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#108 Federal Finances: Navigating Retirement Prep

Home » Pension Payments » Computation » #108 Federal Finances: Navigating Retirement Prep

Listen to the Full Episode:

Join Tammy and Micah, seasoned federal retirement experts, as they share their insights on navigating retirement preparation, avoiding common mistakes with OPM, and ensuring a smooth transition from federal service.
 
Learn about the importance of accurate record-keeping, the need for correct dates and service credibility, and how to involve HR early on to avoid territorial issues. Find out approaches to resolving retirement claim issues, including the challenges of fixing errors in OPM’s database and the importance of regular reminders for clients waiting on OPM responses.

Listen to this episode to gain practical insights and tips on federal retirement planning, documentation, and how to make the retirement process as seamless as possible. You’ll be equipped with the knowledge to take control of your retirement journey.

Tune in now and take the first step towards a well-prepared and successful retirement journey.

What We Cover:

  • Retirement planning and avoiding common mistakes with OPM.
  • The importance of accurate record-keeping and documentation.
    • Before You Retire
      • When do you start with the paperwork 
      • When do you submit the retirement paperwork
      • How to avoid problems
      • Be sure the TSP is up to date (address current; enter your bank info so that your first payments don’t get delayed)
    • After you retire
      • When are you going to get your first check
      • How does your health insurance work in retirement
      • Medicare
      • Social Security
  • OPM Processes (When retirement goes wrong…)
      • What if OPM disagrees with your retirement?
      • If something doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t.
      • What if OPM doesn’t allow you to keep your health insurance? 
      • What if you need to change your survivor in retirement (divorce or death) 

Action Items

  1. Ensure the Accuracy of dates of service and buyback records 
  2. Request final retirement estimate (6-12 months before retiring)
  3. Get your EOPF
  4. Attend a Training

Resources for this Episode:

Ideas Worth Sharing:

The rule of thumb is, if you're in a small organization that maybe only two or three people retire in it in a month, 30 days, 60 days, notice is plenty, because that HR person probably doesn't have too much to do. But if you're in a large… Share on X

So keep in mind, this is two totally separate agencies who's processing this benefit. Part of it gets processed in your own HR and payroll office. There's two different components as an employee, and then it goes to OPM, where they start the… Share on X

If you're off by a substantial amount or you see something wrong, we got a limited time that we need to voice that to OPM to make sure we're asking them to fix or address any potential issues. – Micah Shilanski Share on X

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Micah Shilanski  00:48

Welcome to the Plan Your Federal Retirement podcast. I’m your cohost, Micah Shilanski, and with me the legendary Tammy Flanagan. Tammy, how’s it going, ma’am? 

Tammy Flanagan  00:57

Hey, Micah, I’m just doing well here in Florida, we’re a little sweltering hot here. But other than that, we’re doing doing pretty good. 

Micah Shilanski  01:05

Phew, it’s sweltering hot in Florida, right? My definition of sweltering hot, probably, as our listeners know, in Alaska, is like 72, I’m like, clawing on my neck. I’m like, it’s way too hot. My wife’s like, you’re being dramatic, but it’s probably slightly warmer than that. where you are.

Tammy Flanagan  01:16

Yeah, it’s 91 and I think the humidity is 91% as well. So we’re waiting for our afternoon  thunderstorm that comes about this time of year on a daily basis. 

Micah Shilanski  01:27

There you go.

Tammy Flanagan  01:29

Too heavy.

Micah Shilanski  01:29

Well, we wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about navigating retirement prep. Now, we’ve talked about this kind of in different pieces in the podcast before. We’ve talked about a lot on a podcast, 100 plus episodes in. But we’re really starting to see some issues come out of OPM relatively recently, I know we talked about it in the past. So Tammy, we talked about, kind of putting this whole thing together with, let’s talk about pre retirement, like right before retirement, when do we start things? What do we need to do when we start things? Right after retirement what are things kind of look like, and then, God forbid, but if you’re one of those people that OPM has an issue with your retirement, what are you doing? What does that timeline look like? Because, quite frankly, it feels like you’re just washing paint dry when you’re trying to get an issue solved with OPM. You send off a bunch of stuff and you wait, because it kind of feels like it goes into this abyss and you don’t know what to do next. Tammy, does that sound about right, or am I being a little dramatic here? 

01:45

Oh, no, you’re not being dramatic at all. And I think there are things we can do and we can help people understand what to do to avoid some of these problems that we see crop up almost on a daily basis. Right? We always have somebody with an issue that we say, boy, if we could have only talked to this person five years ago. This would not have happened. You know, there are things you can do before you retire to avoid some of these mistakes.

Micah Shilanski  02:49

And we’re not trying to say this for plugging like our services. Yes, this is what we actually do for a living. But work with us, work with somebody else, but really understand your benefits, because preventing some of these issues, and it can be the wrong as the wrong date on a retirement application costs you health insurance for your entire life. And that’s, I’m not being dramatic about this. We’ve seen that happen where people come into us after the fact and it’s like, oh no, we missed it. So we really got to be careful about these things. All right. That’s just to keep you into suspense, so you listen to the end of the podcast. Let’s back up a little bit. Tammy, let’s talk about before you retire. Now, one of the things that we always like to give to our clients is a retirement timeline, and it’s kind of a seven months before retirement. What are some things that you need to be thinking about in kind of this order of operations, but walk us through that a little bit. So you’ve decided to retire. It’s going to be the year. When do you do what?

Tammy Flanagan  03:43

Well, I think I agree. You know, seven months before, a year beforehand, that’s a good time to really start getting serious about making sure all the ducks are in the road, making sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. But it really starts a long time before that. So one of the things you can do as you get to that point of a year out, seven months out, is to make sure that all the dates are correct, make sure that all the service is creditable. This… in this area, you might need some help, because maybe you don’t know. But to give you an example, I’m working with a woman right now who served in the military, and her starting date was actually March, but on her military deposit, it’s August. Her DD 214 says March. Everything else says March, but they’re only giving her credit from August. And the whole reason this happened was her DD 214 initially was wrong, and there was a correction. That correction probably didn’t go with the actual DD 214 when she was making that deposit. Yeah, this happened in 1992 that she paid the deposit. So for all these years, that’s never been looked at, never been corrected. She obviously didn’t notice it, but that has to be corrected before she retires. I can guarantee you that’s an automatic delay in the form of months of delay, because OPM is going to look at that DD 214 and look at her deposit and say she didn’t get it for three months of service. You know, either they won’t give her credit for it, or they’re going to try to go back and get the agency to correct it. It’s just there’ll be a mess. So I always say, when you see things like that, realize that you’re not going to get away with it, right? OPM is going to eventually catch up with it, sometimes as soon as you retire, sometimes many years later, but you’re much better off to fix anything that’s not right now while you’re still getting a paycheck. Because when you’re waiting for that first retirement check, that can be utterly stressful and frustrating. 

Micah Shilanski  05:44

You just nailed it, right? There’s kind of two classifications of issues that I like to put it with, OPM. Catastrophic, right? Which is, I’m going to not have a pension, I’m going to lose health insurance, my survivor is not covered. I mean, there’s, there’s some massive issues. Then there’s delay issues, which they’re fixable, they’re survivable, right? The delay issues. But how long is the delay for? It’s months, if not a year plus. In order to get some things resolved. And I love your point, it’s so much easier to fix it when you have a paycheck. When you’ll when you’re in, you’re a guest and you’re out, you’re a pest. So if all of a sudden you retire, and in that example, OPM goes back to your agency and says, get agency, go fix this. They’re like, Yeah, whatever. Tammy is retired, living up in Florida, I got real stuff to do, and they just have other work versus when you’re in the system. I have always found it easier to try to fix these things while we’re working, just because cash flow is not an issue, the stress is dramatically less, and it seems like it moves faster when we’re employed in the system versus when we’re retired.

Tammy Flanagan  06:45

Yeah, I always tell employees, I say, only you know what you’ve really done throughout your career. You know when you started, you know when you left. You know if you took a refund. The agency only knows what’s in your personnel file. And even then, you know something’s inaccurate or something’s missing, they’re not going to know about it. So I really do think the first thing anybody can do who works for the government is to watch any document that’s filed in that personnel file to make sure it’s accurate, make sure it’s complete. Make sure that any record of coming, going, changing work schedule, changing retirement coverage, that you’re aware of that and that you have that form in your own possession, because once you leave the government, you’re going to lose access to all those forms that are filed in your electronic personnel file.

Micah Shilanski  07:30

And that’s one of the great tips right there, before you separate. Now I don’t care when your retirement date is, I would say now is when you start with this. Go get a copy of all of your records in your personal possession. They can be electronic on your own personal device, not on the government’s device, right? And that’s an annual thing. Anytime you get these updated SF 50s, anytime it’s a notification of personnel action, anything like that, I like to keep in your own personnel record. And then the year of retirement, that’s a good time to go look at it again. You know, were you sloppy? Did he not get anything? Let’s go grab all those things again. And Timmy, I always tell clients, I hope this is a giant waste of time. I hope that you download everything, we look at it and say, oh my gosh, you really do just have 30 years of service, all of the Park Service, and it’s a simple retirement. And OPM turns around and looks at it and says, Oh my gosh, this is simple retirement and fires everything right out. And you look back at it and says, Man, I wish you didn’t spend that hours doing this paperwork. I really hope that is the outcome. But that is my ideal outcome. The other side of this, I’ve been on it where people didn’t do the work and they don’t have the documents. Now they’re retired, and OPM says, you know, you got 28 years, you don’t got 30 years. This is a penalty, MRA in 10 retirement with a 30 or 25% penalty in this one particular case. And it’s like, no, no. The client really does have 30 years of service, but they didn’t have the evidence for that, and it became very problematic and took a long time to solve.

Tammy Flanagan  08:47

Oh, yeah. I had a guy one time who had biggest 15 years of service. OPM came back to him when he filed for his deferred retirement and said, Sorry, we can’t pay you anything, you only have three and a half years of service. Yeah. Well, he did. He had 15 and we had to go find it and prove it, because they didn’t have the documentation. There was nothing in their storehouse that proved that he had that service. So if he didn’t have it, or he couldn’t get it, he would have been out of luck. 

Micah Shilanski  09:12

Make sure you get this documentation. Absolutely, at minimum, all of your SF 50s are super important. And then Tammy, when do you request your retirement paperwork? When do you submit this to HR? You know, how does that work?

Tammy Flanagan  09:25

Well, one thing that goes hand in hand with what we just talked about, the service credit, making sure everything’s up to date. If you’re a seven months to a year out from retirement, I know some agencies now have the do it yourself GRB platform, where you can do your own retirement estimate, but if you have access to your personnel office, to a retirement specialist who works in personnel, I would want them to run the final retirement estimate. For the date that I’m retiring if I’m younger than 62 and I’m entitled to the supplement, I want to see that supplement on there. I want to see all my insurance withholdings coming out of that estimate. Want to make sure it’s for the date that I’m actually going to retire on, not some date that I elected three years ago. So get that final estimate. Once you have that, once you’ve made this decision, that I’m financially ready, I’m mentally prepared, it’s time to start in action, then you’re going to get the paperwork. And that paperwork is generally provided to you by your agency. They usually have a whole little link to a website that gives you all the documents that you’re going to need. But they’re really only two, right? There’s all the only two documents you really need to start the whole process is your retirement application. For most our listeners, it’s FERS, right? We don’t have too many CSRS left to get the standard form, 3107 which is the application for immediate retirement. And if you carry FEGLI, government life insurance, you need the SF 2818, which is the application to continue life insurance in retirement. That’s all it takes to get started. 

Micah Shilanski  10:56

So getting those forms, getting them filled out, I think, are really great if you don’t have to do it yourself system, I’ve always had success requesting them from HR first. I think I mentioned this before on the podcast. Sometimes, if we fill them out first for clients and they submit them to HR, it gets a little bit territorial. So I always like to bring HR in as soon as we can, and then ask them, when do they want the paperwork? There’s some agencies that will take it months in advance, like six months in advance. Other agencies that says, I don’t want to see this till 60 or 90 days before you retire. So let’s start finding out what their preference is. So we can kind of be a good retiree, right? What system do we need to kind of fit in? That’s a good process going. You’ve been doing this for like, dozens of years. Now you know how this works, right? What system do you need to fit in in order to get the best outcome, which is your retirement process accurately and quickly, is what we’re solving for.

Tammy Flanagan  11:44

The rule of thumb is, if you’re in a small organization that maybe only two or three people retire in it in a month, 30 days, 60 days, notice is plenty, because that HR person probably doesn’t have too much to do. But if you’re in a large organization, like part of DOD or one of the intelligence organizations that are just massive, six months to a year is not too soon. You want to get, you want to get in the head of the queue. You want to get at the beginning of the line. So when it’s close to your date, that yours is the first one on top that they start to work on.

Micah Shilanski  12:16

I love it. And then I always like that client. My clients to ask, like, when you submit this, or you’re asking about, say, hey, what else can I do to make your job easier, right? Is there anything else out there that’s going to make it that I can help provide to make this a little bit easier for you? And then be on the lookout for things. Tammy, you mentioned the top of the pod if you bought back military time, right? You don’t have that DD 214 which most of my clients, most military people, have their DD 214 pretty handy, which is great. But do you have that confirmation that you bought back that military time, that beautiful little letter from OPM, right? 

Tammy Flanagan  12:47

Letter for the military buyback actually comes from your payroll office. If you pay back civilian service, I would come from OPM. So you may have paid a military deposit, and you may have paid back some temporary service or a refunded period of service. So you may have both. You may have a statement from OPM and one from DFAS, or whoever your payroll provider is and some of these documents are not in your personnel finding. So you pay back a deposit, make sure you get that receipt. Make sure it shows that you owe zero things paid in full.

Micah Shilanski  13:22

And then include that with your retirement application. Right? These are things that they’re going to need. Sometimes I have clients like Micah, though HR should have this. It’s like, okay, well, there’s, there’s two comments here, but there should have it. I’m not going to address it’s what do we do to, number one, make your retirement as accurate as possible and as timely process as possible. That is what we’re solving for. So supply this documents with that retirement application. Let’s make this easy. 

Tammy Flanagan  13:45

Yeah, another thing, speaking of things you want to provide with your retirement application is if you’re under your spouse’s federal health plan, or if you’re under your spouse’s military health care plan, and you want to show that you’ve had five years of coverage, because you have to have five years covered under FEHB to retire, you may need to bring in documentation from your spouse’s personnel folder or from your spouse’s agency, verifying that you’re a family member on that plan, because if OPM doesn’t clearly see that you’ve had five years of coverage, you’re never going to be able to carry federal health insurance in your own name, which can be really important if your spouse doesn’t leave you a survivor benefit. 

Micah Shilanski  14:26

Yeah, super important, I would say, kind of, as we, as you walk through that kind of the paperwork to submit, I also like to throw in there, and I know we mentioned this before, but get a copy of everything after, you know, after you separate from starters, I always like to request from HR, get a copy of everything they’re submitting to OPM. And Tammy, I have found that super helpful, just to thumb through it and say, Okay, maybe we gave them military buyback and it didn’t show up here. Maybe we gave them a health certificate and it didn’t show up here. And I’m not going to do anything with that yet, but I get a thumb through it and look and be like, Aha. I know there’s going to be some questions, and now I’m ready once OPM comes back, right? And now, once you’re in the system with your CSA number, now we can start communicating with OPM, but there’s a bit of a limbo time from when you separate to when you’re in the system that it’s a pretty much a sit and wait game. 

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Tammy Flanagan  15:45

Right? Keep in mind that when you’re an employee, OPM doesn’t really know who you are, right? They, if you call them up, they would say, Go back to your HR office. So, like you called it Micah, there’s a limbo period. There’s this, like black hole, when you leave your agency and you’re waiting now for OPM to send you some acknowledgement that they have your retirement. So keep in mind, this is two totally separate agencies who’s processing this benefit. Part of it gets processed in your own HR and payroll office. There’s two different components as an employee, and then it goes to OPM, where they start the process as the Retirement Agency, and they’re the ones who are going to determine, finally, if you’re eligible to retire, how much your retirement is going to be. And once it gets to that point, it’s really hard to go back and correct errors or provide documentation that might have been missing, so be sure that you have a complete package before you separate because it’s a lot easier to fix it while you’re getting the paycheck. 

Micah Shilanski  15:59

It is 100%, right? So then you’re going to retire, you’re going to get this information. Hopefully your retirement is smooth. Couple months will get an interim check, then a couple of months later, if not sooner, you’ll get your full retirement check. You’ll get that nice little booklet. It’s now a whole page kind of print out booklet that they send out. Lot of great information in there that you need to pull out and again, go through, if you’re off 12 cents, then call it a day, and everything’s good with life. If you’re off by a substantial amount or you see something wrong, we got a limited time that we need to voice that to OPM to make sure we’re asking them to fix or address any potential issues.

Tammy Flanagan  17:18

That’s right, that’s right. And you know, when you’re going through that transition and you’re getting ready to fill out the paperwork, there are some decisions there that may not be as clear as they sound, because, for example, if you’re married and you’re looking at the Survivor Benefit election and you’re saying, well, I’m I’m retiring, my spouse is retiring, why do we need to leave each other as survivor benefit? It does not make any sense. It could make perfect sense to leave your spouse’s survivor benefit if losing your retirement is going to cause a financial hardship to your spouse. So look at those decisions you’re making with much care, because once you make them, they’re pretty much irrevocable. It’s either the survivor election I see problems with, I see electing life insurance coverage. Some people will drop basic FEGLI when they retire. Don’t drop it. It’s free until you’re 65 you don’t have to pay for it. You’ll still maintain 25% of it. So make sure you understand what ramifications these decisions you’re making have down the road, because, like we’ve been saying, these are really permanent elections. You’re setting the stage for the next decades of your life. Yes, if you’re married, it can have an effect on both of you.

Micah Shilanski  18:32

So let’s kind of talk about some problems that sometimes we see with OPM. Then we’ll talk about watching the paint dry, and then maybe Tammy, if we have time, we can add a little bit of a timeline on at least kind of what we walk clients through once we start seeing issues about saying, hey, let’s set some good expectations of how long it’s actually going to take to get resolution with this. Is that okay? 

Tammy Flanagan  18:52

Sure, absolutely.

Micah Shilanski  18:55

All right, so Tammy, step number one, what if OPM disagrees with your retirement, right? You think you’re supposed to get x, you’re getting less than x, and your retirement is adjudicated. It’s finalized. What do you do?

Tammy Flanagan  19:07

Can you prove it? This is why we say, save all the documentation. Save a copy of your retirement application. Keep records of all of your federal employment, because it could be wrong. You know, they might not have seen something, they may not have received some of the paperwork. If you have it, it’s really easy to fix the problem. You can contact OPM. Call them at 7:40am Eastern, Standard Time, which is a problem for you folks in Alaska. You call them at two o’clock in the morning, but no matter what you try to get through, you know, call midweek, don’t call on a Friday afternoon, and explain to them what happened. Sometimes that’s all it takes is, oh yeah, just send us that document. We’ll get it back in your file and we’ll fix it. But if you don’t have the proof, and you’re just ranting and raving saying, this doesn’t look right, this doesn’t match up with what my agency said, you’re kind of at a loss, because they’re going to say, Oh no, we’re finished with it. It’s done. So you want to be able to prove your point. You have to understand where those numbers are coming from. So when you get that retirement estimate, if there’s something on that estimate that doesn’t make sense to you, like it might say FERS supplement. Maybe you don’t know what a FERS supplement is, find out, or maybe you’re under CSRS offset and you don’t understand what offset means. These are valid questions that you want to fully understand before you walk out the door, because this can really impact your retirement later. And you can then say, oh, no, it should be this and this, because I know how that works. So having an understanding, attending pre retirement seminars, asking questions. If you can get someone in your personnel shop to talk to you that is knowledgeable, that’s the person asked those questions, and if they answer it and it doesn’t sound right, or it sounds too good to be true, have them back it up with a reference. There’s nothing you or I say that we can’t back up with a law, a resource, a reference, something that’s clear on that topic. Because sometimes you hear what you want to hear when somebody’s talking to you, even when we’re talking on this podcast, sure, yeah, maybe, or something we say, and you want us to back it up with a resource. Micah and I can both do that very easily on opm.gov,

Micah Shilanski  21:20

We’ve spend a lot of time on that website. And why do we do it? Because when we have an education opportunity, that’s what I like to call it, right? So if I have the evidence that I know we are correct, right, and OPM is incorrect, or HR is incorrect, I call this an education opportunity. Great news is we’re going to learn, but I’m not going to learn from Micah’s opinion is like, Oh, look at me. We have a website and a YouTube channel, therefore, listen to me. Nope, it’s gonna be go to OPM, grab the rags, provide the supporting documentation, and I’m gonna outline very politely why I think it should be this way and why I think the numbers are incorrect and how they need to be adjusted timing. Tammy, we don’t have a lot of clients that want to call OPM. I don’t know why they don’t know why they don’t want to get up at 3am and do it. I know it’s not on my list of things we do, most of ours via correspondence. And this is the tough part, because the via email, via correspondence, this takes weeks, if not months, to get responses from OPM. And even if we call and we get a hold of somebody, you know, a lot of times, it’s only been one time I’ve had someone to be able to fix it on the phone. That’s because they already had our email with all the information I was able to talk to them every other time. So Tammy, to show just how much better you are than I am fixing these problems, right? It takes a long time to go through this process, so I like to set the stage, you’re talking six months to a year depending on the problem, to be able to get this fixed. Is that being too dramatic, Tammy? Is that? 

Tammy Flanagan  22:46

No, that’s true. And when I do discover a real problem, like it’s not just a misunderstanding or a missing document, it does take time, and it goes, we go back and forth and back and forth, and sometimes get to send a little reminders, because OPM, you know, they’re the people that fix the problems. They probably hear, yeah, not the majority, but there’s a number of things that they’re working on, and each one of them is going to take time. When there’s an issue or a problem, you have to unravel and see where it came from, see what caused it, see what it’s going to take to fix it. No one wants to sit that’s a very tedious thing to do, so you want to keep on it, because the only person who really cares if it gets fixed is you, right?

Micah Shilanski  23:27

So what’s the timeline on reminders? Right? We’re dealing with one right now. We have a client that hired us after he submitted his retirement applications. There’s errors with that on a postponed, deferred retirement question mark, and so we’re trying to work on that. OPM hasn’t responded for a month since, you know, a month and a half since our last communication, the last response we got from them. I’m kind of at every three to four weeks we need to be kind of reaching out with a tickler or reminder, etc. But what have you found that works?

Tammy Flanagan  23:53

Yeah, I would, I would say the same thing. You know, three to four weeks is plenty of time to do something. So I asked for a progress report. Say hey, we sent this to you, you know, the first of June. Haven’t heard anything yet. What has been happening, is there any update? Is there anything you need from us? You know, what else can we do to make this move along? Because this person has been waiting with no money coming in, you know, for for not just a month, but probably for six months since they first retired. Yeah.

Micah Shilanski  24:19

And in this case, he has no health insurance either, because that’s, that’s the big issue. So we got six months of this going on. Okay? So it’s like, every three to four weeks, there’s a tickler. And then when we hit kind of that five to six month mark, Tammy, if we don’t get a pro, if we’re not getting traction with something moving, then I start looking at congressional it’s contacting representatives and senators. Is kind of my timeline. What are your thoughts? 

 

Tammy Flanagan  24:43

Yeah, sometimes you do have to pull in your congressional representative to try to intervene. And even then, you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, you know, depends on the staff member, how they present that to OPM and what what it is that you’re looking for. Because I always tell people, try to think of it like a resume. You know, one page, two pages at most. Don’t write them a whole book. No one’s going to read a book. It’s simple. Don’t complain about anything. Don’t add extraneous material, like my mother had a heart attack and I couldn’t get to it. Put the facts down and what, what is it that you want fix what’s wrong? You know, make it very clear. And hopefully, when you know, I don’t want to sound like doom and gloom, like everybody, every retirement has a problem, but when you do face that, it is, it is it can be a struggle to fix it. 

Micah Shilanski  25:27

And I think Tammy, that’s why you and I are so passionate about the front end of this. Is because we have to deal with the back end of this, right? We have people contacting us be like, this got messed up, and we’re like, oh, six months ago you called right? These things could have been avoided. So that front end is important. If you get into that circumstances like we’re not going to break you if you do reach out to us, by the way, it is what it is. Let’s go through the facts. And I like on these letters, I always tell my team, it’s that bluff, as we put up front. Bottom line up front. Whenever we’re contacting them, is what’s a one paragraph, entire summary of what’s going on. Then I want nothing but dates and facts, nice, short, sweet to the point. And then if you have a stack of evidence and you want to put that in a second PDF, we could talk about that. But one thing I love what you said, it’s that one pager let someone read it. It’s the novel I’m going to get around to tomorrow plus never right, because they’re never going to get to it.

Tammy Flanagan  26:19

Right, Yeah. And sometimes I’ll do that too. I’ll write a book, you know, I put everything down that I’m thinking about, but then go back through it and take out what you don’t need, reorder it. You know, the nice thing about word processing, the sign, you know, besides that old IBM Selectric, is we don’t need white out. We can go back and rearrange it and make it just exactly concise and readable and understandable. It’s so important. That’s how I get the best results, and that’s how people get the best results from me. When somebody writes me a book, I kind of put it aside and put it aside. But if I get you know one question, one good, decent question, I can go back to them and ask them if I need more information. 

Micah Shilanski  26:56

Tip of, the kind of one of the things that we’re doing, can we get your feedback on this too? So if I end up getting a novel or writing a little too much, I jump up chat GPT, and I throw it in there and say, give me a one pager on this. It does get a little too creative, so you still have to know the facts and go back and fix those things, but it’s pretty good at giving me kind of nice summaries of things and forcing you down. So just a thought for our listeners.

Tammy Flanagan  27:20

Very good. That’s a thought for me too. I’ve, I’ve heard of chat GPT, but I don’t really know how to use it. I need someone to learn from.

Micah Shilanski  27:26

I’ll show you,  that’s pretty fun. All right. Well, this podcast is all about action. I know we want a little longer than normal, but really important stuff. So Tammy, I’m going to take the easy one, if you don’t mind. Number one just what Tammy said the beginning of the pod will be an echoing this entire time, all the way through document, document, document, have a copy of your eOPF. My recommendation is, get everything in your eOPF. The bare minimum is at least those SF 50s.

 

Tammy Flanagan  27:52

And attend a training. I know it can be tedious. You know, nobody wants to sit through a whole webinar for three hours, but if it’s offered to you go to it, you’ll learn something. Even if it’s one thing, it can be that one important thing that makes the difference. So understand, ask questions, attend training.

Micah Shilanski  28:09

Alright, and the third one, share this podcast. Share the love out there. We want to help another 1 million people with their retirement. The only way that’s going to help is with you guys sending this information out there. So help this podcast grow. We really appreciate it. And Tammy, thank you so much and until next time, happy planning.

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