How to Retire Successfully with Timothy McCleskey, Jr..mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

How to Retire Successfully with Timothy McCleskey, Jr..mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Val Majewski:
Well. Welcome, everybody. Back to the Federal Retirement Show. I'm your host, Val Majewski, vice president with American Benefits Exchange. And I'm really excited to bring back my dear friend and federal benefits expert working with American Benefits Exchange, Tim McCleskey, on today's show and we're going to be discussing our recent experience at a convention that we went to for federal employees. It's actually one of the groups that our company is a national corporate partner with. It's called the American Society of Military Controllers, and we had a tremendous turnout. It was really great to get back to face to face interaction, seeing some familiar faces and getting a chance to not only be a part of the event, but to contribute to the event. So we're going to discuss that today again with Mr. Tim McCluskey. Tim, I appreciate you joining me. Thanks for coming back on the show.

Tim McCleskey:
Hey, glad to be here. Glad to help. And I'm excited for the opportunity again. Thank you.

Val Majewski:
Well, we met in Atlanta and it was good again to get back to face to face, seeing again those familiar faces, the folks that we see usually year in and year out. We had a little bit of a hiatus due to COVID, but again, glad to be back to face to face. Just tell me a little bit about your experience and your thoughts again, seeing some of those familiar faces.

Tim McCleskey:
Well, it was exciting. You know, I was curious as to what the turnout would be like, but I can tell you people were excited to come out there. There were quite a few people. In fact, I didn't realize they had a waiting list just to come. I had spoken to a few people prior to the meeting and I was saying, Well, I hope I can meet you there after doing a webinar with one of the SMC chapters and they said, Well, I'm on the list, I hope I can make it. So, I mean, it was exciting to see so many people and people were happy to be there. They were geared toward ready to learn, going through a lot of different classes. And we had such an amazing turnout for our sessions. I think we were both kind of excited and really struck that people were really interested in learning about the retirement.

Val Majewski:
Well, you're right about the waiting list thing was awesome to hear because generally they have between 3004 thousand live attendees. I know they had over 3000 virtual attendees and I think they're going to do that going forward. But you said the waiting list. I mean, that was people really were looking for a prison break. Right. It felt like we were in handcuffs, like we were just waiting to get out because of all the restrictions and things, especially with the government. And people were used to working from home. Right. They weren't interacting as much with even their own colleagues. So they were really looking forward to getting out and seeing some of their friends around the country, people that they haven't seen in a couple of years that are used to going to this event. And you're right. I mean, the excitement was there, the anticipation to learn. You know, you mentioned our two sessions going back a couple of years. We we did you and I did a session in San Antonio when the event was down there. We had probably in between 200 and 250 people sign up in the room this year. They allowed us to do two sessions, not just one, and had over 800 people combined register for that. I mean, the room was almost not big enough, right? I mean, we walked in standing room only it was really impressive.

Tim McCleskey:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and when you look at what's going on in the world, I think people are geared toward really trying to figure out what do I do, what, what what decisions should I make? And maybe even just thinking, okay, I need to really give this some thought. I really need to be focused on what my plans are. And so we saw people in the room ranging from probably their their late twenties or early thirties all the way up into probably their mid sixties and seventies. So it's a broad range, but people were really interested. The world is different now since COVID, and I think it gives people an opportunity to think, okay, how can I get prepared for retirement?

Val Majewski:
Yeah, we were talking so we didn't even mention the title of it, but we were talking about benefits and retirement, specifically for federal employees and just going over all the ins and outs right that we were talking about how to maximize, how to optimize, how to set yourself up properly for not just today, but for your future of retirement. And our goal when we do these sessions is to keep it fun, keep it interactive, have it not just be like a normal training session. But we were extremely surprised and maybe not to the extent of the interest in it, because we've had interest before, but just to the amount of interest, right. I mean, I didn't know I didn't know that we would get 800 people to sign up and who knows how many people were. We're watching online. This was just a live attendance. Right. And it was standing room only. There were people sitting on the floor on the sides and standing up against the brick wall in the back because there weren't any seats available. So that was that was exciting to see and to come hear you talk to him because you gave both of those sessions. Was it intimidating getting up there on the stage in front of that many people?

Tim McCleskey:
Well, you know, what's interesting is I think, what, maybe 45 minutes prior to my stomach got a little queasy, you know, like and I said, what is going on with me? You know? But I think any time that I get up to speak, I always want to do well and serve people the best way that I can. And so I had a few nerves, but I think every time I start to speak, the nerves go away. And I think what was interesting is everybody was paying attention. You know, a lot of times you can do sessions and you'll have people on their phone or people walking in and out. But I mean, it was quiet. You could hear a mouse squeak because people were really interested in trying to figure out what information can we give them to to not only better understand their benefits or retirement, but help them make better decisions as they approach that in.

Val Majewski:
Yeah. We also had a booth set up a table in the exhibit area where we gave out some of our information, talk to a lot of the attendees just about what we do. And it seems like everybody that we talked to that came by our table. We said, Hey, we're giving a couple of the breakout sessions. We're at this, this time and this location. Everybody that we talked to or seemed like seemed like everybody we talked to was like, yeah, I'm signed up for that. I'm going to see you there. Looking forward to it. I think I've got you on my schedule, whatever it might be. It was it was extremely popular. But the idea, like you said, is to keep it fun because this stuff is not on by itself. Interesting. Right. And it's that's why it's not really discussed with the federal employees, not something that they get trained on. Because I don't want to say what we do and what we talk about is boring by any means. I mean, it is 100% needed, but we have to keep it interactive, have to keep it fun, or else people will tune out and turn to their phones or or just take a snooze or whatever it might be. So you had a couple of awesome stories in there, some jokes, obviously, that we we threw in. But even even one of the first slides you had, you talked about a guy that said, what I need, I need ten more years. Can you explain that story a little bit? Because I think that really opened up people's eyes in the beginning to say, hey, I need to pay attention to this.

Tim McCleskey:
Absolutely. And I always try to start with a story that people can relate to. You know, when people consider the idea of retirement, we want to think about it in a positive light. So people think about the good things that they want to do. And this gentleman that I've spoke of, real, real client, real gentleman I spoke to probably about eight or nine years ago, he had worked for the federal government in an agency for 30 years. He was 60 years of age. And he was ready he was ready to retire. In his mind, he was mentally ready. Now, when I say mentally in his mind, I mean, he had bought his retirement vehicle. You know, we geared toward buying that retirement car or truck. And it was nice. You know, it's always the nicest one. He had redone some things in his home to make sure that was squared away. He had gotten those nice, big, plush chairs that vibrate and do the massages. I mean, he was ready to retire in thought. But when we looked at the numbers and the new debt he had incurred by getting ready to retire, he was almost $900 in the hole with his retirement income. And I told him, I said, it's great that we saw each other now because imagine retiring and figuring that out later, you'd be going back to work. And so people got really quiet because they're going to be some people thinking like that, like, I want to travel, I want to do this. Well, wait a minute, do you have the money to do that? And it doesn't mean you can't, but you want to count the cost on the front end first before you make that decision. And that's what we discussed.

Val Majewski:
I remember you saying, hey, I laid it all out to them and I told them, you're going to have to work ten more years. He's like, ten more years. You got to be kidding me. I'm ready to go now, you know, and things you may be planning in your head that this is what I'm going or I'm going to put my 30 years in, get my gold watch, and I'm out of here. I've seen some people say, yeah, my numbers what I'm going to get coming in from say say the refers employee and and you're listening to this show you might be a first employee and think well I've got my pension, I've got Social Security, I've got TSP I'll be taking care of. But you don't really consider what's going to be going out and what that net number looks like. You said perfectly he acquired new debt right before retirement and that wasn't really conducive to a financially sound retirement.

Tim McCleskey:
Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that I do mention is we look at this 80% retirement rule where we try to look at can you live off of 80% of your working income? And if you can, are you going to have 80% of your working income in retirement? See, the pension only carries about 25 to 30%. Social Security, depending on when you choose to accept it, may cover between 25 and 30%. So you've got a shortfall there. Now, the hope is that TSP will fill in that gap. But you've got to remember, if you're taking money out of any 41k or any retirement account, what do you have to do? First, you've got to pay taxes, so the IRS has to get their portion and then you get what's left over. Well, if you're in a position where you feel like you need that extra 20 or 25% from your TSP or other retirement account, guess what? You may end up outliving your money. And the worst thing you want to be is 75 or 80 and your income drops because there was no real plan in place.

Val Majewski:
And that's a huge concern. We say this all the time. And you can look up details and surveys. Google it. But the number one fear of retirees is outliving their money. Living without money. Your number two fear is death. So people are more afraid of living without money than they are of dying. And that story, I think, really opened up everybody's eyes and said, yeah, I need to pay attention to the rest of what this guy is going to be saying, because I don't want to be in that same boat. I may have this false sense of security, too. So I need to really, really pay attention. I think that perked up everybody's interest during both sessions when we spoke.

Tim McCleskey:
Yeah, absolutely. I think another piece and you kind of alluded to it is people really don't think about how long they may actually live. The IRS projects right now that people are going to live 20 to 25 years retire. Now, that doesn't matter with you retired 57 or 67, the IRS still projects and this is based on census data. So it's not based on your health or how much money you have or family dynamics. This is based on census data. We all know somebody that's living well into their eighties and possibly their nineties. So you've got to have a plan for that because the cost of living and we're feeling it now is going to continue to rise. So you have to have a plan in place long before that date of separation from employment comes because you don't want to be 15, 20 years in retirement and your income is going backwards. Worst place to be in retirement.

Val Majewski:
Right. And that's. You said inflation and cost of living. The dollar typically is going to go less and less. So if you're if you're making what you think you're going to make or you're going to make what you are making now as an active federal employee in retirement, that you're buying power. Purchasing power most likely is going to be going down. So if you're not even inflation protected, you're preparing for that going forward. It may be the same type of boat, right? Your money's not going as far, which means you don't have as much money in retirement as you think you do. So that's a concern that people take into consideration to taxes may be going up, not just cost of living or inflation and taxes. That's something that we talk about and people don't take into consideration because we're historically in a pretty low tax bracket time, you know, and taxes may go up in the future. And I'm not I say this not based on any factual thing, knowing which way taxes are going to go. But I've taken your little surveys with federal employees every time I speak to them or do a personalized benefits report. And I just ask them, which direction do you think taxes are going in? And it's not unanimous, but the consensus is that people think taxes will be going up in the future. That's not my opinion. That's theirs. That's just information I've gathered from other federal employees. Tim, I don't know if you hear the same thing, but that's going to reduce spending power in the future.

Tim McCleskey:
Yeah. And even if taxes don't go up for that individual, their tax bracket, if they make they maintain the same tax bracket, or guess what, your taxes as an individual may go up. Now, why would that happen? Because while you're working, you have deductions, you may have dependents. So you have these opportunities to not pay taxes on certain monies. But guess what? When you retire, well, hopefully you won't have dependents that you may, but you will have those same deductions. So you're going to pay a little more based on your bracket. And believe it or not, many of us will retire in the same tax bracket we're in while we're working, but we're not paying the same because of those opportunities for deductions now. And when you don't have them later and your income has dropped by 20, 30 or 40%, you begin to feel that burden of taxes.

Val Majewski:
Oh, sure, sure. So that was those were some some questions that we got during the sessions. I know we didn't have time to go through everything, but some of the major concerns that we saw from people, they were they were shocked to hear some of the information that you had to understand. These are highly educated federal employees that it's not like they don't know what they're talking about. I mean, the American Society of Military Controllers, these are people that are in budgeting, auditing financial numbers, people for the Department of Defense, and they know what they're talking about when it comes to numbers. And these folks are sharp when it comes to crunching the data. It's just they weren't completely aware of everything that goes into their financial situation as a federal employee, especially as it pertains to their future retirement. So when you make what we made, the numbers make sense to them. It was eye opening, jaw dropping, and we got a lot of great questions during the session. But just to boil it down, just to kind of think about some of the concerns, the common concerns that people have, I mean, do you have a few off the top of your head that were really sticking out that people had either when they asked us at our table or asked during the sessions?

Tim McCleskey:
Well, one of the concerns is, is there there through a savings plan, you know, with inflation, with the the Fed's raising the rates, the market is just is just dipping. In fact, I had a conversation just this morning with a lady, and I know everybody's not in the same situation, but at the end of the year of last year, she earned $300,000 in her TSP. But guess what? We're halfway through the year, she's lost $300,000 in her TSP. And so one of those greatest concerns is, where do I put my money? What do I need to do? And what I tell people is you got to look at the data first. You know, you never want to make an emotional decision based on how you feel just because you see numbers dropping, look at the data and then make an educated decision based on that information. Now, what's the data? Well, we know the feds said they were going to raise rates at the end of the year. And there are some people I spoke to that they shifted their money in the first quarter right before the end of the first quarter, and they have not lost anything. Now, why haven't they looked at the data? They paid attention. What we cannot do is put our heads in the sand and hope for the best, because that doesn't always work out the way we want it to.

Tim McCleskey:
We have to make wise decisions based on the information we're given. It's not always going to feel good, but if we have the time to work. You know, the numbers may come back bad. I said one thing at the end of I think it's day two of the session. I said, You know what? We've been riding this wave for a long time and we've been having a good ride. But, you know, just like all rides on the roller coaster, they always come to an end. Now you can get back home. And actually, when you get back home, you may feel a little bit better because now you know what to expect. But that's because you have some experience. That's because you have some working knowledge, and you have to use that working knowledge to make the best choice for yourself and your family. Never make decisions based on what the person in the cubicle next to you is doing. You don't know what their situation is, what their family dynamics are, or their financial situation. You have to make decisions based on your knowledge for your and what's going to be best for you and your family.

Val Majewski:
That is a huge thing that we talk about is where are you getting your information from? Is it watercooler talk? Is it the person next to you or are you talking to somebody that is an expert in federal benefits and retirement information? To guide you along your way. I'd rather get my information from an expert. Now, I'm not going to claim that we know every single thing, but we know a whole lot in our experience working with federal government employees. So that's extremely important, especially when it comes to TSP because yeah, I heard it too. What should I be doing with my TSP? The market is up and down. It's very temperamental right now. What what should I do? And there's a lot of factors that go in, like you said. I mean, what is your time horizon? What is your overall risk tolerance? What do you want that money to do for you? In the end, you know, the person that lost 300,000, maybe they have a whole lot of time left and they're they're okay with waiting until it comes back. Or maybe not. Maybe they were anticipating using that money, like you said earlier, for part of their retirement income and now they're $301,000 less. It's not going to make their money go any further. So you've got to understand where exactly you are in your career, understand what your risk tolerance is, what you want that money to do to to make the best decision. Plus, and look at the data. Look at look at what's going on out there. And I think there's no one size fits all answer for for anything, but specifically TSP because of how crazy things have been.

Tim McCleskey:
Yeah, that's exactly right. In fact, with you bringing that up about TSP, we have to consider there now changes in TSP. If you going into your to your your account, you notice you have to reset everything and it looks good but but once you learn how to navigate through it, I think there are some great opportunities that are kind of look at some numbers and really have a better understanding on how to how to go through it. But it takes some time and you've got to take that time to go through it. I've spent quite a few minutes with about four or five people just perusing through the site to try to understand what's going on. You want to take that time, you want to kind of have that understanding. So when it's time to make a decision, when it's time to maybe move some money around to different funds, if you have more time to work, look at all of the data that they have available. It's there. You've got to find it. And we can work together to help you find it, but you've got to be willing to take the time to do it. It's not just going to happen by osmosis, as my dad used to say, you really want to put the time in. So when it's time to separate, you can skip out the door and not go out with your head down, wondering if it's going to work out for you.

Val Majewski:
You mentioned that TSP making changes. They were they were down for about a week. Their system they came back whole new website, whole new, like you said, log in. You got to set up your whole account all over again. And unfortunately, you know, they're not providing a full instruction manual on how to do everything. So federal employees like you all listening have to figure this all out. So, again, talking to somebody who's got some experience now, we are learning as much as you are, but we are helping federal employees out every single day with regard to TSP and navigating the new website, logging in, understanding the processes. So it can be extremely confusing, but it's beneficial for you to talk to somebody like us so that we can walk you through those, those different processes and the different points or the good, the bad. That's with the new website so that I've seen it. Tim I don't know if you have helped out some clients, but hold times on TSP because of this new system have been over an hour. I've heard of some people being on hold for two and even this is an extreme scenario 3 hours just to get their phone call disconnected. It was extremely frustrating to try to get answers. So if you do need assistance, please reach out because we know it's been have been pretty frustrating for a lot of folks. Yeah.

Tim McCleskey:
Absolutely. And we do everything we can to help. And again, as I stated, you know, we don't know everything we're learning as well, but we're able to spend some time with people. And I'm grateful to have people that say, hey, get in here with me. Let's look at this thing and kind of figure it out. And honestly, once you get in there, it's actually it's actually pretty simple, but you've got to take the time and go through it. And who wants to sit on the phone for an hour waiting to get one or two questions answered? And then what if you don't get an answered? Right. I had one lady, she sat on the phone for an hour and a half and then they couldn't even give her an answer. And I know this is not going to happen to everybody because it can be frustrating. But just to let you know, we're all human. This this lady was on the phone an hour and a half and they said, we're going to give you the number to to when you're ready to move money. We're going to give you the rollover number. She gave them the number. She called the number. It was another federal employee spouse whose husband had passed and she was waiting. To get a response from TSP on a death benefit.

Val Majewski:
Oh, my gosh.

Tim McCleskey:
Now that's not going to happen to everybody. But again, we're human. We make mistakes. But they're trying to figure stuff out. So you want to make sure that you try to go in on your own. And they have this little birdie that you can click on and they will go through these kind of, like, webinar deals to kind of explain some things. Allow yourself time to go through that versus waiting to get on the phone with somebody because a mistake may be made. And I don't want you to chalk it up and say it's TSP fault. It's not. Everybody's still trying to figure it out and it's going to take time.

Val Majewski:
Yeah, that was a concern, you know, during it. Well, during the time we were at the convention or TSP was down, so we were getting questions asked like, what's the new system going to look like? And we had to say, unfortunately, we we don't know because we're waiting, just like you. It's hurry up and wait to see what comes out of this along with with TSP. We we talked to a bunch of folks that had previous military time, had concerns or questions about purchasing that back in my opinion. Tim, it's always beneficial to purchase that back. I'm sure you've got some questions there, but what are your thoughts on that?

Tim McCleskey:
I think it's wise. You know, if you have not retired with the military and you have some time, five years, two years, even if it's 18 months by that time back. Why? Because as you get close to separation, time is going to become important to you. Like, Wow, I wish I had that two or three years because it projects you and pushes you forward to have any amount of time necessary to retire, either without a penalty or with comfort, with the amount of years necessary for you to have the high three that you want and the amount of time in years that you want. So, yes, by all means. By the time back and the earlier you buy it back, the cheaper it is. The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes. So go ahead. Do not wait by that time back as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Val Majewski:
Yeah. Because they charge interest on the deposit needed. So there have been times where I've seen people that were 20 years removed from their military service time and actually the interest owed was more than the original deposit amount because of the duration of time that had passed. Also, there's a little bit of confusion that I heard from some federal employees. And just to clear it up, they had thought that buying back the military time didn't count towards their eligibility for years of service. I said, absolutely it does. I mean, if you have four years of military time and you've worked ten years already as a civilian, well, you get now you're at 14 years and 14 years that count towards your eligibility for retirement. So Tim just said you can get to retirement. Earlier, there was a little bit of confusion from a person I talked to that thought it didn't count towards eligibility, it only counted towards the calculation. No, it counts towards both, which helps. The only thing it doesn't count towards is towards your first supplement calculation. If you're not familiar with the first supplement, you can go back to one of our previous episodes where we discussed the first supplement in detail. But yeah, that's usually always beneficial to purchase back that that previous military time. That's just we'll go with one more note. We've got a lot of concerns and questions and things, but just your thoughts on a common concern or common question that you saw people ask during our time at the convention and during our time giving the the two breakout sessions.

Tim McCleskey:
You know, it's interesting. This is a very, very simple, easy question, but it's a it's a full blown question at the same time. Tim. Can I retire? I mean, you know, at the end of the day, people really want to know if they can. Now, here's what I've learned that people are really asking. Can I continue to live the same way I'm living right now and retire? A lot of times that's really the question. Do I have to change my life and my lifestyle in order to retire? Well, just to give you a couple of pieces there, one of the things we look at is your debt to income ratio. We look at that now and we look at it. Is it going to be the same in retirement? That's the easy answer. You know, if you have 100,000 year income and your debt supports $100,000 of your income, then you can't afford to live on 60. You know, so we have to talk about that on the front end. And we look at what needs to happen to eliminate that debt as swiftly as possible. So you can put more in TSP, put more in savings so you're better prepared. Because if you don't make those adjustments now, your behavior is not going to be a light switch and change when you walk out the door and retire. Here's the other piece. How long is it going to take for me to get my my full pension paycheck? Well, right now, it takes about three months to process your retirement claim. Now, that's just to process the claim.

Tim McCleskey:
So that means if you decide to put in paperwork today and it's the end of June, it's probably going to be August, September before it's completely processed. But that doesn't mean that very next month you get a check. It typically takes three or four months before you begin to get that first full pension paycheck. So now how do you live? We have to look at your cash flow. All of these are moving parts that are important to determine if and when and how you retire. And guess what? If you got a lot of debt that you're paying off to other people, you can't prepare and plan and put money up. So you have that cash flow. Now, what are you doing? Pulling money out of TSP? Paying taxes just to live from month to month to wait on your pension. Nobody wants to do that. So those questions are about debt. Can I retire now and how do I do it? How much cash do I need to have? 3 to 6 months living expense money. It'd be nice if you had a year's worth, and I always get that. That laugh or smirk. How am I going to have a year's worth? Well, if you've got a car note, credit card, student loan and some other debt, and you pay all of that off, now you might have 1000 $502,000 plus that you can put up for a year. But that might be a year's worth of expenses right there. But you're paying it off to somebody else now.

Val Majewski:
Well, that's part of it, right, is not knowing what the bottom line is going to look like down the road. And and we can share that with them now. We do. People probably asking, well, how do how do you do that? How do you look into the future? Now, it's easy if somebody's a couple of months away from retirement and we've got all the numbers right now, but let's say somebody's 50 years old and they're like, well, I'm going to retire at 60 or 65. How do we project that out? Tim, you do a great job of explaining this when when we're in front of folks and they kind of ask that what exactly do you do? What is your benefits analysis, your one on one meeting? How can you determine all of this? Well, I'll let you explain it, because you do a great job of it. But how do we explain properly to a federal employee that might be listening here exactly what we do?

Tim McCleskey:
Well, it's pretty simple. We take someone's most recent lease and that's your leaving earnings date. That's your biweekly paycheck. And then we look mostly in your deduction section and we take your highest three salary, not today, but projected out for the time that you're going to retire. So we may look at your grade and stuff. We may ask, do you expect some promotions? And I always say, give me a good conservative number. And we take that as your future high three and we take that number against how many years of service you're going to have. And we manually calculate what your pension is going to be. And if you go back and look at the previous one or even the webinar that we've done in the past, you'll be able to see how we calculate those numbers. Now, we put all of this in a workbook for each individual, and mind you, they're not hypothetical numbers. These are your actual numbers, probably within 15% of margin of error. And that way you're able to get an idea of what your pension is going to be. We use the Social Security calculator from the Social Security website to estimate what your Social Security income is going to be. We look at what your tax bracket is and take out federal taxes and then we add in your debt. So you're going to a good bottom line number. And what does this show you? Future earnings, future behaviors and what your net income is going to be based on those choices that you're making now that are going to project you in the future. That's how we come up with your numbers or retire.

Val Majewski:
And I love the line that you have because the simplify it. We take a snapshot of where you are today so you can see where you're at. And we also project out into the future. So you can see how your trending and trending is as a common word. In today's day and age, people want to be trending in a positive direction. So if you can see it in black and white that you are going exactly where you want to be, then great. You've got peace of mind. You see, you're on the right track and we can continue to update your analysis as we get closer to retirement. But if you see that you've got some years to go and you are not trending where you want to be in the future, you have time to make some different choices or different preparations, and that's what we're doing. We don't want to get to the point where you're talking to people. They realize they need to do something, but they stay the same. Like, Oh, well, you know, I'm just heading in a bad direction. No, no, no, no, no. We want to make sure that you are set up properly. You're maximizing what the government gives you. You're optimized if you want to use any other AIS words to put in there, but that you're set up properly so you can retire when you want to on your terms and not have to work yourself to the bone or not have to drastically reduce your lifestyle when it's all said and done. We want to make sure you're set up properly. I mean, that's the whole goal, right? You've done all this work not to just retire and with a sad face. I mean, we want to have a happy face. You have a pretty cool slide in there actually, though, about the the crying face of those that typically retire, not on their terms or not under the financial situation that they want to be. People got a really good chuckle out of that slide.

Tim McCleskey:
Yeah, absolutely. And I tell people, you know, probably about 65% of the people I see don't really have a plan or don't don't have a thought about what they need to do. And I tell them, don't don't feel bad that the great thing is we're having a conversation now. Yeah. And the biggest part is having the conversation because then what people then realize a lot of times they're not as bad off as they thought and that's kind of a sigh of relief. But then we put together a plan. We put together some ideas of what needs to be done for them specifically, and it would be for you specifically, not based on what everybody else is doing, but what your specific needs and interest are. And then we hone in on that. And then as Val stated, every year we come back and look at those numbers again and again and again. And by the time when it's time for you to separate, you've got a nice nest egg, you've made some good choices. You may have had to adjust some things according to to what's going on in the world and in your life. But you've had a plan along the way, and that's the goal.

Val Majewski:
So people may be asking, well, I want to get my plan taken care of. I want to I want you to look at this. I want you to share with me the reports. I want to talk to Val or Tim. How do they do that? Well, you can go to our Web site, Federal Retirement Show dot com, request some information and we'll be happy to get in touch with you and create the report that Tim is talking about. Look at where you currently stand, how you're trending, how you're projecting, so you can see what you need to do. And I've had people that say, I'm scared to look, I don't want to know what that looks like, what you need to know. You absolutely need to know. You know, there's no fear in this. It's you need to know where you currently stand. You need to know how everything looks so that you can be set up. So we give these presentations, we get in front of I we just said hundreds of people to provide benefits and retirement information for what? So that you can make the best decisions.

Val Majewski:
Now, what we provide and what we did recently is very general in nature, but you need to know what your specific situation looks like. So I encourage you I know Tim would encourage you as well to reach out, talk to an expert like Tim or myself and go over your personal situation, get all of your questions answered. Because as Tim said, your situation is different than the person working next to you, different than the person working next to them or everybody else in your office or your post or wherever it is that you're working for the federal government. Your situation is unique, so you need a unique approach, an individual approach to your retirement. So we're happy to do that. And I know, Tim, we went way longer than we could have. We could still talk for probably hours on end, but I'll pass it to you before I close this out. Any kind of final thoughts for the federal employees that are tuned in, you know, words of encouragement or just things that you think they should do on top of what we've already talked about?

Tim McCleskey:
You know, one thing I can say is, if you are listening to to to this podcast right now, you're already moving in the right direction. Right. Even if you already have a plan in place, the more information you gather, the better opportunity you have for retiring with comfort. It's not about what you have in terms of material items. It's that peace of mind. So your decision making should should be based on what's going to be comfortable for you when you walk out the door the last time. Everybody's going to be different in the office. Everybody's going to have their opinions and advice and things of that nature. And that's okay. But at the end of the day, you have to make the decisions is going to be best for you and your family and you feel good about that. That's what really counts.

Val Majewski:
Awesome. Well, Tim, I appreciate you joining me again. I'm sure it won't be the last time we'll have many other discussions as we move forward helping federal employees. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule, taking time away from your new baby girl to talk to us and the federal employees out there. But I just want to leave you with with one final thing. Look, I really do encourage you go to the website requesting information, let us know how we can help, at least answer some of the questions that you may been keeping inside. Just let us let us help you. That's federal retirement show dot com. Request information. Be happy to stay in touch. Now, if you need more information on other benefits and other topics pertinent to federal employees and you're curious about some other things that we mentioned, go back and look at the other episodes that we have are my previous discussion with Tim and you can learn a lot more prior to reaching out and going over your situation, but I really do thank you for joining in. Please like subscribe, share. Tell everybody you know about us. We just want to help our employees provide this information to them. So thank you again for joining us on the Federal Retirement Show. I'm bound by and look forward to seeing you on a future episode. And.

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