Key Decisions Florida Public Employees (FRS) Need to Consider Before Retiring

Join Financial Fiduciary and Florida Retirement Specialist Ken Orenstein and Host Jeff Roediger as we discuss the important decisions Florida Public Employees Need to Make Before Retiring.

Ken and his team can help you navigate The FRS System to make sure you are educated on  all of the options and decisions that you will need to make before you set your retirement date.

Transcript

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This conference will now be recorded. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to our next session. This is Jeff rediger host and the podcast series that you are attending is replacing Wall Street with Main Street, where I interview financial professionals on different subjects that pertain to each of you very important subjects regarding your financial wellness, retirement and estate, and today, we are concentrating on each of you in the Sunshine, sunshine state of Florida, who worked for the Florida Retirement System FERS public employees down there, and I have a special guest that focus their practice on each of you. And, Ken, I'd like to welcome you back to the series. Thank you for joining me. Hey, Jeff, happy Friday, pleasure to be chatting. So, before we get into some of the challenges that you see with Florida, public employees, can you give the audience just a brief background on your practice, you are a financial fiduciary, which is very important, and I've done sessions dedicated to that, but give the audience a little background on your practice. Okay, so first and foremost, I am a licensed financial fiduciary, which means I'm held to a higher legal standard than your average plan or a stockbroker. And also I specialize in working what's known as the public sector, public sector is federal employees, state employees, educators, police, fire, postal workers, and so forth. I mean, I do have some clients and corporate and some private sector people. But the majority of my work is in state and federal employees, their retirement systems, their benefits systems are very, very different than what you find in corporate America. And that's something that we talk about, and each of you attending out there. One reason I interview professionals such as Ken is because I truly believe that you need to find a fiduciary that understands your benefits in your retirement system. We've just seen too many mistakes out there of employee employees going to a general practitioner, for lack of a better term. And I think you need the I think you need to work with somebody similar to Ken or kin, himself that understands your retirement system so that you can minimize potential mistakes. As you know, Jeff, they want to work with Ken, let him work with me. Okay, and there you go. You need to work with Kim. So let's let's let's expand on that a little bit. Let's say that I am a public employee in the state of Florida, within three years of retirement, and I'm meeting with you. Most of the time, it would be a web or a phone call initially. What are the biggest issues that you see out there with the public employee as they start to get close to retirement? Okay, so Jeff, if you worked in the Florida system, first and foremost, and this is really more relevant for somebody one year or less from retirement, somebody like you mentioned three years or less, I could advise them what to do within fr s. Okay. I've advised people when they were 10 years away from retirement rule of thumb, the further away you are from retirement, the more aggressive you can be in your pension plan and your investment choices. But for somebody one year or less, first and foremost, is the navigation of the FRS system itself. I work in a lot of state agencies. I mean, federal Azizi, when I work with a federal employee, they could be in Oregon, they could be in Florida, they could be in New York, it doesn't matter. It's a federal investment system. The state every state has a different system, Florida, and I love Florida. I hope to move to Florida. I'm sick of New Jersey winters. But Florida has a very complex system. Okay, so first and foremost, navigation of the Florida system itself, making the proper investment choices predicated on tolerance towards risk when you're one year away from retirement and into retirement risk is a lot different For rent and when you have 10 or 20 more years to work. So you do not have time to, to get a correction in a downturn. That's, that's why they need somebody like you and they have some moving parts. So you and I've talked about this before, but what are some of the when you're determining what their income is? What are some of those pieces that have to come together to make sure they do not run out of retirement income? Yes, very important. So, first thing we do spend a lot of time on items I think other planners don't talk about or not, I shouldn't really say that. I don't think every planners thinks about it, we look and dive deeply into the attitude towards risk. Okay, there's something called sequence of return risk. And it's a whole complicated investments theory. But basically what it boils down to the year to three years before full retirement, mistakes made during that period, an employee may not come back from they might critically impair their retirement for the rest of their life. So we take a deep dive on how conservative or how aggressive they want to be in their investment styles. We have suggestions for all types of invest. Risk tolerance, Okay, number one. Number two, like you mentioned, nobody wants to run out of money in retirement. Okay, so we spend time on budgeting. Nobody likes budgeting, it's a scary war a word. I have a very painless exercise for an employee to determine what their monthly recurring expenditures are monthly recurring expenditures we call outflow, okay? When you retire, you're going to want to know what your inflow is. inflow is your pension money, your Social Security money, any monies coming from former employers, whether it be for three d 401, K, TSP, whatever the case may be. So we determine your Inflow. Inflow is your paycheck replacement, we determine your outflow your monthly expenditures. Once we know what that is, we then determine based on that, whether the employee needs income planning, if there's an income gap, you know, the inflow doesn't meet the monthly bills, there's an income gap. So we need to do immediate income planning, or preferably, if there's monies left over after paying the monthly bills, we do growth planning, but with an increased eye towards safety, because ideally, somebody in their 60s, that's no longer investing future capital into their retirement plan. They're now potentially drawing on their retirement plan, somebody in their 60s Shouldn't be investing the way they sit the same way they did when they were saying their 30s or 40s. Right. So in addition to the retirement income strategies, what else is important to the public employers they they enter into this next phase of their life that you help them? Manage? Okay, we also discuss that best practices for post retiree group health insurance, if the employee has enough tenure, they'll be able to continue on their group health insurance, usually at a cost for a lot of employees, that is what is going to make the most sense. Conversely, they may want to do Medicare planning. So we spend a lot of time talking about group health insurance, post retiree benefit, versus Medicare planning, we can help with that. We talk a lot about Social Security Maximization. There's a lot of different ways of claiming on your social security and when to take it. And it's a very individualistic decision. So we drill down on that as well. Another area we cover is we dive into estate planning. A lot of times the employee they set up their beneficiaries, on their pension on their recruits sick days on their life insurance accounts that did that 2030 years ago, they might have been single, okay, you want to make sure all beneficiary designations are up to date. You want to make sure you will wish your trusts your health care and financial directives, the role current. certain documents expire, like directives like health care power of attorney, so we spend time on that as well. I will tell you, we've done sessions on this. You and I did a session for the federal employee on that subject. and 80% of public employees that we have surveyed across the country, either have an outdated will or do not have a will. It is overlooked. And, you know, Ken is not an attorney, he, you know, want to make that clear. But in his role as a fiduciary, he can help facilitate and go through a checklist to make sure that you're not outdated on your beneficiaries and has resources and tools to make sure that the Wellcome Trust are updated. So that's a very important topic. I'm glad you brought that up. Okay, yes. So as we wrap up here, let me mention that your initial consultation, correct me if I'm wrong, but the initial consultation for you, which we addressed when we started the session, either a web meeting or initial phone call, just answer questions and kind of get an idea where they're at. There's no charge for that correct. Yes, my commitment to the public sector, a lot of times, I come to get clients by virtue now, not only by doing podcasts like this, but also I'm affiliated with various nonprofit agencies that have contracts with the federal government and and the relevant state agencies that enabled me to talk to employees about their investment and retirement planning. My commitment to these markets is I do not charge a fee, just forgiving advice, you could talk to me on the phone, you could utilize me as a resource. I don't charge a fee for that. fees may or may not come into play if I end up handling your investments. And even in the remote cases where fees do come into play. They are drastically discounted over and above what we charge the private sector, and nine times out of 10 for public people. We're not even getting into fee based work at all. Okay, that's very important. So education versus something we we communicate to the public sector, in our podcasts and our marketing, everything we do is education first, and Ken fits right in there. So great information. I know how busy you are. So I appreciate you giving us a little of your time today to get this message out to the Florida public employees. My pleasure. So the toll free number to get ahold of Ken is directly 883153608 That's 888-315-3608 Calling directly his firm and let them know that you attended this podcast series. You can also leave a comment in the section of this podcast if you'd like to address a specific question or you can go over to gov resource.com and request a consultation you can even book one let us know that you're in the Florida Retirement System and and even put in when you fill out a request for a consultation with Ken's firm specifically in the areas you need help with and we will reach out to you and get you in touch with Ken So Jeff, why don't we give the another phone number because a lot of times the toll free number gets backed up so just as a backup also 90880648359088064835 If you want we could give my email address sometimes people would rather email Do you have that there you want me to give it? Yeah, give it out and Okay, so I'm going to say it and then I'm going to apologize up front it's a little bit longer than it should be so I'm going to say it that I'm going to spell it so my firm name brokerage consulting B as in Bravo or as in Robert Oh is an open case and Ken is an early hours and Robert as an apple Geez and George is an Edward the word brokerage. The word consulting C as in Charlie Oh is an open and it's a nickel SS and Sam you as a new bet Ellison Lima t is and Tom is an Irene and is the nickel GS and George. I got to take a breath I told you it's a little bit longer than it should be the word brokerage Consulting at Comcast C as in Charlie Oh isn't open as a Mary C as in Charlie a It's an apple SS and Sam t is and tom.net and E T. Got it. Also for those of you that registered, he may be listening in and not in front of your computers, or smartphone. It will be posted on the invite. So check that out there too. So, okay, can thank you very much great info. Great, as always nice chatting with you. And we will be back for another session and everybody look for our next podcast to drop and we want to thank all of you send this out to friends, family, public employees out there, we feel that this information is vital, getting you in contact with good people like Ken that are licensed and focused on helping each of you. Thank you very much and we'll talk to you soon