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January 29, 2026 โ€ข 15 mins

Too many retirees make one pension decision they can’t undo and it reshapes their entire financial future. We break down the real trade-offs hiding behind payout options, survivor benefits, and the lure of a lump sum, then show you how to weave your pension together with Social Security and investments to build a calm, resilient retirement plan.

We start by reframing the pension as a supercharged bond; steady, predictable income that can cover the must-haves and free your portfolio to fund the fun stuff. You’ll learn a simple two-column method to map fixed expenses against guaranteed income, why 80 to 100 percent coverage is a powerful target, and how that floor helps you sleep at night when markets get rough. From there, we unpack the key payout choices: single life for maximum income, joint-and-survivor to protect both lives, and variations with different survivor percentages. We explain how to stress test each option against age, health, tax implications, and timing your Social Security benefits.

A candid case study shows the cost of chasing the biggest monthly number and leaving a spouse with too little income. We also walk through when a lump sum can work; low fixed expenses, solid guaranteed coverage, strong legacy goals, and the discipline to manage market risk after rolling to an IRA. To keep you out of trouble, we highlight common mistakes like ignoring inflation, misreading the pension’s bond-like role, and making decisions in silos instead of as a system. By the end, you’ll have a clear framework: cover essentials with guarantees, fund goals with growth, and choose a payout that protects the person you love most.

If this helped you think more clearly about your pension, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review. Your support helps others find the show and make smarter, safer retirement choices.

๐Ÿ—“๏ธ Meet with me: https://paradigmwealthpartners.com/begin-your-journey/#calendly
โ†”๏ธ Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbednarii/
๐ŸŒ Paradigm Wealth Partners (website) – Financial planning for career professionals who want to retire and stay retired: https://paradigmwealthpartners.com/
๐ŸŒ What the Wealth (website) – Adding clarity to difficult financial topics: https://whatthewealth.com/
โ–ถ๏ธ YouTube: Paradigm Wealth Partners

If you or someone you care about could use the help of a financial advisor and sees the value in establishing a financial plan, please reach out to me. 

Thanks for Listening! 

Jonathan

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Episode Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
If you're in the US and have a pension, you have one
of the most powerful tools inyour financial toolkit.
Most people, unfortunately,don't understand how pensions
work, and one wrong choice can'tbe undone, whether that's taking
the wrong payout option, notunderstanding the survivor
benefit.
I've seen people roll theirpension into their IRA thinking

(00:28):
that they can just easily beatthe market, only to lose their
guaranteed payment that wouldcover all of their basic bills,
their basic expenses.
I've also seen people take thewrong payout option only to lose
their spouse and not have apension payout anymore.
More on that later.

(00:48):
I'm going to tell you exactlyhow pensions work, walk you
through so that you can make aninformed financial decision on
how those work with your SocialSecurity, your investment, so
that you have a confident andclear financial plan.
I'm your host, Jonathan Bedner,certified financial planner,
owner of Paradigm WealthPartners.
We're going to talk all thingspension.

(01:10):
Pensions are rare.
They're not just like a 401k.
And just because you have one,if you're fortunate enough to
have one, means you're unlikeeverybody else that only has a
401k.
The problem is people think insilos.
They think, I'll just want toretire and turn on my pension,
or I'm going to roll it overinto my 401k or my IRA and I'm

(01:33):
going to start investing it tobeat the market.
Or, you know, I'll just start itwhen I take Social Security.
And what they fail to do is seehow all of these work together,
almost like a puzzle.
How do we put these piecestogether so that the puzzle is
complete and you see the fullpicture, the vibrant full
picture of that puzzle?

(01:53):
So this leads to bad timing,unnecessary risk, and
irreversible mistakes whenyou're thinking in these silos,
when you're not making a clear,educated decisions.
One of the most powerful toolsin your retirement arsenal,
don't mess it up by just makingone-off decisions willy-nilly.

(02:14):
Think of your pension like asupercharged bond.
It's not a bond, but let's thinkof it that way for an example.
A bond is a type of investmentwhere you loan somebody money
and in return they give you somefixed payment, some fixed
interest.
Well, a pension, you've givensomeone your working career,

(02:37):
your life, your time, your youryour work history, your your
life.
And so when you make thattrade-off, some employers
provide pensions.
And so in return, when youchoose to retire, one of the
options you can do is have thatpension make payments.
So your employer would owe youthese predictable monthly

(03:01):
checks, similar to that bond,getting these predictable
interest payments.
And so that is like bond income.
Again, it's not bond income, butfor oversimplification reasons,
we can think of it in kind ofthe same light.
So for many retirees, thepresent value of that uh income

(03:22):
generated by the pension couldbe like having millions of
dollars set aside in retirement.
As an example, let's assume thatyou're getting um four, let me
get my calculator out.
Let's say you get$4,000 a monthin pension income times 12

(03:43):
months is$48,000 a year times 25years.
That's like having a$1.2 millioninvestment portfolio, except you
didn't have to save$1.2 millionto get the income.
You provided your working careeror intellectual capital, uh,
your dedication to the employer,and in return, they give you

(04:06):
that$4,000 a month.
So it shouldn't be the end-allbe all to your retirement plan.
You should still have the 4K or403B, but having that pension
would be very, very similar tohaving a$1.2 million retirement
nest egg tucked away, couplethat with Social Security, and

(04:27):
you've got two really niceguaranteed incomes that help
cover a lot of your fixedexpenses.
So let's discuss how we canbuild a framework to match our
guaranteed income with our fixedexpenses.
So here's the formula that wesee people use to determine what
that should be.
First of all, you should listall of your fixed expenses: your

(04:51):
mortgage, your insurance, yourutilities, your food, your
medical, the things that youhave to have to live in
retirement.
From there, you're gonna list ona second column your guaranteed
income.
So that would be your SocialSecurity, your pension, if you
have an annuity, something likethat.
Anything that pays guaranteedpayments to you, you should list

(05:14):
those down in the second column.
Once you look at those twonumbers, if your guaranteed
income covers between 80 to 100%of your fixed expenses, you're
in a really good position tohave a really sound retirement
that lets the other retirementaccount, your savings, your

(05:37):
401k, those sort of thingsbecome the nest egg to funnel
your travel, your dreams.
We talk a lot about dreams hereat Paradigm Wealth Partners.
So your travel, your dreams, thethe kitchen remodel, the
Corvette you've always wanted,the things that are fun in your
life because your fixed expensesare already covered.

(05:59):
You have you have those coveredwith those guaranteed income
streams.
As you analyze your pension, youcan start to become overwhelmed
by the options.
Typically, there are four orfive ways to determine how
you're going to make thesepension distributions.
Are you going to take a lump sumlike we've been talking about?

(06:22):
Are you going to take singlelife expectancy that maybe has a
higher monthly amount?
Are you going to make sure thatyour wife has or spouse has uh a
pension that it would be thesame whether either one of you
pass away, you're fully covered?
Or some of the various otheroptions that we see in the
survivor benefits.
And those survivor benefitsmatter more than you think.

(06:45):
What we see a lot of times ispeople get too caught up in how
much it can I get this to payme?
What's the most amount thepension can pay me?
And while I think what's themost amount this can pay me is
certainly a valid question tolook at, you should also be
concerned about what happens tothe person that I love the most

(07:05):
if I'm gone.
And so that is one of thebiggest things that we do as we
evaluate these pensions,choosing the right payment
option.
Let me give you a real casestudy for someone this week that
I had talked with.
Uh, she was a lady in her early70s and uh had a house that she

(07:27):
had had built with her husband,small kind of a cabin-ish house,
a couple hundred thousanddollars, not not fancy.
Um then they had another housethat they lived in, also another
couple hundred thousand.
I mean, not a lot.
These two together are probablyworth 450 to 500,000.
And as we were talking, one ofthe things that she brought up

(07:48):
is how her her husband diedabout two years ago.
How things look so muchdifferent now than they did just
two, three, four years ago whenher husband was alive.
And as I uh asked more questionsand and asked her to tell me
more about what happened is iswhen she told me that her

(08:10):
husband died a couple years agoand he had a pension.
And one of the things that hedid without consulting her,
without consulting a financialadvisor to see how you know
these options make the mostsense, uh, was he just selected
the single life option, theoption that paid the most money,
because it it looked good.

(08:31):
You know, I he just assumed thathe would live, I guess, forever.
Um, so he took the option thatpaid the most money, paid
actually, we've referenced thisa couple of times, the dollar
amount.
He it paid her, or paid him, Ishould what I should say, paid
him$4,000 a month.
And uh unfortunately, just acouple years later, he passed
away.

(08:52):
He was 71 years old.
Um, she's 70 today.
And so she's lived without thispension for a couple of years,
and now she's living on SocialSecurity at$1,700 a month, you
know, being forced to sell oneof these houses just to continue
to pay the bills and make endsmeet.
However, if we could turn backtime and he met with a financial

(09:17):
advisor, or if he just did theresearch on his own and just
took a little bit more time tounderstand the pensions and how
they work with Social Securityand investments and you know,
analyze their fixed expenses,the things that we've already
talked about here could havemade a huge impact on their
success in retirement should oneof them pass away early, like he

(09:40):
did.
She would still be receiving$1,000 a month, maybe slightly
less, or if he took a plan tocover both of their lives, maybe
he would have been getting, Idon't know, let's say$3,000.
Um, if it covered both theirlives instead of the$4,000 for
single life.
Well, if that happened, she'sstill getting$3,600 a month plus

(10:00):
the$17 for Social Security.
She's at$5,000 a month.
That's$3,300 more than she's,you know, getting right now.
So it ends up being a hugemistake that I see in real life
happen.
So when I talk about thesethings today, uh I'm sharing

(10:21):
real scenarios, scenarios thatwe see happen every single day
just because people don't take alittle bit of time to understand
how these work and how do youmake a best decision.
These are these are irreversibledecisions.
It is imperative that if youdon't know what you're doing,
you consult someone that does.
At a minimum, talk to yourspouse about it, don't just wing

(10:44):
it.
So uh I wanted to share thatjust so you see how imperative
it is to make these decisionsand have a full understanding
and grasp so you you understandwhat you're potentially leaving
on the table.
So let's kind of move into whena lump sum may make sense.
A lump sum necessarily isn'tnecessarily the wrong thing to

(11:05):
do.
Again, we've talked about howyou know if you leave the
pension and you take thosepayments, you take a lot of
pressure off you, you haveguaranteed payments coming in to
cover your fixed livingexpenses.
That's huge because it lets therest of your portfolio be the
fun money.
But if we look at, you know,maybe the flip side of that,

(11:25):
when should you take a lump sum?
Well, I would look at that andsay, well, if your expenses are
very, very low, which we haveclients whose expenses are two
to three thousand dollars amonth, it's fully funded by
Social Security, you know, andit's and it's pretty easy.
Life's good.
So there's not a lot of pressureor stress for having these
higher incomes.
The so I guess what I would sayis if your guaranteed income is

(11:48):
covering your fixed in fixedexpenses, or your fixed expenses
are very, very low, then maybeperhaps it's it's worth taking
the lump sum distribution.
Or maybe you want more control,or you strongly have a strong
feeling about leaving money toyour kids.
You know, one option is you wantto make sure you and your spouse

(12:08):
are covered in retirement, butthe other option may be the lump
sum provides more legacyplanning for your children.
So there's a couple of differentthings to think about as you're
evaluating guaranteed paymentsfor your life, or do you make
lump sum distribution and rollit into an IRA and then decide

(12:30):
how do you take payments fromthere?
So these are things that youknow you can do on the back of a
napkin, on a piece of paper.
Again, something you shouldreally think through versus
making willy-nilly decisions,like uh Mr.
Mr.
Person that I just discussed.
Mr.
Person probably shouldn't havesaid it that way, but you know,
the the case study where I justtold you about the real

(12:52):
conversation um where herhusband just made kind of a uh
lackluster decision and it endedup costing um her in the long
run because she doesn't haveadequate cash flow to cover
those living expenses.
So a couple of common mistakesis ignoring the bond value,
choosing the highest incomestream just because it's the

(13:15):
highest income stream withoutconsidering you know you or your
loved ones, maybe being overlyconservative on your investing,
not planning for inflation,taking a lump sum for the wrong
reasons.
There's there's a plethora ofthings that you know are
mistakes that you should youshould be thinking through
because you don't want to makethe same mistake, especially if

(13:35):
you've got educational contentlike this to help you make
informed and confident decisionswith your pension.
Final thought your pension isn'tjust a paycheck, it's the
backbone of your retirement.
You have to get this right sothat your lifestyle is
protected, your spouse isprotected, your portfolio can

(13:56):
focus on growth and being thefun money of your retirement.
You'll sleep better at night.
These are major impacts to yourretirement plan and why they
should be well thought out whenyou're making financial
decisions, but specificallytoday on making decisions about
your pension.
If you want to know how I canhelp, you can schedule some time

(14:19):
with me in the in the aboutsection.
My calendar link is there.
We're happy to chat.
If you haven't already liked andsubscribed, please do so.
Be confident in your retirementeverywhere.
Thanks for joining me on anotherepisode of What the Wealth.
If you enjoyed the episodetoday, smash that subscribe
button.
It helps me more than you think.

(14:39):
Also, if you found this episodeinsightful and the light bulb
went off, share it.
Your friend Aunt Judy, therandom guy in the office who's
always talking aboutinvestments.
Wealth isn't about just the chipchain.
It's about our choices, chances,and changing our financial
futures.
The information in this podcastis informational and general in
nature and does not take intoconsideration the listener's

(15:02):
personal circumstances.
This podcast is not intended tobe a substitute for specific in
financial, legal, or tax advice.
You should consult the approvedqualified professional prior to
making the final decision.
Security is offered through LPLFinancial, member FINRA SIPC.
Paradigm Wealth Partners is theother business name for
Independent Advisor Alliance.
Investment Advice offeredthrough Independent Advisor

(15:23):
Alliance, a registeredinvestment advisor.
Independent advisor alliance andparadigm wealth partners are
separate entities for LPLFinancial.
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