Fitness:
Financial:
And most important to me
Life:
Today I had to attend a meeting at the Social Security Administration to learn about the positives/negatives of opting into the Social Security system beginning January 2010. My work is in sort of a unique situation, and with the merger that previously happened, those that weren’t into Social Security would have the option to join it in 2010. As I would have guessed, the laws, amendments, etc. for deciding are about as complicated as the IRS’s and it’s forms for filing taxes each year.
I already have 13 credits built up in Social Security from working part-time with my brother, and the chances are that I will hit the required 40 sometime during my working life. The complications that come up with deciding whether to join or not have to deal with the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. As complicated as those are, my age really helps me with deciding. The way I’m looking at it, is I am diciplined enough to be able to stick aside at least 6.2% of my income without ever touching it, which would be the amount that would be taken out for Social Security, and I’m already paying the 1.45% for Medicare. So it appears to me that I am just as well off to stay out of Social Security and stay into our defined benefits plan at work for as long as I’m here, however long that ends up being, and then enter Social Security fully when my employment changes.
Since my work has merged with another one of what we previously were, we’re no longer a non-profit organization. Changes in benefits, retirement plans, positions, procedures, etc. are all forthcoming with the transition. If it were up to me, it’d take a long while to get to those changes. We’ve already had one staff retreat to kind of get to know one another and from what I hear we have an overnight one mid October sometime. There’s also a meeting tomorrow for benefits, and one on Wednesday for our retirement plan options.
I like my current 403b account, and I’ve got some thinking to do between now and Wednesday morning about signing up for a 457b account since we are no longer eligible to contribute to the 403b. They’re very similar accounts as far as matches and investment choices go, except for ownership—457b”s are owned by the employer. I don’t necessarily like putting my trust in someone else for what could grow to be a substantial amount of money. I feel safer knowing that I own the account, yet I love available matches of free money. Then there’s the big Social Security option and whether to begin it or not. Which for me seems easy, as it’s a Government program that I have no faith in whatsoever. But for others, it may be more enticing depending on their own situations and ages. Decisions..decisions…
I know you aren’t really supposed to check on your long term investments, especially when you know the stock market has been doing nothing good lately, but today I checked on my Vanguard account to see where it stands. This month, coincidentally, is 2 years from when I first started my mutual fund that invests in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. Over the 1st year I made a few contributions, and then went cold turkey at the end of 2007. This of course could be looked at as either a nice move, or a mistake, because even while it was dropping I should have been dollar-cost averaging. I’m sitting at -38.8% currently on my funds that are in the 500 Index Fund, ouch!
As the new year came, my work offered me a chance to participate in their 403b plan. I saw this as a chance to make an instant 50% return on the first 6%, 50¢ on each $1 invested, that I chose to have withdrawn from my check and placed in it, so I naturally signed up for it. I really don’t know how long I will be there, but that really doesn’t matter, as I just wanted to take the free money since it was offered.
I’ve got a co-worker that is nice enough to bring me Money Magazine each month, and today suggested that I look into opening an IRA while I’m as young as I am. I’ve read about this some in the recent past, and am going to do alot more digging and number crunching before the month of April comes along.
40+ years is a long time, and a ton of things can change in that amount of time, but doing things early won’t hurt at all.
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.
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© Copyright 2007-2012 Shane Holden
All Rights Reserved.
