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Really? You retired but your retirement plan offers no medical coverage until Medicare takes over. At the rate things are going then, I would say that you might not have medical coverage at all unless you maintain that insurance. Medicare is going to go bust before you are eligible.paulmcohen wrote:Not eligible for company retirement health plan until I am eligible for Medicare.
So Farmer, after reviewing the information, how would you rate the plan:robinson46176 wrote:Here is a site where you can read the actual law (have aspirin handy).
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/full/index.html
There is a huge amount of general health care information on that site including a lot of information directed at seniors.
Read the information, sort out what you like, ignore what you want to, (it won't go away just because you ignore it but you can anyway).
Just don't base your decisions on the extremes from either side and certainly not based on the tripe that is flooding email in-boxes and the likes of facebook etc.
A lot of people are always ready to climb on some band-wagon without even looking to see if it is hitched to a horse.
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pennview wrote:Steve, the IRA-like retirement plan I was referring to was the FERS (Federal Employees Retirement System) and specifically the G Fund option that is available to employees under the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).
This is what the site for that plan says today: "The payment of G Fund principal and interest is guaranteed by the U.S. Government. This means that the U.S. Government will always make the required payments. In other words, your G Fund investment is not subject to credit (default) risk."
The site further states: "Consider investing in the G Fund if you would like to have all or a portion of your TSP account completely protected from loss. If you choose to invest in the G Fund, you are placing a higher priority on the stability and preservation of your money than on the opportunity to potentially achieve greater long-term growth in your account through investment in the other TSP funds."
As I understand it, folks under the Civil Service Retirement System could put savings into the various funds available under FERS, but didn't get matching funds from the government going into their retirement accounts. The government only matched a portion of what an employee saved that was part of the FERS plan.
Folks can go to the TSP web page and see the various options available to federal employees -- https://www.tsp.gov/investmentfunds/fun ... Perf.shtml --
No employee investing exclusively in the G Fund has lost a dime. In fact the average annual return since inception of the funds is 5.86 percent. Last year's return was 2.45 percent. According to the web site, $100 invested in this fund since inception in April 1987 is now worth $410.
You can look at the other funds available and how they've performed by visiting the web site I mentioned above. If you've invested in stocks, the C Fund, you can lose money. If you take the average performance over the past five years of the C Fund, investors lost an average of .2 percent per year. Just looking at the last three years though, they averaged a gain of 14.17 percent. Over the last 10 years, the fund has returned on average 2.94 percent. 2008 was a really, really bad year for stocks and that's why the five year average is so bad. According to the web site, $100 invested at the inception of the C Fund in 1988 would now be worth $832.
And the federal employees have a variety of other options. In addition, the FERS employees pay into Social Security. Participation in the Thrift Savings Plan is voluntary. If someone doesn't want to save for retirement beyond Social Security, they don't have to.
My PowerPro DIY will be arriving in the morning so I will have something else to worry about so this will be my last post on this subject.pennview wrote:It would be like losing money on a U.S. Series EE Savings Bond. Can't happen.