#120 Reduction in Force (RIF) and Job Changes – What You Need to Know!

Micah Shilanski  00:45

Welcome back to the Plan Your Federal Retirement Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Shilanski, and we wanted to have a pretty timely episode kind of coming out. I know there’s a lot of changes with the new administration, things that are happening, we’re getting a lot of questions, and I know we’ve posted some content on that already, but I wanted to bring in a guy who has been through this more than once. I wanted to bring in someone 40 plus years of experience when it says, okay, when these things happen, you know, what’s the theoretical things we should be thinking about? But more importantly, what are the realistic things we should be thinking about? So I could think of no other than my pops, Floyd Shilanski, with over 40 plus years of doing financial planning, working with government employees, so pops, thanks for joining us on the pod. 

Floyd Shilanski  01:27

It is my pleasure, even though it’s about four degrees below zero, so I had to take my park off to have the conversation. 

Micah Shilanski  01:34

I appreciate you doing that. The heater not working in the house?

Floyd Shilanski  01:39

Standing outside, right? Yeah, you know the crazy part is, you said that my mind instantly goes back to the 80s, whenever we had the first SIRs conversation going on, do I go, do I stay, or I flip flop back and forth? And so a lot of what I’ll be responding to today will be pulling back out of those ancient memory banks, those conversations that we had. 

Micah Shilanski  02:00

Now pops, it would be pretty quick for people to be able to say, hey, look, this isn’t a change, right, from one benefit system to the next, this is a potential Reduction in Force, a RIF. This is a downsizing, I know jobs may be getting terminated, etc. So how do you draw those correlations and correct me if I’m wrong, but kind of the correlation really is here, is there’s a big change happening, right? And so there’s a some formula that we always look at, and we kind of go back to consistently whenever there’s a big financial change in a client’s life, and it’s important to follow that process, because when we do, it really helps us with a guided discovery of finding out, what do we need to do, where do we need to go, etc. And when we don’t follow that process, sometimes it makes it a bit more confusing, so that’s my take on it, but what are your thoughts?

Floyd Shilanski  02:47

You know, cash flow is the heart of everything, right? So anytime there’s changes, whether it’s the change in benefits, whether it’s a change in the job source, do I have enough money, right? How’s it gonna affect my take home pay, and so many times people and whether it’s the private sector or as the public sector, and we could talk extensively about the differences, but the reality is, at the end of the day, am I going to get a paycheck? You know the how many times have you and I in your career gone through, oh, let’s see we’re not a continuing resolution. Everyone’s paid, but I can remember, back when we got what were they offering sheets that, you know? Yeah, remember that? What a stress level, and what do we tell our clients, our clients, you know, the ones that our firm works with, we didn’t have a problem, and there’s one reason, because we 911 account where we want three to six months worth of living expenses, all right, for day to day, and whether I’m in the high schools talking or we’re talking at a class that you and I do, one of the things that we stress is, early on, get that 911, account three to six months worth of living expenses regardless of what’s going on.

Micah Shilanski  03:57

So let’s do this. Let’s break down a few different things. If this is something that we’re worried about right now, we can’t really talk about what the administration is going to do or not going to do, because guess what? The problem with this administration is the same as the previous administration, they don’t return my phone calls like I got great ideas. All right, that’s a joke, all right, but we don’t know what’s going to happen. So what we want to do is we want to empower you our listeners. We want to empower our clients. Let’s not focus on what we don’t know and we can’t control. Let’s focus on our lives. What are things we can do today that puts you in a better position, regardless of what the future is going to hold? So I want to go through this a little bit, pops you hit on the first one already, but cash flow is the heartbeat of retirement, right? We’ve got to have a solid understanding, so we’re going to beat up on that one a little bit, and then want to get into your best benefit that you have your health insurance. I want to get in your health insurance. How does it work if you are subject to a reduction, how does it work in retirement? I know we talked about it again on the pod, but this is so important, it’s worth listening to a little bit longer, and I want to get into retirement rules and early retirement rules. Now, maybe there’s an early retirement coming out, not a RIF, right? Well, if there’s an early retirement, clients come to us all the time like, wow, this is such a great idea, I want to take advantage of it, but there’s some key things you have to have ready in advance to take advantage of an early out opportunity, so I want to make sure we have some time to chat about those, give you some teasers to make sure you stay tuned to the end of the podcast as well. Pops anything before we jump into kind of cash flow, anything else you want to make sure you’re adding to the agenda? 

Floyd Shilanski  05:27

You know, for me, especially as an advisor, and when I’m talking with people, it’s the more data that I have, the more I can understand and make reasonable recommendations. You know, the same way someone says, I’m tired of my job, I’m fed up, I want to you know, jump ship, find what does it look like, what are your monthly expenses, what do we have in reserves, what do you have in your TSP, what are you going to do with your TSP, how long before you get vested? Back in the 80s, we had people leaving the Fed system, jumping to the state of Alaska system, because we had the FERS involved, and tier one was as good as CSRS, and then as they started making changes, I would see people move from the Fed system to the state system, and then for a long time, in the late 80s and late 70s, early 80s, people jumped from the state system to the Fed system because of the CRS. So it’s that data, what does it mean if you stay full term, what does it mean 20 years, what does it mean, if you go out early? If you know the data, know what your expenses are, how do we calculate those things, and you get this opportunity, it’s easy to evaluate. The toughest part is, hey Floyd, hey Micah, I’ve got a rift coming, all right, what does it say? I don’t know, they just said we got a RIF coming. Okay, that’s one, It’s coming, What does it mean to you? I don’t know, all right. My first question is, tell me about your cash flow. What does it cost you to maintain your lifestyle month to month? Next question, how much you got in reserves, how much you own credit card debt, what does it really mean, and if you do take the RIF, what are you going to do? Do you have another job opportunity, can you jump agencies, can you move? 

Micah Shilanski  07:04

Oh, hold on, second, also, we gotta go one step at a time, you can’t jump into the agenda today. 

Floyd Shilanski  07:08

All right, all right. 

Micah Shilanski  07:09

I got some teasers out there. Alright, so let’s, let’s go into that cash flow just a little bit, right? Let’s, let’s be super clear in what we’re talking about. Now, one of the things that’s this goes into spending. How much a month fo you spend right now? That’s super sometimes complicated to find out, we start thinking about budgets and spreadsheets and all these other things. Here’s the hack I know Tammy and I talked about it, and pops, I know you do the same thing. What do you net every two weeks, right? What do your take home? That’s the easiest place to start as to what do you spend? So if you’re bringing home, you know $3,500 a pay period, well, that’s 7000 a month, I know it’s not, but I’m rounding here, right? That’s 7000 a month times six, right? Now we need $35,000 kind of set aside in a bank account, that’s our O sugar fund that if something happens, whether it’s a termination, a job layoff, you want to make a job change, anything you have that money set aside. Now, pops, I also get a question from clients, when the emergency fund, they said, all right, Micah, I two different ones, I have one that’s in the bank, but what happens if there’s a natural disaster like, how much cash should I keep at home? So what are your thoughts on that one of people keeping cash, cash in home for like a natural disaster, something taking place.

Floyd Shilanski  08:26

Everyone is different, and, you know, I get so frustrated when you look at the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, compare your net worth with people in the same age group, right? So what I may say, or you may say with separate things, all right, if you’re worried about an EMP going off and all of the ATM shutting down, you ought to have a bunch of junk silver, and because you’re going to be bartering, right? Well, that’s the that’s an extreme, 

Micah Shilanski  08:50

Oh, I gotta totally disagree with that

Floyd Shilanski  08:52

We live in Alaska, we were in Alaska, so. 

Micah Shilanski  08:54

What are you going to do with junk silver? Are you like, like, scrape off a little bit of that silver to trade somebody for, like, breadcrumbs or something, I like, I do not get that concept. You have more experiences than me, but I do not get that concept of junk silver laying around, I get the dollars, like the Benjamins laying around, like, I understand what I could do with that one and how there’s a system, but you really think you should have, like, junk silver laying around in that case?

Floyd Shilanski  09:20

We live in Alaska, and I live up in the valley, where we have a lot of, I won’t say extremists, but a lot of people that believe that’s coming, so but back to your question, your Benjamins all right, I have no problem with 5, $10,000 you know, ones, fives, tens, twenties. I won’t, I don’t do hundreds, because if the world has gone to sugar, as you explain, it may be hard to cash $100 bill. So, you know, just having that walk around money, they know that if things came to that, that would cover you for three, four weeks, I’m okay with that. Yeah, sometimes I get people with 25, $30,000

Micah Shilanski  09:57

$100,000 at home, yeah. 

Floyd Shilanski  09:59

You know, that’s lazy money that isn’t working, so I’m not, I guess I’m Pollyanna sometimes Micah, I kind of think, well, the system will figure itself out, and here’s a flip side of that. If there is an EMP and all the things that we’re talking about, what’s it really going to matter whether it’s in the bank or the gun safe, if you go to that extreme?

Micah Shilanski  10:18

Okay, again, I’m not talking like EMP, I’m talking like an earthquake or a hurricane or a tornado, right? So natural disasters, boy, we’ve taken a left turn, sorry, listeners, on from reduction in force. I’m just talking about natural disasters that have come through, which do often happen, right? So in that case, the the approach that I like to take is, what spending money do you need, and have a couple months of that. So here’s what I’m not worried about, if an earthquake happens, and this has happened in Alaska, right in 2018 whether it’s a hurricane that’s down south and shuts things down for a while, I still need to buy food, I still need to do some other things, I need to get gas. Here’s what I don’t need to worry about. I don’t need to worry about my mortgage payment. What do you mean you don’t need to worry about your mortgage payment? Look, if the banking system is shut down because of a hurricane, I’m not worried about going to the bank and making a mortgage payment, I’m not really worried about my utilities, they’re not going to shut your utilities off. If they’re operational in that, you’re not going to show up in cash to pay them. So Micah’s opinion here. I want to take spending money and have two or three months of that, so between my grocery bill or out of pockets, etc, what are those? And I like to keep that in cash at home, and then that’s some good money in case something happens again, not a war scenario, but just a natural disaster scenario. What are things we need to worry about? But then pops, I totally agree with you with money in the bank. Let’s at least have some money working, I prefer my my savings account, not to be lazy money earning point 3% I want to use like a Capital One, a Lending Tree, a Marcus bank, right? Those are recommendations, just ideas for you guys out there, I want to use some online bank that, as of today, is paying 4% or north of that for FDIC insured money might be a little less, depending on where rates are going to go, etc. But my 911, account again, if I had $7,000 a month is what I’m spending, that means 35,000 bucks, I want it to least earn something. So in those emergency funds, make sure you put them at a place that you’re earning it. My preference is that’s not your local checking and savings account that you’re spending money out of, I like that to be in a slightly separate, different bank, so it’s a little out of sight, out of mind. What are your thoughts? 

Floyd Shilanski  12:21

Okay, exactly right, because if it’s you know, well, I’m gonna pick on Wells Fargo, you can log on and see your savings, your credit card, debit and then you see your 911, it’s easy to go, oh, transfer, ooh, transfer and done. I happen to like online banks because it is, is not instantaneously. So if I go, we’ll say Capital One, if I go to Capital One and say, oh, I want to buy a new side by side, let’s transfer $30,000 and my wife and Micah’s mom says, oh, no, you don’t want to have that, I can hit delay, because it doesn’t hit instantly, all right, and then, but it’s so many times I’ve had clients that when they see it all their 911 account gets built up, then they take a holiday, 911, account gets built up, and they had to go do something else. Yeah, out of sight, different location, I agree, but back to the first question, if you’re having cash on hand, you don’t need to worry about mortgage payments, you don’t need to worry about car payments or utility payments to your point, go to the gas station, put gas in my car, so that need for cash at home, and what the gun safe or the safe doesn’t have to be the same thing as the 7000 that we’re talking about, three to six months worth of living expenses set aside.

Micah Shilanski  13:29

One of the mistakes that I see as a financial advisor after federal employees go to retire is not understanding how it’s different when you’re in accumulation mode, saving money for retirement, building your TSP to you’re in the distribution mode, pulling money out of the TSP. Sometimes we think that we can manage everything the same, then it comes to retirement, and we all of a sudden, we have this flood of different types of emotions, and it only happens to people that generally aren’t emotional about investments, and if you are, it happens to you even more. So we put together a guide for you, a free guide in order to help know what questions you need to ask, know what learning lessons are out there, and how should you build a proper distribution plan with your TSP? This is so important, because how you got here in order to be able to retire, is not how you’re going to stay retired. There are some differences that we need to keep in mind, and more importantly, we have to come up with a plan that not if, when the market goes down for a long period of time, how do we, say, dispassionate investors, how do we hold for the long run, but have a plan that you won’t run out of money? In order to get your free guide, jump on our website at planyourfederalretirement.com/tspafterretirement. That’s planyourfederalretirement.com/tspafterretirement. Take control of your retirement savings, get this guide so you can make smarter decisions about your retirement, till then Happy Planning. Exactly, yep, I agree the 100%. Now, as we get closer to retirement, right, this gets into a whole different investment conversation that increases, but we’re not going to time to really chat about that today, but that’s 12 to 24 months we should have. So here’s what I know, just on this basic aspect of it, that clients that are subject to a cash flow constraint coming up, whether it’s a job change, forced or voluntary, whether it is a budget resolution issue, and you’re not going to get paid for a little while, whether the boiler goes out at home, right? So any of those things, my clients with cash in the emergency fund have a low stress level, lower stress level going through those events, because we’re not worried about it, because we have cash to buy us the time. Cash buys you time, time buys you options, right? The clients that haven’t built up the emergency reserve, they’re pretty stressed about this, because how am I going to pay the bills and do the things? So it’s the fundamentals, it’s the keys, it’s the basic which makes such a big difference, and that would say, I think that’s a really important one. All right, pops, I want to make a little transition from cash flow, let’s talk about the best benefit our federal employees have, in my opinion, looking from the outside in, and that’s health insurance, and if you may have a job change, right? We’re going to talk about the rules for keeping health insurance in a minute, but if you have a job change, again, voluntary or involuntary, and you’re not able to keep your health insurance, you get this TCC, Temporary Continuation of Coverage, it’s kind of like Cobra for the federal sector, and you get about 18 months of coverage, but there’s a catch, you have to pay 102% of the premium. That’s not what you’re paying right now, you only pay about 28% of the premium, the government pays the vast majority of it. You, if you separated, are gonna have to pay the full premium, so pretty much, take yours times three, and that’s gonna be a lot closer to that dollar amount. So that’s something that I think catches people off guard, what do you think pops?

Floyd Shilanski  16:51

Well, without a doubt.

Micah Shilanski  16:52

So you know, that’s kind of the issue is, is the health insurance kind of drops off and you know, you got to pay a lot more for it, then you have a question, do you go on the healthcare exchange, do you go into healthcare exchange in order to do that, do you stick with the TCC coverage? So these are things again, we really have to look at to say, are you going to be set up and okay. Now let’s talk a little bit about the rules for keeping health insurance into retirement. Number one, you must retire, I’m sorry, separate from service, therefore retirement, with the eligibility of an immediate pension, that’s rule number one. Rule number two, you the federal employee, must be in FEHB for five years prior to retirement. This is really important that you’re meeting both of these rules. I talk about it a lot, where I see federal employees make this mistake is their younger federal employees, their spouse has a job outside doing something else, and they’re like, oh, well, it’s fine, their health insurance is cheaper, so I’m not going to do FEHB, I’m going to jump on their family plan, and we’re going to save some money, and that just continues to happen, and we forget about it until retirement comes up, and you look at it and be like, they’ve only been in FEHB for two years, they’re ready to retire, but they can’t keep their health insurance, they got to stay another three years to get to the five. So be very careful, especially when there’s an involuntary job change might be coming up that’s going to force you out. So let’s talk a little bit about how that’s going to work. The involuntary job change, right? If there’s a reduction of force or potentially an early out, what the rules are is, as long as you work for the federal government for at least five years, you are vested in your pension, your TSP, you’re always vested in your TSP for your contributions, you’re vested for the match contributions after you work for three years, those are two slightly different roles. You’re always vested after that five years paying into FERS, you’re vested for a pension, then the question is, how much and when is it going to be? But if you only have five years of service, and you’d stop working for the government for any reason, that means, at age 62 you can go collect your pension benefits. Now, you may not be eligible for health insurance, you may not be eligible for other benefits, but because you’ve worked at least five years, paying into the system, you are eligible for some pension in the future, which is really nice. Now there is an immediate retirement option for an early out, a forced reduction, right? And what this is going to be is that if you have at least 25 years of service, regardless of age, you’re eligible to go out under an early out and get 100% of your pension with no penalty any age with 25 years of service. The second requirement is, if at least 50 with 20 years of service, you’re eligible to retire right away, and you’re able to collect your pension. Now, the course, the good benefit about this is your health insurance, you get to keep your health insurance because, again, you’re separating with an immediate pension, and if you’ve been in FEHB for five years, you get to keep that health insurance into retirement. 

Floyd Shilanski  19:40

You know, Micah, and also just one thing to stress, if you’re in a family plan, or you need to have the family plan for five years as well, and there’s been times we’ve seen people that have had the have not had the spouse on their coverage, because they work like for the state of Alaska, and they had their own coverage, and my challenge with that is which one or the question becomes, which one is better, we didn’t want to have to double dip on it. So that’s one of the things as well as they prepare to get ready, to make sure that the spouse, if they’re going to go use the Fed program, that they’ve got the family plan, so everyone’s involved in that for five years. Is that a correct statement? 

Micah Shilanski  20:13

A little modification on that one pops. So the two rules for you as the federal employees, you must retire with the eligibility of an immediate pension, and number two, you, the federal employee, have to be in FEHB for five years, it doesn’t matter what plan you have, you have to be in it for five years. Your spouse to maintain FEHB after you pass away has two requirements. Number one, they must be in FEHB before you pass away. There’s no time requirement. It could be one day before you pass away, but they got to be in FEHB before you pass away, and number two, they must be receiving a survivor benefit. So we can’t disinherit them on the retirement application, they got to be receiving that survivor benefit, to your point again, if spouses have two separate plans, right? One is for a federal employees just FEHB self only, and the spouse has an outside plan, and the Federal Employee passes away, the spouse does not get that health insurance for life.

Floyd Shilanski  21:05

Yeah, and think that’s something that I don’t know about you, but a lot of the people I see, I do have some dual Feds as clients, but have a lot that work for two different whether it’s the Fed and private sector or the Fed and the state sector, and then blending those things together, and to the point of what we’re talking about today, that forced retirement, or reduction in force, is making sure you coordinate benefits too, as well, whether you’re being laid off in the public sector or whether you’re being, you know, changed in the federal sector.

Micah Shilanski  21:32

Yeah, very much so, right? So these are things to really look for. Now, one of the things that comes out is sometimes with early retirements, this is the positive side, right? Little negative side, so more reduction in forces you’re being forced out and you don’t want to, and early retirement opportunities a little different, that’s saying, hey, we’re opening the doors, and if you’re eligible retire, go ahead and take advantage of it. So here’s some questions that we get from federal employees. Is sometimes they’re going to come to us and be like, hey, is it better for me to retire now, or if I work longer, am I going to have more? Okay, if we think about that just a little bit, right? If you work longer, you’re always gonna have more, your pension continues to grow, your TSP, you’re putting money in versus pulling money out, right? So you’re going to have more the longer you work. If I could push back a little bit, I don’t think that’s the correct question. The right question is, am I ready to retire, and keep in mind, there’s two components to this, right pops? The first one is, financially, am I financially ready to retire? Boy, that’s the easy one, that’s just math, right? That’s for us, that’s right. The second one, though, is mental, are you mentally ready to retire? And so I think that’s what catches a lot of people off guard during these early out opportunities.

Floyd Shilanski  22:44

You know, Micah and I use the same terminology, different words, you know, financial and emotional, and I had that conversation continued with my clients, that we can speak to the financial side, that let me challenge you on the emotional side. Yeah. What are you going to do, all right, finances, the finances for you and I are easy. Have a client that’s been with us for a number of years getting ready to retire, and he went to his first like, we call him, plan your federal retirement one, right? And so he’s attending one outside, and they’re going through all this stuff, and he calls me, like, three or four times in the interview, Floyd, we’re doing this, right? We’re doing this right? So what are you talking about? Well, I did this, he said, they’re talking about that, and they’re doing these comparisons, and I kind of laughed, and I said, yeah, don’t, don’t worry about it, all those things are in place for you, and the program gets over, and his wife calls me and says, Floyd, all these guys, and these guys are asking these questions, why don’t they have a Floyd, like, we do, right? And that’s the point getting involved, and of course, Micah and I love to get, love to talk about this with our with prospects and clients, but making sure you’ve got a professional that deals with this, non emotionally. Yes, non emotionally, we can talk to the cash flow, we can talk about the money side of it, we can talk to the emotions, not at the emotions. So finding that balance between cash flow and emotions, am I ready to retire? I’m tired of working, I didn’t say that, are you ready to retire? We got the cash flow, what are you going to do? And Micah, what have all our clients tell us the first thing they’re going to do they retire the next morning, they’re going to? 

Micah Shilanski  24:20

Sleep in.

Floyd Shilanski  24:21

Right!

Micah Shilanski  24:22

Hard part about that, and maybe I’m not retired, so I don’t know, you know, on Saturday I still wake up at the same time, but on vacation, right? I still wake up. You know, my wife is like, why can’t we sleep in? It’s 4:50 in the morning. I’m like, I’m up, I don’t know what to say. You know, our bodies just get kind of wired for that. But pops, I agree, whether we call it mental, whether we call it emotional, these are some big steps. Now I know we want to wrap up this podcast and really talk about some action items for you guys as well, but one of the things I really want to talk about too is the stress at home that can happen with this, right and this anytime there’s a big life change, you’re elevating that home stress. And I’ve never found a way to perfectly get rid of it. It just comes in different forms, but here’s one thing I’ll consistently say, that reduces it. When you’ve made good financial decisions, when you have cash, when you understand cash flow, how much you spend, where your money comes from, etc. And you got a plan, now you may not have full confidence, because you’ve never done it, the plan is going to work, right? I tell my retirees that are savers, not spenders, it takes about 18 months after you’re retired to be like, oh, this actually, really does work, and you actually get comfortable with it, it’s going to take some time. But the ones that have the cash, they have the plan, they understand their spending, they move so much easier into retirement, whether it’s voluntary or forced, they move so much easier into this than clients that don’t.

Floyd Shilanski  25:48

I always tell my clients, I know when that when you retire the first 18 months, your cash flow is going to increase because there’s honeydue projects, there’s trips, there’s things you want to go do, somewhere around the 12th, 18th month, it needs to be trending down back towards the number that we plotted for, and the biggest thing hope everyone listen to this, don’t compare yourself to the guy, the gal you’re working next door. No, if you’ve cash flow, and you’re working with a competent advisor that’s got the cash flow dialed in for you, and you know, that, hey, my check’s gonna go down by 30% but I’m gonna place that 30% by X, Y and Z, and here’s my spending, you’re gonna be fine. I never had a retiree that took a 30% reduction that hadn’t already reduced or planned for their reduction, have a problem. My challenge is when clients retire and says, oh my God, I thought my check was going to be bigger, and all of a sudden they got that, what we call it, a gap in spending. Now we have to make some critical adjustments, no two to three years out before planning, you’re always ready to start trying to live on those adjustments, so we know where the gap is at, we can make the adjustments before that magical, mythical day comes, I’m done.

Micah Shilanski  27:02

100% right? So here’s our big takeaway, here’s our big action items for our listeners on this you know, number one, make sure when you’re about to make a big life decision, you’re bringing someone in your corner. No, I’m not saying hire us. Yes, I’m biased, I would like that, right? But that’s not the sales pitcher, you guys, as our listeners, know that I want you to work with somebody, even if it’s just one time, review it dot the i’s cross the t’s. Here’s one thing, and I’ll still help you if you call and this happens, it just bothers the dickens out of me when a client comes in with a situation that happened months ago, but they didn’t want to hire advisor first, now they’re in a pickle, and we could have avoided it, right? I don’t beat people up about it. I don’t go, hey, there’s nothing I can do about the past, my time machine is still broke, it doesn’t work, right? So I can’t go back and fix it. So we’re gonna take what we can and we’re gonna move forward the best we can, but man, I love it when I can see that problem, that pothole, coming, make a little course correction, and we just avoid it and sell right into retirement, right? That is my preference. Doesn’t always happen, but that’s my preference, that’s what I want for you, our listeners, if you’re being hit with a big life decision, you’re not alone, find somebody who’s really good at this stuff, sit down and go through it, make sure you’re not just making an emotional decision, but you really know what this impact is.

Floyd Shilanski  28:23

Micah, if I could just add to that, yeah, please bias again, make sure that whoever you’re talking to the resolution to your problem is not selling you some type of financial product.

Micah Shilanski  28:34

Yes, yeah, the answer is not life insurance, yes, right?

Floyd Shilanski  28:37

Or an annuity or whatever, yeah, make sure, and regrettably, Micah and I do see that I get calls all the time from people I just attended this class, and their answer was, buy X, Y, Z, and I go, did they ask you these other questions? And they go, no, I said your solution isn’t a product, a product may be part of what you want, but your solution right now is close to the heart, make sure you’ve got your base is covered. 

Micah Shilanski  29:00

Such wisdom, such wisdom, right there, pops, I appreciate that. All right, the other thing is, we’re really trying to help another million federal employees with retirement, so send this information out, vote, early, vote, often, it really helps us get that information, and until next time, Happy Planning!