.) So in 24 hours, my status should be live in the system and I can get back to Kaiser about starting my Medicare Advantage. Yay for no coverage gap!

(I seem to be incapable of typing "Medicare" correctly the first time unless being very very careful. It keeps coming out "Medicate.")

So I now have a second "poke" in the system about the retirement benefit and she said if there's been no movement in a couple of weeks to check back and they can get a manager involved. "A couple of weeks" is at my retirement date, but this is less critical for the Social Security payments because I get back-pay from when I requested it to start (February) and I have plenty of savings to tide me over.

I am once again reveling in how much I can accomplish with my "pre-retirement long weekends." I posted about Friday's accomplishments already. Saturday was all about getting the vegetable beds set up and the tomatoes planted. Plus harvesting another bushel of Seville oranges, because I want to make a batch of "Heather's Retirement Marmalade" as give-aways at my work retirement party. (Previous instances of giving away Produce of My Estates have been very well received.)

( Boring Financial Geekery, but check back later because I will have an Interesting Announcement this afternoon )

An update on the path to retirement. For those who might need "what has gone before," in 26 days I will be retired.

My Social Security and Medicare Part B applications are still in process. Converting my 401K from the accumulation phase to the payout phase is still in the planning stages and can't be finalized until after my last paycheck, so not until mid-May. But in the mean time, I got a Very Nice Bonus (possibly the largest bonus ever in my time at the Big B), and I'll be getting 50 days worth of unused vacation paid out, so there are no worries about tiding over while things get sorted. I just get anxious when things aren't finalized yet, as a basic principle.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the last week interacting with Fidelity (who not only manage my employer's 401K and pension funds, but also handle pretty much all of the outsourceable HR tasks). After fighting through phone trees, chat bots, and HR tickets, I finally have answers or resolutions to all the issues I was pursuing. Some involved actions. Some involved clarifications.

I had two to-do items with regard to the Social Security Administration. I needed to deliver the "yes I've had employer health insurance for the last two years" form (one of the things I was fighting with Fidelity about) so they could complete my Medicare Part B application. (Needed to I can seamlessly transfer from Kaiser-from-employer to Kaiser-as-Medicare-Advantage.)

The other item was "I know the 30-day response time advertised on the website is a polite fiction, but it's been 100 days since I put in my application for retirement payments and I need to know if something's gone wrong and they just haven't told me."

Now, there are supposedly two ways you can make an appointment at your local SSA office: phone the local number, or phone the national number. Every time I phoned the local number, after listening through the whole 10 minute recorded message (it may have only been 5 minutes, to be fair) the chatbot would announce that since the wait time was too long they were just going to hang up on me and I should call another time. The national number, after listening through the whole etc. ect. etc. the chatbot would announce that since wait times were over two hours I should leave my number and they'd call me back. Yeah. Right.

Well, the third option is just to show up at the office and punt. Today was another of my "I need to use up my non-refundable days off" Fridays, so I showed up at the SSA office an hour before opening. This gave me time to peruse the posters on the door, one one which provided a qmr code that would allow you to check in online for the waiting list. Both the posters and the nice SSA person who came out to align our expectations said that there was no way nohow anyone without an appointment was going to get their business done today, but that we'd all get an intake interview to make a future appointment and get our needs classified.

Evidently my needs were exceptionally simple, because despite that caution, my intake interview covered everything I'd hoped to do. Turn in the Medicare form, and inquire about the status of my Social Security application. I was able to confirm that there were no problems/hold-ups noted on my application (my biggest worry), and the clerk put a "nudge" in my file for the person processing the application, noting how long it had been and that I was two months past my requested start date. (I'll get back-payments, once everything is approved.)

Since that was the only task I'd assigned myself for the day and it was completed by 9:30, I also dropped by the nursery and picked up tomato sets (which adds one more necessary task for the day).

Then I finally hunted down the physical location of my credit union (which merged with another CU a couple years ago and closed the location I'd gone to previously) to split off a new savings account (money market rates) to hold my "emergency funds" so I can use my regular savings account for "stashing money away for special projects and highly variable expenses." For quite some time now, I've had the privilege of not having to worry much about what I'm spending. Now I need to pay a lot more attention, so I'm setting up systems to make spending thresholds more visible and to save more aggressively for things I used to be able to do by feel. I have spreadsheets...

Today's major task for "pre-retirment prep Fridays" was an appointment with a Fidelity financial consultant. An actual in-person appointment (in Walnut Creek), which meant that I could use his facial and body language to figure out when we weren't entirely communicating clearly. (I hate had HATE doing business over the phone with no visuals.) After the hour-long phone consult last week, I was under the impression that today's appointment was to decide upon the specific details of how to turn my 401K into retirement income. I'm not entirely sure what *his* idea about today's appointment was. I have a feeling that I fell in an awkward mid-point between "has no idea what she's doing" and "knows enough to be a financial planner myself and what do I need him for."

So a couple times during the discussion I found myself asking, "What is the end goal of the things you're asking me about and presenting me with? What are the next steps in the process?" Because it felt like he was working very hard to avoid making specific recommendations, but whenever I started to discuss concrete specifics, I'd get presented with a basic-level lecture on How Things Worked.

I mean, he kept circling around to "based on even the most conservative projections, you can afford to live to age 97 with 90% confidence." But then he'd pivot to, "So what other sources of income were you planning to pursue?" ("Other sources" besides my 401K, my tiny fixed pension, and my social security. We did discuss my writing income, both current and projected, but I said I didn't want to include that in my financial planning due to the variability and uncertainty.)

In the end, we did manage to pull in harness and come up with a tentative plan for a mixture of two different types of annuities and the rest in one or more managed funds. I was hoping to walk out of the office with everything set up, but it turns out we can't move my money from the Bayer 401K into my prospective choices until my Bayer account is "inactive", i.e., after my last paycheck. Sigh.

So we have another appointment set for 3 weeks from now to lay out the specifics and set things up to be ready for a "push-button start" when that happens.

(I just had a really crazy thought that I might pitch to him. If I took a fraction of my retirement account and simply paid off my mortgage, it might make financial sense, because what I'd save in mortgage payments far outstrips what I'd lose in investment dividends.)

I keep pledging to post here more often, focusing on things that don't fit as well into my author blog. It just feels so hard to make time, but mostly it's my perennial problem of having trouble focusing on more than one social media venue at a time.

Retirement planning continues. I've gone back to taking Fridays off and using them for pre-retirement tasks, since I have some Personal Days that I won't get reimbursed for if I don't use them up. Last Friday I powered through most of the checklist items for things my employer has outsourced to Fidelity. There's an in-person appointment this Friday to hammer out the details for my 401K.

There has been slight movement on the Social Security front: Medicare asked me to get a form filled out by my employer saying I've had healthcare coverage for the last two years. So I guess that means that my application has actually been reviewed to some extent. Still no word on the Social Security itself. I think next week's task will be to see if I can get an in-person appointment to see if there's anything holding it up and maybe get an estimate (given that I was supposed to have started getting payments this month...).

Work is pretty much going to keep me running full speed until the last day, but I'm officially off the list for being assigned "major" investigations, since I can't guarantee that I'd get them finished before I leave.

Maybe next post I'll start getting caught up again on Things I Have Read.

My relationship with social media is not expansively polyamorous: I have a tendency to settle on one or two venues that I read compulsively, while forgetting about all the others (except when I want to post some blog/podcast publicity). Thus Bluesky has been getting all my love, Mastodon has been left to languish, fb gets browsed as a timewaster, and Dreamwidth...well, I'm not going to check when I last posted.

And yet, I love blogging long-form, and there are all manner of things that aren't really appropriate for the Alpennia/LHMP blog. So here I am. Maybe I'll even get caught up on my book reviews.

As of today, it is 60 days to retirement. I'm still angsting over whether my social security and medicare applications will get processed in time. I thought I'd allowed way more than enough time, but then they blew past the "normative processing times" posted on the websites. Well, I did some searching online with questions about current wait times and found a discussion with crowdsourced data that looks reliable. The conclusion of that discussion is that social security applications are being processed by start date, not application date, and that people have waited multiple months only to have their applications approved just in time for their desired start date. That helps a little, though it means I should be hearing very soon now.

In reality, as long as my payments start by May, it makes no difference in cashflow. (I picked February as my start month because it was my earliest 100% date and if I waited after that I was leaving money on the table.) The Medicare Part B start is a bit more critical since I need it approved before I can switch to Kaiser as my Medicare provider. I suppose I should research what my options are if there ends up being a gap before it kicks in.

The spring season in my garden has officially started. I've harvested my first two artichokes and am having some successful experiments in treating the artichoke leaf stalks as cardoons. I planted the replacement persimmon tree (and discovered the one it was replacing had rotted at the graft, so I may have planted it too deep). In the cleared bed around the persimmon, I'm seeing if I can manage to start an asparagus bed. And I also decided to squeeze in one more citrus tree--a mandarin. I think this weekend I need to begin processing the Seville oranges. I have plenty of marmalade in several varieties from last year, so I think this will be a candied peel year for the most part.