April 25, 2025 • 34 mins
Federal Employees: Retirement & Layoffs - Planning during DOGE – with Brian
Kuhn, CFP – With all the recent news stories concerning workforce reduction and
changes that Federal employees may be facing, Chris Boyd welcomes fellow Wealth
Enhancement Certified Financial Planner Brian Kuhn to the podcast. Brian provides an
overview of the retirement system and benefits provided to Federal employees. Chris
Boyd and Jeff Perry ask for Brian’s commentary on recent incentives for early retirement
and the likely elimination of remote work for Federal employees. Brian offers his
suggestions for Federal employees who are concerned about a potential job loss related to
DOGE.
To learn more about Brian Kuhn, check him out at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/briankuhncfp/
For more information or to reach TEAM AMR, click the following link:
https://www.wealthenhancement.com/s/advisor-teams/amr
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner,
and senior vice president and financial advisor at
Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest
registered investment advisors.
We call it Something More because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
Welcome to the program, Something More with Chris
Boyd, and I'm here with Jeff Perry, my
co-host, and we are pleased to have
our guest today, Brian Kuhn.
(00:43):
He's also a financial advisor with Wealth Enhancement
Group, an authority, I will say, when dealing
with federal employees.
So with all that's been going on with
DOGE and early retirement offers and layoffs, it
has been a time for federal employees to
(01:04):
have a lot of concerns.
So we're going to talk about that.
But before we do, Brian, let's start off
with a little, get to know you a
little bit.
Yeah, absolutely.
Appreciate it, Jeff and Chris, for having me
here.
So my name is Brian Kuhn, certified financial
planner.
I've been in the business for 24 years
now.
I'm also with Wealth Enhancement based out of
the Maryland area in a county called Anne
(01:26):
Arundel.
And if anybody's familiar with the Maryland area,
you know, there is this hub of federal
employees, Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel, and Prince George's
predominantly, but there's federal employees all over.
But they're very highly located in that area
in the suburbs of DC.
So many years ago, I kept noticing them
(01:46):
coming into the office looking for financial planning
and retirement planning.
This was around the 2006-2007 timeframe.
It started due to a thing called BRAC.
We had the base realignment after 9-11
that took many years.
And they all kept coming in with these
monster pensions and thinking about retiring because all
of the changes.
So, and as you guys know, being financial
(02:07):
advisors, we're all supposed to develop a niche,
if you will, something we're really good at.
So I said, well, if I could, I
don't, not sure I could find a larger
niche than the multi-million federal employees that
there are out there.
So I decided to devote my practice to
helping them.
At the moment, if we could only have
something that was as complicated, is as complicated
(02:30):
as BRAC, this is about 10 times more
complicated than it, unfortunately, but we're all doing
our best to navigate it.
Well, I mean, I think it's definitely a
topic on people's minds that just the general
public is aware of all that's going on.
And if you work in the federal government,
(02:52):
you know, I think everybody's kind of watching
their back a little bit of like, what's
going to happen, right?
And so I imagine you're dealing with people
who are, this is really interesting expertise, by
the way.
You know, I think that we'll hopefully get
some good lessons for our listeners and anyone
who's dealing with these kinds of clients.
(03:14):
But one of the things that I was
thinking about is, you know, you must be
dealing with not only people who have gone
through a layoff recently, or a retirement package
offering, but also people wondering, am I going
to be next?
Or what's my plan if things change?
So where should we begin, do you think,
(03:34):
tackling this topic?
Yeah, so we'll begin where we are at
the moment with the offers federal employees are
being given to leave.
Basically, that's pretty much how it's how it's
going so far.
So we had the original DRP, or fork
in the road, as it's called, back in
late January.
And predominantly, federal employees didn't really sign up
(03:57):
for that, because there was a lack of
clarification, a lack of an understanding of what
you were even signing up for.
I mean, it was coming from OPM, rather
than their direct agency was really how employment
topics arrive.
So we had the reconciliation bill, subsequent to
that original fork in the road.
So not too many people took that, unless
(04:20):
they were intending, perhaps, to retire in the
next couple months anyway, and just saw it
as what they felt was an opportunity worth
taking.
Yeah, we're past the deadline of that one.
But then VERAs have come out.
So opportunities to retire under more favorable conditions,
basically people who are eligible to retire that
(04:42):
might not have otherwise been eligible for what's
called an immediate retirement.
And then also now we've had the DRP
come back.
And this time, through their direct agency and
as with and with a lot more clarification,
doesn't mean it's a good thing to take.
And specifically, federal employment, unlike private sector employment
(05:03):
is really a legal employment contract.
There's all sorts of nuance and documentation and
policies to working for the government that doesn't
really exist in the private sector.
So federal employment attorneys are a regular thing
that I've been referring people to just to
make sure they know as much as they
can what they would be signing up for
(05:23):
if they take it.
So that's where we are right now.
Different agencies have different deadlines.
Some have passed, some are still ongoing.
Some are actively pursuing as many people volunteering
to leave as possible.
Others are not.
Some people, some agencies are actively forcing a
return to office once the DRP is over
five days a week.
(05:44):
Some are a little bit more flexible with
how they're implementing it.
So it's not easy by any stretch of
the imagination.
All of the public speaking that I'm doing
for feds and just talking to my clients,
one of the biggest things I'm trying to
convey is I'm just trying to give everybody
a big virtual hug because this is what
they're going through.
(06:05):
It's one that...
Would you start by giving us a little
bit of an overview of how does the
federal employee retirement system work?
You know what I mean?
There might be some nuances there.
And are there differences, for example, in different
kinds of federal employees, military versus something that
(06:27):
works for the government in some other fashion?
Maybe just give us an overview of how
that all fits together.
Yeah, absolutely.
So if you work for the federal government,
you can qualify for a pension.
That's one of the main differences.
And some private sector companies, they offer pensions,
but they're different and rare.
So if you work for the federal government
(06:48):
and you have certain conditions, which is time
and age, then you can exit federal employment
and receive a pension.
So the most common way that people want
to do that is on what's called an
immediate retirement, meaning there wouldn't be a delay
between their last paycheck and other than processing
time, the start of their pension.
And an immediate retirement allows them to continue
(07:10):
their health insurance throughout retirement, the FEHB plan.
Not for free, they have to pay for
it, but it's a plan that gives them
the option to continue the health insurance they
were previously on rather than switching over to
Medicare or in addition to switching over to
Medicare.
So some basic credentials that you have to
have is five years of civilian service and
(07:33):
age 62, or you can have what's called
MRA, which is an age range between 55
and 57 and 30 years of federal service,
which 30 years sounds like a real long
time.
But when you go into the federal government,
on average, you don't leave, unlike the private
sector.
That could be a sign of how you
might change from where you're doing it, but
(07:54):
just right in the government.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You could change around agencies.
You could change your job description, but generally
once you're in, on average, you stay.
So 30 years in MRA is something people
attain all the time.
There's another one called MRA plus 10.
So you would only need to be late
50s and have 10 years of service, but
(08:14):
there's a discount to your pension.
And then there's another one age 60 and
20, which is another one that a lot
of people qualify for.
So that's what everybody is striving for.
The biggest thing with federal employment, I would
say, is everybody is striving for a particular
date in the future.
In the private sector, you retire whenever you
have enough money, or you think you have
(08:35):
enough money, or when you reach some sort
of round number like 65 or 60 or
62, because that's when you can start social
security, right?
Or just when you get tired of it.
There isn't as much precision to timing what
you become eligible for.
So all the federal employees, this is a
common thing we're doing, is we're planning to
(08:57):
get to some particular qualifier that would allow
them to retire, ideally with that immediate pension.
And then the VERA, which is an opportunity
to leave under easier conditions, is a different
set.
So that's age 50 and 20 years in,
(09:17):
or any age and 25 years in.
So predominantly what I'm doing is we'll talk
and the employee will have, I have eight
years and I'm 55.
Well, I don't care how good the offer
sounds, if you could just make it another
two years, or one year and seven months
(09:37):
and three days.
We're literally calculating that timeframe down to the
day so that they can qualify to exit
under the conditions that they want.
That's what we're doing a lot of, and
that's what's unique about federal employment.
So Brian, are any of these offers out
there, rumors of offers, where they consist of
(09:58):
giving credit for additional years?
Yeah, the offers aren't producing additional credit.
They haven't rolled out a system like that.
That might be a good idea, actually.
I don't know that the leadership wants to
hear what we think, but if they were
to consider that, that would incentivize a lot
(10:19):
of people to consider, to think about it
because they're trying to get to that date.
But that's not how it works.
The DRP was a program that didn't exist
prior to three months ago.
And that was basically just saying, we'll put
you on paid leave until September.
So you don't have to commute around the
495 beltway and then you're done.
(10:41):
And then the VERA is an established program.
So that is sort of what you're describing
where it makes things easier to exit, but
they're not customizing it.
They're not making any easier than those conditions.
So now the VERAs and the current DRP,
as I understand, as I'm following things, a
lot of people are signing up for.
I've had more people sign up for this
(11:01):
round of it.
So there are a number of federal employees
that are eligible and choosing to exit, but
there are many more.
There's been over a million people.
It's called FERS-FRAE that have been hired
by the federal government since 2014.
So now we could have a discussion about
(11:23):
whether the federal government needs an additional million
people, but that's a different topic.
And also there's been attrition.
There's been people that have been retiring over
that timeframe.
But by definition, if they started since 2014,
that means they have no more than 11
years in.
So that doesn't make them eligible for the
(11:44):
early out offers that are being made.
I wonder how much of the folks who
are accepting some of these offers, which may
not be the greatest offers, are doing so
because they've been working remotely, meaning some of
them, I've heard from a couple of people
that we know through our practice that have
actually moved and been working remote thinking that
(12:06):
this was the way it was going to
be.
And so they're taking these offers because they
don't have the ability to go back to
work.
Absolutely.
I just got off a client, off the
phone with a client earlier this morning that
was specifically about that.
You know, they are fully, their agency is
now fully enforcing the return to office mandate,
what appears to be five days a week,
(12:27):
and that just doesn't work for their family.
So they're considering all of their options.
And unfortunately it appears that at least some
of the agencies are intending to enforce that
specifically to create attrition, best we can tell.
Also for what they believe to be productivity.
But so yeah, where you live and your
(12:50):
return to office mandates are factoring into their
decision because they just can't, or they don't
want to do it.
So what happens to an employee who doesn't
have that minimum level of time when they
leave federal service?
Do they get their contributions back or?
(13:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
They would get that.
That would only, so if they don't qualify
for anything, that would imply that they have
less than five years of civilian service, which
actually is somewhat rare, at least for the
people that I talk to, you know, there
are the probationary employees, right?
There's hundreds of thousands of them and they
all deserve two hugs in my opinion.
I've made the news recently too.
(13:33):
Yeah.
So, but by definition of your probationary employee,
you have fewer than five years, so they
would get a return of contributions.
But if you have five years in, you
know, that's then you would qualify for a
pension.
It just, you would have this gap period
between your last day at federal employment and
(13:53):
the start of the income and the income
probably wouldn't be enough to exclusively retire with,
and it wouldn't have the ability to sign
up for the health insurance later, but it
would still be a pension.
So that's good.
Great.
So let's go on to the idea of
if someone is concerned that they might lose
their job, what should they be doing?
(14:16):
What steps should they take?
Yeah, there's lots of things that they can
be doing and human nature, you know, some
cases, what I'm finding out is people are,
they're ready, fire, aim, or they are just
continuing to do the job until they're told
otherwise.
And we don't want to do that.
(14:37):
We want to consider all of our options,
even if we don't like that particular option.
So there's a whole industry of number, there's
three different industries that I would consider exploring
and I refer them, refer my clients to
them all the time.
There's federal employment law attorneys.
So these are people that make sure your
rights have not been infringed upon and help
(14:59):
represent you in front of like the MSPB.
If there is something that has happened, that's
mostly in the cases of terminations rather than
any sort of voluntarily leaving the government, but
they still consult on, you know, what forms
you're being asked to sign because there are
new forms that didn't exist before.
(15:20):
So that's one position or occupation that I
would definitely encourage federal employees to talk to
before signing anything or making any decisions.
There is the whole industry of career counselors,
right?
So these are the standard people who help
with LinkedIn profiles and resumes.
And it's somewhat ironic.
There's a lot of people who their whole
(15:40):
job was focusing on landing people federal jobs,
right?
So the niche within career counselors who help
you find a job within federal employment, they're
actually going in the opposite direction now, right?
So they know the terminology, they know the
industry and the agencies, but they're going in
the other direction.
So helping people land with contractors and so
(16:02):
forth.
But also, you know, with federal employees, you
have tenure, you have the same job for
the last 30 years, the last time you
had a resume, you know, you might have
faxed it to an employer.
So it doesn't really work like that anymore.
So there's a lot to learn if you
are going to transition and keep working.
So career counselors can help a lot with
(16:23):
that.
And then there's a whole other industry called
federal employee benefits specialists.
So not specifically financial advisors like me, we
compliment them, but these are people who typically
worked in the federal government in like an
HR capacity for years or decades and know
all of the paperwork and technicalities and things.
And there's a lot of nuance.
(16:44):
So I don't claim to know everything.
I bring them in to make sure, you
know, we're sharing accurate information and they charge
for their time, but a lot of time
it's really worth the hour or a couple
hours to walk through that.
So I would check with them because there's
all sorts of instances where, you know, you're
not exactly familiar with what actions you might
need to take to get credit for all
(17:06):
of your time.
Right.
So I was talking to a lady the
other day, she said she had 1.7,
one year and seven months in, but then
it turns out there was another two years
prior to that, that we weren't sure whether
that counted or she wasn't sure.
It sounded like it counted to me.
So she really, she wasn't three years and
five months away.
She was only one year and five months
away.
That's a big deal with what's going on
(17:27):
right now.
So we're, and other people where they're moving
from like within the federal reserve to regular
FERS or vice versa, there's military time where
you can buy that credit for it.
There's all sorts of nuance.
So there's a whole team of people that
really should be involved with each federal employee,
which sounds like a lot, but you know,
(17:49):
we try to coordinate that as much as
possible.
Is that the same for people who might
be entertaining one of the opportunities for retirement?
Is it to assemble that same group of
people or, you know, what should someone who's
maybe considering some kind of a, whether they
(18:11):
should take an offer or something?
Yeah.
So if they're planning to retire, I suppose
they wouldn't need, thankfully, the career counselor, right?
They would just wind down their work, but
the employee benefits specialist can definitely help with
the retirement application and the other technicalities of
their process.
The retirement process takes months.
(18:32):
I mean, and it could take longer now
because of the volume of people doing it.
The form that you turn in just to
say you want to retire is 14 pages
long that I've seen.
So this is not something where you just,
you know, check a box or you send
an email to your HR person.
There's a whole process to it.
(18:53):
The federal employment law attorneys, I mean, if
you're signing up for something voluntarily, then, you
know, it's difficult for the rights to be
infringed.
But if you're doing it through the DRP,
then it's still worth it.
I would say regardless, it's still worth it
just to get an hour of their time
and talk through things.
But definitely a financial advisor, if I can
(19:13):
put in a plug for what we do,
right?
I mean, like I said, with people, you
know, accepting the offers and then doing planning,
not everybody's doing that, you know, but I
wouldn't recommend that because, you know, you want
to know your numbers.
We build cash flow models for a living.
You know, you guys do that as well.
That's where we live.
So we can run all sorts of scenarios
(19:34):
to show you how things look, you know,
under different conditions.
If you were to go to work in
the private sector, if you were to stop
tomorrow, if you got terminated, if they change
the rules of your pension, not that I'm
saying they're trying to do that.
Let's hope they don't do that.
And meaning the amount that you are scheduled
(19:55):
to get any sort of scenario we can
model before it becomes a reality.
We hope it doesn't become reality, but that
really gives you the confidence to make these
decisions.
So that's what I would strongly encourage.
Yeah, it's so true, right?
Knowledge is power, right?
The more you can model this stuff out,
the better prepared you are for what are
(20:17):
the variations?
What is this?
What is that, right?
Yeah.
And most of the time I'll say the
conclusion we're making after building the model is
that they're in better shape than they thought
they were.
And that's always the case with planning.
You know, if people have an assumption that,
you know, they have less money than they
realize or less resources than they realize, but
(20:37):
certainly with feds, with the pension, I do
an exercise for people a lot where we'll
say, if you didn't have that pension, how
much money would you need in an account
to recreate that income, right?
Guaranteed for life with cost of living adjustments,
with the survivorship for your spouse, if you
have one.
And it's a lot of money.
It's a lot more than people think.
(20:58):
Yeah.
Even if you're FERS, you know, the old
system, not too many people are the old
system anymore, but their pensions were monsters, you
know, 60, 70, 80, a hundred thousand dollar
a year pensions.
They did exist.
But even FERS, you know, and you get
what's called a supplement with FERS, or sometimes
(21:19):
if you're eligible, there's qualifications, but that's an
extra amount to get you to social security.
And then you get social security and we
could get into, there's a lot of news
about that.
And then there's the TSP, which offers a
match.
So the combination of benefits, you know, it
can get you there.
We just need to number crunch.
(21:39):
You know, I was thinking about this.
Jeff has been telling me about all these
different pensions offerings at different systems that Massachusetts
public employees have.
I got to imagine the different kinds of
plans for the federal government has got to
be all that much more complicated that there's
(21:59):
so many variations and different iterations.
Yeah.
Tell us a little bit about just the
range of some of these kinds of, you
mentioned FERS is one example as maybe I
gather that's not as common today, but what
are some of the other possibilities?
So, I mean, if you're a civilian employee,
then everybody nowadays, if you were hired past
(22:22):
1984 or so, then you are FERS.
So it's a universal system referred to as
FERS for civilian employees, but you're absolutely right.
The nuance to each individual's experience with the
federal government can make it complicated because of
how they move around, let's say over time.
(22:44):
So like if you had military service beforehand,
or you had time away, right, you left
the government and came back, or you worked
part time, or you're what's called a term,
you have like a term appointment where it's
a certain number of years, or I even
had one that was an intern for a
while and how that factors in and then
(23:06):
your leave.
So there's annual leave and sick leave, and
both of those can factor into how many
years, both of those have certain definitions of
how they can factor into the size of
your pension or eligibility for your pension.
But then there's the decision that some people
(23:26):
make to take their leave because they want
the money because that's going to give them
liquidity until other things start like social security
or wrapping up a certain amount of debt
or something.
So yeah, it's certainly a full time job.
Do you have any involvement with the TSP's?
Do you help your clients decide what's the
(23:48):
right options for them?
Yeah, TSP is definitely a daily conversation I'm
having with clients to talk through the plan.
Maybe you should define it for our listeners
who are familiar.
Sure.
Yeah.
So for anybody not in the TSP or
just wanting a refresher on your own retirement
plan, so it's the retirement plan of the
federal government if you work for them.
And it's similar to a 401k but defined
(24:11):
a little bit differently.
It's basically an opportunity to save for retirement.
And you can do pre-tax or Roth
contributions.
And if you're a FERS employee, then you
get a match on that.
There's $960 billion in the TSP plan across
7 million accounts.
So these are current and former accounts.
There's not 7 million active federal employees.
(24:33):
So last time I checked, $960 billion is
a lot of money.
It's a factor of 50 times bigger than
a company like Apple's 401k plan.
So there's a lot of money and a
lot of people who have a lot of
questions.
So we could talk about the TSP pretty
much endlessly, but there's basically five lettered funds
(24:54):
or what are called target date funds or
L funds.
And people navigate that the best that they
can.
A thing that's coming up a lot to
be objective and clear and help people is
that another thing that's specific to their age
when they leave is that if they reach
age 55 before they leave service, then the
(25:15):
TSP plan acts basically like a 401k where
they can access money within the TSP from
it to their pocket and avoid the 10
% penalty.
Whereas if they took that money and roll
it to an IRA first and then took
a withdrawal, there would be that 10%
penalty.
So that window is valuable.
It doesn't necessarily mean all the money needs
to stay there, but however much we might
(25:37):
need during that window.
But we try to make people aware of
things like that, even if it prevents them
from being interested in rolling it because this
is the business we're in is helping people
manage money.
But there's all sorts of investment opportunities in
the private marketplace that sometimes are worth considering,
income investing and broader diversification and some international
(25:59):
options and all sorts of investment vehicles that
we're familiar with that we could get into.
Very good.
You sound like you kind of wanted to
get into just in passing the idea of
how things might change.
Yeah.
Do you want to talk about that?
(26:20):
Yeah, sure.
So that's another thing that a lot of
feds are worried about is things are changing
in terms of job security and returning to
office.
But in terms of actual laws being passed
that might change federal employee benefits is another
thing that people are following or concerned about.
That generally would come from Congress.
(26:43):
So there's lots of rumors about what could
happen and people who are already receiving their
pension, they're thinking, well, I really hope they
don't do anything with that.
And there's nothing active that I'm aware of
that would change a pension that's already being
received or the size of a pension that
has yet to be started.
But one example of something that is in
(27:05):
a house bill would be changing how much
current federal employees pay for their pension, but
only for those who started, who are not
that FERS-FRAE employee.
So FERS-FRAE pay 4.4% of
their salary for their pension.
(27:25):
So if anybody's not a fed and listening,
they pay for their pension.
It's not free just for working there.
They pay a part of their salary.
It's 4.4%. But those prior to that
start date pay less, in many instances, noticeably
less.
So there is a bill that would, if
passed, it hasn't passed yet, hasn't become law
(27:48):
yet, it would make everybody pay that 4
.4%. So if you have tenure in the
federal government, if you've been there since before
2014, and you had intended to stay a
while longer, then there's a chance you could
be paying more for your pension, which is
unfortunate.
But change happens.
(28:11):
If I was working with a federal employee,
I would probably lean towards them not leaving
government just exclusively due to that.
If I had a job offer and they
told me that I would get a pension
one day, but I had to pay 4
.4% of my salary for that pension,
I would sign up.
That's a pretty good deal overall.
(28:31):
But either way, that's factoring into people's decisions.
There's another one where hypothetically the retirement supplement
might go away.
This is all just reading the news.
I'm not personally aware of any bill that's
about to pass or anything, but the supplement
is an extra source of income that would
come from MRA to age 62.
(28:53):
So it's a short window, but it's more
money, it's more income.
They talked about changing around the health insurance
plan to a form of a voucher system.
So those are some of the examples of
change that are active.
Everything else, my knowledge at least, is more
of a rumor.
Well, I think the point you made is
(29:17):
a good one.
We've certainly heard from clients who are all
anxious about just social security being altered in
some fashion and a lot of rumor.
But you've made the point that that would
require an act of Congress and it would
have to be passed into law.
And I think there's a lot of representatives
(29:43):
in Congress who like working in Congress.
So that's probably not something that most people
who are actively receiving benefits have to worry
too much about.
That being said, there's definitely some need for
change before too long.
We've got, was it 2033 that we've got
(30:04):
this issue still looming?
So something will need to be done, but
as we talked about it, Jeff, often it's
probably going to be around 2033 that that
actually gets done.
Yeah.
Congress doesn't have a history of being proactive
in such matters.
Right.
Yeah.
The last time they made a major change,
(30:26):
other than the file and suspend back in
2015, the major change was all the way
in the early eighties and they phased it
in over 40 years.
So whatever happens will probably be phased in
over time one would think or hope.
And it's all over the news in terms
of Doge terminating people or restructuring where they
(30:46):
work and federal employees taking opportunities to leave.
But that's headcount.
That's not the benefit that any one individual
is receiving.
So there's nothing that I'm aware of that
is about to be passed.
It's going to change the dollar amount that
people receive.
So it certainly is something that you can
look up your benefits online, incorporate it into
(31:06):
a model, decide when to take it, learn
about things like spousal benefits and survivor benefits.
They actually, the last thing they passed actually
made it better, not worse with the social
security fairness act.
So that affects people who had what's called
WEP or GPO where they're getting an increased
benefit basically that they weren't getting before.
(31:29):
So that's good.
But yeah, long-term, I definitely agree with
you.
Something needs to happen, but whatever, what change
it's going to be is just guessing at
this point.
Well, Brian, you've been a great resource and
I know you're often a wealth of information
because you've even written a book about some
of these issues over time.
(31:50):
Tell our listeners, if they want to learn
more, how can they glean from insights from
you?
Do you have a newsletter or anything that
they might want to follow that kind of
thing?
Yeah.
So you can connect with me on LinkedIn.
I'm there posting content about federal employee benefits,
as well as sharing content of other colleagues
that I work with.
(32:10):
And then just reaching out if you'd like
301-543-6035 or BKuhn, K-U-H
-N at wealthenhancement.com.
And what I'm telling people is let's just
build the model.
Give me 30 minutes of your time and
a couple data points, and I'll show you
visually what your future looks like.
It's a free meeting.
(32:32):
I would not want to be making any
major career decisions before at least building that
and we'll get it done and you can
go from there.
But normally the turnaround time is we get
to know each other.
We talk about broader planning topics.
We gather even more data, but for right
now with beds, with what they're going through,
just the act of driving into the office,
(32:53):
they're less available than they were.
So we're accommodating that as best we can.
And I would encourage, just build the cashflow
model and we'll tell you what it says.
Yeah.
Information is definitely power in this case.
We'll include your LinkedIn link in the show
notes.
(33:14):
And with that, Brian, great content, great insights.
Thanks for sharing it with our audience and
with us.
And if anyone needs help, don't hesitate to
reach out.
Until next time, everybody keeps driving for something
more.
Thank you for listening to Something More with
Chris Boyd.
Call us for help, whether it's for financial
(33:34):
planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those
quality of life issues that make the money
matters matter.
Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd
.com or call us toll free at 866
-771-8901.
Or send us your questions to amr-info
(33:55):
at wealthenhancement.com.
You're listening to Something More with Chris Boyd,
and
I'll
(34:18):
see you next time.
Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner,
and senior vice president and financial advisor at
Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest
registered investment advisors.
We call it Something More because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
Welcome to the program, Something More with Chris
Boyd, and I'm here with Jeff Perry, my
co-host, and we are pleased to have
our guest today, Brian Kuhn.
(00:43):
He's also a financial advisor with Wealth Enhancement
Group, an authority, I will say, when dealing
with federal employees.
So with all that's been going on with
DOGE and early retirement offers and layoffs, it
has been a time for federal employees to
(01:04):
have a lot of concerns.
So we're going to talk about that.
But before we do, Brian, let's start off
with a little, get to know you a
little bit.
Yeah, absolutely.
Appreciate it, Jeff and Chris, for having me
here.
So my name is Brian Kuhn, certified financial
planner.
I've been in the business for 24 years
now.
I'm also with Wealth Enhancement based out of
the Maryland area in a county called Anne
(01:26):
Arundel.
And if anybody's familiar with the Maryland area,
you know, there is this hub of federal
employees, Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel, and Prince George's
predominantly, but there's federal employees all over.
But they're very highly located in that area
in the suburbs of DC.
So many years ago, I kept noticing them
(01:46):
coming into the office looking for financial planning
and retirement planning.
This was around the 2006-2007 timeframe.
It started due to a thing called BRAC.
We had the base realignment after 9-11
that took many years.
And they all kept coming in with these
monster pensions and thinking about retiring because all
of the changes.
So, and as you guys know, being financial
(02:07):
advisors, we're all supposed to develop a niche,
if you will, something we're really good at.
So I said, well, if I could, I
don't, not sure I could find a larger
niche than the multi-million federal employees that
there are out there.
So I decided to devote my practice to
helping them.
At the moment, if we could only have
something that was as complicated, is as complicated
(02:30):
as BRAC, this is about 10 times more
complicated than it, unfortunately, but we're all doing
our best to navigate it.
Well, I mean, I think it's definitely a
topic on people's minds that just the general
public is aware of all that's going on.
And if you work in the federal government,
(02:52):
you know, I think everybody's kind of watching
their back a little bit of like, what's
going to happen, right?
And so I imagine you're dealing with people
who are, this is really interesting expertise, by
the way.
You know, I think that we'll hopefully get
some good lessons for our listeners and anyone
who's dealing with these kinds of clients.
(03:14):
But one of the things that I was
thinking about is, you know, you must be
dealing with not only people who have gone
through a layoff recently, or a retirement package
offering, but also people wondering, am I going
to be next?
Or what's my plan if things change?
So where should we begin, do you think,
(03:34):
tackling this topic?
Yeah, so we'll begin where we are at
the moment with the offers federal employees are
being given to leave.
Basically, that's pretty much how it's how it's
going so far.
So we had the original DRP, or fork
in the road, as it's called, back in
late January.
And predominantly, federal employees didn't really sign up
(03:57):
for that, because there was a lack of
clarification, a lack of an understanding of what
you were even signing up for.
I mean, it was coming from OPM, rather
than their direct agency was really how employment
topics arrive.
So we had the reconciliation bill, subsequent to
that original fork in the road.
So not too many people took that, unless
(04:20):
they were intending, perhaps, to retire in the
next couple months anyway, and just saw it
as what they felt was an opportunity worth
taking.
Yeah, we're past the deadline of that one.
But then VERAs have come out.
So opportunities to retire under more favorable conditions,
basically people who are eligible to retire that
(04:42):
might not have otherwise been eligible for what's
called an immediate retirement.
And then also now we've had the DRP
come back.
And this time, through their direct agency and
as with and with a lot more clarification,
doesn't mean it's a good thing to take.
And specifically, federal employment, unlike private sector employment
(05:03):
is really a legal employment contract.
There's all sorts of nuance and documentation and
policies to working for the government that doesn't
really exist in the private sector.
So federal employment attorneys are a regular thing
that I've been referring people to just to
make sure they know as much as they
can what they would be signing up for
(05:23):
if they take it.
So that's where we are right now.
Different agencies have different deadlines.
Some have passed, some are still ongoing.
Some are actively pursuing as many people volunteering
to leave as possible.
Others are not.
Some people, some agencies are actively forcing a
return to office once the DRP is over
five days a week.
(05:44):
Some are a little bit more flexible with
how they're implementing it.
So it's not easy by any stretch of
the imagination.
All of the public speaking that I'm doing
for feds and just talking to my clients,
one of the biggest things I'm trying to
convey is I'm just trying to give everybody
a big virtual hug because this is what
they're going through.
(06:05):
It's one that...
Would you start by giving us a little
bit of an overview of how does the
federal employee retirement system work?
You know what I mean?
There might be some nuances there.
And are there differences, for example, in different
kinds of federal employees, military versus something that
(06:27):
works for the government in some other fashion?
Maybe just give us an overview of how
that all fits together.
Yeah, absolutely.
So if you work for the federal government,
you can qualify for a pension.
That's one of the main differences.
And some private sector companies, they offer pensions,
but they're different and rare.
So if you work for the federal government
(06:48):
and you have certain conditions, which is time
and age, then you can exit federal employment
and receive a pension.
So the most common way that people want
to do that is on what's called an
immediate retirement, meaning there wouldn't be a delay
between their last paycheck and other than processing
time, the start of their pension.
And an immediate retirement allows them to continue
(07:10):
their health insurance throughout retirement, the FEHB plan.
Not for free, they have to pay for
it, but it's a plan that gives them
the option to continue the health insurance they
were previously on rather than switching over to
Medicare or in addition to switching over to
Medicare.
So some basic credentials that you have to
have is five years of civilian service and
(07:33):
age 62, or you can have what's called
MRA, which is an age range between 55
and 57 and 30 years of federal service,
which 30 years sounds like a real long
time.
But when you go into the federal government,
on average, you don't leave, unlike the private
sector.
That could be a sign of how you
might change from where you're doing it, but
(07:54):
just right in the government.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You could change around agencies.
You could change your job description, but generally
once you're in, on average, you stay.
So 30 years in MRA is something people
attain all the time.
There's another one called MRA plus 10.
So you would only need to be late
50s and have 10 years of service, but
(08:14):
there's a discount to your pension.
And then there's another one age 60 and
20, which is another one that a lot
of people qualify for.
So that's what everybody is striving for.
The biggest thing with federal employment, I would
say, is everybody is striving for a particular
date in the future.
In the private sector, you retire whenever you
have enough money, or you think you have
(08:35):
enough money, or when you reach some sort
of round number like 65 or 60 or
62, because that's when you can start social
security, right?
Or just when you get tired of it.
There isn't as much precision to timing what
you become eligible for.
So all the federal employees, this is a
common thing we're doing, is we're planning to
(08:57):
get to some particular qualifier that would allow
them to retire, ideally with that immediate pension.
And then the VERA, which is an opportunity
to leave under easier conditions, is a different
set.
So that's age 50 and 20 years in,
(09:17):
or any age and 25 years in.
So predominantly what I'm doing is we'll talk
and the employee will have, I have eight
years and I'm 55.
Well, I don't care how good the offer
sounds, if you could just make it another
two years, or one year and seven months
(09:37):
and three days.
We're literally calculating that timeframe down to the
day so that they can qualify to exit
under the conditions that they want.
That's what we're doing a lot of, and
that's what's unique about federal employment.
So Brian, are any of these offers out
there, rumors of offers, where they consist of
(09:58):
giving credit for additional years?
Yeah, the offers aren't producing additional credit.
They haven't rolled out a system like that.
That might be a good idea, actually.
I don't know that the leadership wants to
hear what we think, but if they were
to consider that, that would incentivize a lot
(10:19):
of people to consider, to think about it
because they're trying to get to that date.
But that's not how it works.
The DRP was a program that didn't exist
prior to three months ago.
And that was basically just saying, we'll put
you on paid leave until September.
So you don't have to commute around the
495 beltway and then you're done.
(10:41):
And then the VERA is an established program.
So that is sort of what you're describing
where it makes things easier to exit, but
they're not customizing it.
They're not making any easier than those conditions.
So now the VERAs and the current DRP,
as I understand, as I'm following things, a
lot of people are signing up for.
I've had more people sign up for this
(11:01):
round of it.
So there are a number of federal employees
that are eligible and choosing to exit, but
there are many more.
There's been over a million people.
It's called FERS-FRAE that have been hired
by the federal government since 2014.
So now we could have a discussion about
(11:23):
whether the federal government needs an additional million
people, but that's a different topic.
And also there's been attrition.
There's been people that have been retiring over
that timeframe.
But by definition, if they started since 2014,
that means they have no more than 11
years in.
So that doesn't make them eligible for the
(11:44):
early out offers that are being made.
I wonder how much of the folks who
are accepting some of these offers, which may
not be the greatest offers, are doing so
because they've been working remotely, meaning some of
them, I've heard from a couple of people
that we know through our practice that have
actually moved and been working remote thinking that
(12:06):
this was the way it was going to
be.
And so they're taking these offers because they
don't have the ability to go back to
work.
Absolutely.
I just got off a client, off the
phone with a client earlier this morning that
was specifically about that.
You know, they are fully, their agency is
now fully enforcing the return to office mandate,
what appears to be five days a week,
(12:27):
and that just doesn't work for their family.
So they're considering all of their options.
And unfortunately it appears that at least some
of the agencies are intending to enforce that
specifically to create attrition, best we can tell.
Also for what they believe to be productivity.
But so yeah, where you live and your
(12:50):
return to office mandates are factoring into their
decision because they just can't, or they don't
want to do it.
So what happens to an employee who doesn't
have that minimum level of time when they
leave federal service?
Do they get their contributions back or?
(13:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
They would get that.
That would only, so if they don't qualify
for anything, that would imply that they have
less than five years of civilian service, which
actually is somewhat rare, at least for the
people that I talk to, you know, there
are the probationary employees, right?
There's hundreds of thousands of them and they
all deserve two hugs in my opinion.
I've made the news recently too.
(13:33):
Yeah.
So, but by definition of your probationary employee,
you have fewer than five years, so they
would get a return of contributions.
But if you have five years in, you
know, that's then you would qualify for a
pension.
It just, you would have this gap period
between your last day at federal employment and
(13:53):
the start of the income and the income
probably wouldn't be enough to exclusively retire with,
and it wouldn't have the ability to sign
up for the health insurance later, but it
would still be a pension.
So that's good.
Great.
So let's go on to the idea of
if someone is concerned that they might lose
their job, what should they be doing?
(14:16):
What steps should they take?
Yeah, there's lots of things that they can
be doing and human nature, you know, some
cases, what I'm finding out is people are,
they're ready, fire, aim, or they are just
continuing to do the job until they're told
otherwise.
And we don't want to do that.
(14:37):
We want to consider all of our options,
even if we don't like that particular option.
So there's a whole industry of number, there's
three different industries that I would consider exploring
and I refer them, refer my clients to
them all the time.
There's federal employment law attorneys.
So these are people that make sure your
rights have not been infringed upon and help
(14:59):
represent you in front of like the MSPB.
If there is something that has happened, that's
mostly in the cases of terminations rather than
any sort of voluntarily leaving the government, but
they still consult on, you know, what forms
you're being asked to sign because there are
new forms that didn't exist before.
(15:20):
So that's one position or occupation that I
would definitely encourage federal employees to talk to
before signing anything or making any decisions.
There is the whole industry of career counselors,
right?
So these are the standard people who help
with LinkedIn profiles and resumes.
And it's somewhat ironic.
There's a lot of people who their whole
(15:40):
job was focusing on landing people federal jobs,
right?
So the niche within career counselors who help
you find a job within federal employment, they're
actually going in the opposite direction now, right?
So they know the terminology, they know the
industry and the agencies, but they're going in
the other direction.
So helping people land with contractors and so
(16:02):
forth.
But also, you know, with federal employees, you
have tenure, you have the same job for
the last 30 years, the last time you
had a resume, you know, you might have
faxed it to an employer.
So it doesn't really work like that anymore.
So there's a lot to learn if you
are going to transition and keep working.
So career counselors can help a lot with
(16:23):
that.
And then there's a whole other industry called
federal employee benefits specialists.
So not specifically financial advisors like me, we
compliment them, but these are people who typically
worked in the federal government in like an
HR capacity for years or decades and know
all of the paperwork and technicalities and things.
And there's a lot of nuance.
(16:44):
So I don't claim to know everything.
I bring them in to make sure, you
know, we're sharing accurate information and they charge
for their time, but a lot of time
it's really worth the hour or a couple
hours to walk through that.
So I would check with them because there's
all sorts of instances where, you know, you're
not exactly familiar with what actions you might
need to take to get credit for all
(17:06):
of your time.
Right.
So I was talking to a lady the
other day, she said she had 1.7,
one year and seven months in, but then
it turns out there was another two years
prior to that, that we weren't sure whether
that counted or she wasn't sure.
It sounded like it counted to me.
So she really, she wasn't three years and
five months away.
She was only one year and five months
away.
That's a big deal with what's going on
(17:27):
right now.
So we're, and other people where they're moving
from like within the federal reserve to regular
FERS or vice versa, there's military time where
you can buy that credit for it.
There's all sorts of nuance.
So there's a whole team of people that
really should be involved with each federal employee,
which sounds like a lot, but you know,
(17:49):
we try to coordinate that as much as
possible.
Is that the same for people who might
be entertaining one of the opportunities for retirement?
Is it to assemble that same group of
people or, you know, what should someone who's
maybe considering some kind of a, whether they
(18:11):
should take an offer or something?
Yeah.
So if they're planning to retire, I suppose
they wouldn't need, thankfully, the career counselor, right?
They would just wind down their work, but
the employee benefits specialist can definitely help with
the retirement application and the other technicalities of
their process.
The retirement process takes months.
(18:32):
I mean, and it could take longer now
because of the volume of people doing it.
The form that you turn in just to
say you want to retire is 14 pages
long that I've seen.
So this is not something where you just,
you know, check a box or you send
an email to your HR person.
There's a whole process to it.
(18:53):
The federal employment law attorneys, I mean, if
you're signing up for something voluntarily, then, you
know, it's difficult for the rights to be
infringed.
But if you're doing it through the DRP,
then it's still worth it.
I would say regardless, it's still worth it
just to get an hour of their time
and talk through things.
But definitely a financial advisor, if I can
(19:13):
put in a plug for what we do,
right?
I mean, like I said, with people, you
know, accepting the offers and then doing planning,
not everybody's doing that, you know, but I
wouldn't recommend that because, you know, you want
to know your numbers.
We build cash flow models for a living.
You know, you guys do that as well.
That's where we live.
So we can run all sorts of scenarios
(19:34):
to show you how things look, you know,
under different conditions.
If you were to go to work in
the private sector, if you were to stop
tomorrow, if you got terminated, if they change
the rules of your pension, not that I'm
saying they're trying to do that.
Let's hope they don't do that.
And meaning the amount that you are scheduled
(19:55):
to get any sort of scenario we can
model before it becomes a reality.
We hope it doesn't become reality, but that
really gives you the confidence to make these
decisions.
So that's what I would strongly encourage.
Yeah, it's so true, right?
Knowledge is power, right?
The more you can model this stuff out,
the better prepared you are for what are
(20:17):
the variations?
What is this?
What is that, right?
Yeah.
And most of the time I'll say the
conclusion we're making after building the model is
that they're in better shape than they thought
they were.
And that's always the case with planning.
You know, if people have an assumption that,
you know, they have less money than they
realize or less resources than they realize, but
(20:37):
certainly with feds, with the pension, I do
an exercise for people a lot where we'll
say, if you didn't have that pension, how
much money would you need in an account
to recreate that income, right?
Guaranteed for life with cost of living adjustments,
with the survivorship for your spouse, if you
have one.
And it's a lot of money.
It's a lot more than people think.
(20:58):
Yeah.
Even if you're FERS, you know, the old
system, not too many people are the old
system anymore, but their pensions were monsters, you
know, 60, 70, 80, a hundred thousand dollar
a year pensions.
They did exist.
But even FERS, you know, and you get
what's called a supplement with FERS, or sometimes
(21:19):
if you're eligible, there's qualifications, but that's an
extra amount to get you to social security.
And then you get social security and we
could get into, there's a lot of news
about that.
And then there's the TSP, which offers a
match.
So the combination of benefits, you know, it
can get you there.
We just need to number crunch.
(21:39):
You know, I was thinking about this.
Jeff has been telling me about all these
different pensions offerings at different systems that Massachusetts
public employees have.
I got to imagine the different kinds of
plans for the federal government has got to
be all that much more complicated that there's
(21:59):
so many variations and different iterations.
Yeah.
Tell us a little bit about just the
range of some of these kinds of, you
mentioned FERS is one example as maybe I
gather that's not as common today, but what
are some of the other possibilities?
So, I mean, if you're a civilian employee,
then everybody nowadays, if you were hired past
(22:22):
1984 or so, then you are FERS.
So it's a universal system referred to as
FERS for civilian employees, but you're absolutely right.
The nuance to each individual's experience with the
federal government can make it complicated because of
how they move around, let's say over time.
(22:44):
So like if you had military service beforehand,
or you had time away, right, you left
the government and came back, or you worked
part time, or you're what's called a term,
you have like a term appointment where it's
a certain number of years, or I even
had one that was an intern for a
while and how that factors in and then
(23:06):
your leave.
So there's annual leave and sick leave, and
both of those can factor into how many
years, both of those have certain definitions of
how they can factor into the size of
your pension or eligibility for your pension.
But then there's the decision that some people
(23:26):
make to take their leave because they want
the money because that's going to give them
liquidity until other things start like social security
or wrapping up a certain amount of debt
or something.
So yeah, it's certainly a full time job.
Do you have any involvement with the TSP's?
Do you help your clients decide what's the
(23:48):
right options for them?
Yeah, TSP is definitely a daily conversation I'm
having with clients to talk through the plan.
Maybe you should define it for our listeners
who are familiar.
Sure.
Yeah.
So for anybody not in the TSP or
just wanting a refresher on your own retirement
plan, so it's the retirement plan of the
federal government if you work for them.
And it's similar to a 401k but defined
(24:11):
a little bit differently.
It's basically an opportunity to save for retirement.
And you can do pre-tax or Roth
contributions.
And if you're a FERS employee, then you
get a match on that.
There's $960 billion in the TSP plan across
7 million accounts.
So these are current and former accounts.
There's not 7 million active federal employees.
(24:33):
So last time I checked, $960 billion is
a lot of money.
It's a factor of 50 times bigger than
a company like Apple's 401k plan.
So there's a lot of money and a
lot of people who have a lot of
questions.
So we could talk about the TSP pretty
much endlessly, but there's basically five lettered funds
(24:54):
or what are called target date funds or
L funds.
And people navigate that the best that they
can.
A thing that's coming up a lot to
be objective and clear and help people is
that another thing that's specific to their age
when they leave is that if they reach
age 55 before they leave service, then the
(25:15):
TSP plan acts basically like a 401k where
they can access money within the TSP from
it to their pocket and avoid the 10
% penalty.
Whereas if they took that money and roll
it to an IRA first and then took
a withdrawal, there would be that 10%
penalty.
So that window is valuable.
It doesn't necessarily mean all the money needs
to stay there, but however much we might
(25:37):
need during that window.
But we try to make people aware of
things like that, even if it prevents them
from being interested in rolling it because this
is the business we're in is helping people
manage money.
But there's all sorts of investment opportunities in
the private marketplace that sometimes are worth considering,
income investing and broader diversification and some international
(25:59):
options and all sorts of investment vehicles that
we're familiar with that we could get into.
Very good.
You sound like you kind of wanted to
get into just in passing the idea of
how things might change.
Yeah.
Do you want to talk about that?
(26:20):
Yeah, sure.
So that's another thing that a lot of
feds are worried about is things are changing
in terms of job security and returning to
office.
But in terms of actual laws being passed
that might change federal employee benefits is another
thing that people are following or concerned about.
That generally would come from Congress.
(26:43):
So there's lots of rumors about what could
happen and people who are already receiving their
pension, they're thinking, well, I really hope they
don't do anything with that.
And there's nothing active that I'm aware of
that would change a pension that's already being
received or the size of a pension that
has yet to be started.
But one example of something that is in
(27:05):
a house bill would be changing how much
current federal employees pay for their pension, but
only for those who started, who are not
that FERS-FRAE employee.
So FERS-FRAE pay 4.4% of
their salary for their pension.
(27:25):
So if anybody's not a fed and listening,
they pay for their pension.
It's not free just for working there.
They pay a part of their salary.
It's 4.4%. But those prior to that
start date pay less, in many instances, noticeably
less.
So there is a bill that would, if
passed, it hasn't passed yet, hasn't become law
(27:48):
yet, it would make everybody pay that 4
.4%. So if you have tenure in the
federal government, if you've been there since before
2014, and you had intended to stay a
while longer, then there's a chance you could
be paying more for your pension, which is
unfortunate.
But change happens.
(28:11):
If I was working with a federal employee,
I would probably lean towards them not leaving
government just exclusively due to that.
If I had a job offer and they
told me that I would get a pension
one day, but I had to pay 4
.4% of my salary for that pension,
I would sign up.
That's a pretty good deal overall.
(28:31):
But either way, that's factoring into people's decisions.
There's another one where hypothetically the retirement supplement
might go away.
This is all just reading the news.
I'm not personally aware of any bill that's
about to pass or anything, but the supplement
is an extra source of income that would
come from MRA to age 62.
(28:53):
So it's a short window, but it's more
money, it's more income.
They talked about changing around the health insurance
plan to a form of a voucher system.
So those are some of the examples of
change that are active.
Everything else, my knowledge at least, is more
of a rumor.
Well, I think the point you made is
(29:17):
a good one.
We've certainly heard from clients who are all
anxious about just social security being altered in
some fashion and a lot of rumor.
But you've made the point that that would
require an act of Congress and it would
have to be passed into law.
And I think there's a lot of representatives
(29:43):
in Congress who like working in Congress.
So that's probably not something that most people
who are actively receiving benefits have to worry
too much about.
That being said, there's definitely some need for
change before too long.
We've got, was it 2033 that we've got
(30:04):
this issue still looming?
So something will need to be done, but
as we talked about it, Jeff, often it's
probably going to be around 2033 that that
actually gets done.
Yeah.
Congress doesn't have a history of being proactive
in such matters.
Right.
Yeah.
The last time they made a major change,
(30:26):
other than the file and suspend back in
2015, the major change was all the way
in the early eighties and they phased it
in over 40 years.
So whatever happens will probably be phased in
over time one would think or hope.
And it's all over the news in terms
of Doge terminating people or restructuring where they
(30:46):
work and federal employees taking opportunities to leave.
But that's headcount.
That's not the benefit that any one individual
is receiving.
So there's nothing that I'm aware of that
is about to be passed.
It's going to change the dollar amount that
people receive.
So it certainly is something that you can
look up your benefits online, incorporate it into
(31:06):
a model, decide when to take it, learn
about things like spousal benefits and survivor benefits.
They actually, the last thing they passed actually
made it better, not worse with the social
security fairness act.
So that affects people who had what's called
WEP or GPO where they're getting an increased
benefit basically that they weren't getting before.
(31:29):
So that's good.
But yeah, long-term, I definitely agree with
you.
Something needs to happen, but whatever, what change
it's going to be is just guessing at
this point.
Well, Brian, you've been a great resource and
I know you're often a wealth of information
because you've even written a book about some
of these issues over time.
(31:50):
Tell our listeners, if they want to learn
more, how can they glean from insights from
you?
Do you have a newsletter or anything that
they might want to follow that kind of
thing?
Yeah.
So you can connect with me on LinkedIn.
I'm there posting content about federal employee benefits,
as well as sharing content of other colleagues
that I work with.
(32:10):
And then just reaching out if you'd like
301-543-6035 or BKuhn, K-U-H
-N at wealthenhancement.com.
And what I'm telling people is let's just
build the model.
Give me 30 minutes of your time and
a couple data points, and I'll show you
visually what your future looks like.
It's a free meeting.
(32:32):
I would not want to be making any
major career decisions before at least building that
and we'll get it done and you can
go from there.
But normally the turnaround time is we get
to know each other.
We talk about broader planning topics.
We gather even more data, but for right
now with beds, with what they're going through,
just the act of driving into the office,
(32:53):
they're less available than they were.
So we're accommodating that as best we can.
And I would encourage, just build the cashflow
model and we'll tell you what it says.
Yeah.
Information is definitely power in this case.
We'll include your LinkedIn link in the show
notes.
(33:14):
And with that, Brian, great content, great insights.
Thanks for sharing it with our audience and
with us.
And if anyone needs help, don't hesitate to
reach out.
Until next time, everybody keeps driving for something
more.
Thank you for listening to Something More with
Chris Boyd.
Call us for help, whether it's for financial
(33:34):
planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those
quality of life issues that make the money
matters matter.
Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd
.com or call us toll free at 866
-771-8901.
Or send us your questions to amr-info
(33:55):
at wealthenhancement.com.
You're listening to Something More with Chris Boyd,
and
I'll
(34:18):
see you next time.
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