Everyone for coming today.

My name is Christy Knalt.

I coordinate the wellness resources here at the city of Nashua.

Today we have Mike Tomlin from Empower.

He's our rep, our new rep, actually.

So nice to meet you for those that haven't.

And he'll be going through just it's it's really it's financial literacy month, and we're just investing for our future 101.

He's just gonna hit on some of the high points of investing and things that we should all be paying attention to, especially nowadays with our money.

It's very important to have that sense of what's happening.

So I'm gonna turn it over.

And um questions that come up, um, Mike's gonna just repeat them just so that we can make sure that those that are watching the presentation after the fact can hear your questions because none of your faces are in the recording.

So just thank you.

So good afternoon.

Before we get started in the presentation, I like to do a quick kind of illustration about what we're talking about.

Like start with the why.

Why are we talking about retirement planning?

How does this all work?

And a picture is worth a thousand words.

And also, I think a lot of the times when we get into the presentation, we talk a lot about things like you know, pre-tax, Roth, and it's the nuts and bolt of what we do instead of the story and kind of focusing.

So this is investor.gov.

It's a financial tool that you can use.

This is essentially what we would call a time value of money calculation.

So it's gonna look at a couple of things.

What your initial investment is, how much you're saving monthly, um, your interest rate you're assuming, and it can't kind of give you a final value.

And so we'll just say we're gonna use a hypothetical new hire or someone who's starting today.

So they have zero dollars saved for retirement.

They're gonna do $500 a month.

That's their um commitment.

And we'll say they're gonna save for 35 years.

And we'll use historically the stock market does about 10%, but we're gonna use a number like seven.

We're gonna be a little more conservative.

Number one, because you can invest directly in the stock market.

Number two, um, it also will kind of show the impact of fees um and not being 100% of the market.

And then we'll we're not gonna show a variance, and then we're gonna hit calculate.

Actually, I won't change that to what this shows us is if you started and you save for 35 years at 500 a month, you're gonna get to a number of 1 million 33,000.

So I like million because it's a nice round number, it's a nice target for people.

But what you can see here is in the blue line on the bottom shows how much you're contributed.

The red line shows how much it's grown to.

So the delta or the difference of those is how much interest you're earning and how much that's compounding on top of your investments.

And one of the things you might notice is you get out to about actually I can't step too far from the mic, but you'll get out to about year 12 on the bottom.

And the number between what you're saving and what you've invested is pretty close.

So a lot of times people will say to me, I've been saving for retirement.

I don't feel like I'm earning what I'm earning.

It shows me this big number on the, but it's not really growing.

And so what I typically tell people is it's kind of a race to 100,000.

So that's when you get to six figures.

That's when you start to really feel that impact of compounding.

So if you're making 10% and you have 10,000, you might have $1,000 in interest in gains.

But if you have 100,000, well, now you have 10,000.

And keep in mind, we're putting away 500 a month.

That's 6,000 a year.

So the difference really gets to be felt at around 100,000.

You can see now once you get up to about year 20, you've contributed 120.

Now your account's 274,000.

So uh it's that growth on the assets really take over.

And what seems to happen to a lot of people is A, they can get frustrated earlier in their career and maybe they don't save as much.

Or B, life happens.

You start a family, you buy a house, you maybe don't have as much to contribute.

Or C, what happens a lot of times to people is we switch jobs.

You know, my father was a police officer for 40 plus years, my mom was a teacher for 35 years.

They work for the same institutions their whole careers.

I've had six or seven jobs since I graduated college many, many moons ago.

So the point is is you want to stay the course, you want to stay with the investment because there will be a point of terminal velocity where this takes off and the interest that you earn and the growth that you make on your money far exceeds what you're contributing.

And then you can see even when you get out to say year 32, it's you know, seven, eight, nine hundred thousand.

It's that real last year that you're gonna feel it.

And this is just stopping at 35 years, assuming our friend here who started at age 35 is retiring, but there's gonna be money through retirement.

So it is a really powerful tool.

This is the value of the whole story of compounded interest.

Um, you know, it is really important for saving for retirement.

So with that, we will go into the presentation.

So at Empower, we are here to help you get to the retirement that you want.

It's okay.

Many people tell me, like, I don't know how to save or invest my money, I'm not really sure how any of this works.

That's all fine.

What you need to know are what are your hopes and dreams for retirement.

What are you going towards?

Do you want to travel?

Do you want to spend time on the beach?

Do you want to raise the grandkids?

Do you want to start your own business?

Look, what is it that you want to do?

Because saving for retirement is no different than saving for vacation.

It's the longest vacation, hopefully you ever get to take, and really comes down to what do you want to do?

Where do you want to do it?

Um, how long do you plan on doing that for, which is a factor of health?

And that's gonna kind of tell us how much money you need for retirement.

And so what we can do at Empower is we can help you work on those numbers and get you in a position to hopefully retire and have that retirement that you want.

So let's talk about retirement income.

Typically, you're gonna need between 75 to 90% of what your pre-retirement income is to have the retirement that you want.

That can change dramatically, obviously, based on factors such as you know, if you have a spouse or partner contributing, um, you know, if your mortgage is paid off versus if it's not, healthcare costs are big in retirement.

So those are the things that you're gonna need to plan for.

But typical rule that we would apply for is about 70 to 90 percent.

So now you have a 457B plan.

Uh that is the type of plan that you essentially have with a government employer, very similar to a 401k or 403B.

Um, there are two types of ways that you can invest your money for retirement.

The first is pre-tax, the kind of the traditional way, and then Roth.

And we'll spend a little time talking about the two of those today.

So, pre-tax is where the money goes in.

I always use the example of you make a thousand dollars, a hundred dollars goes into your 457 plan.

So when you get taxed, it'll feel like you're only being taxed on say $900.

So you get that immediate upfront tax savings.

If you're concerned about how this impacts your current spending, pre-tax is a great way because it allows you to kind of absorb some of that hit.

Because if you make $100, you don't get to keep $100, right?

So if you're contributing $100, it won't feel like $100, it'll feel more like 70, kind of the same way as if uh you know you're being taxed on it.

So $100 goes in, that money then grows tax deferred, which is great because you don't want to pay taxes because that creates a drag on your account value.

And then when you get to retirement, you're gonna be taxed at ordinary income at that point.

So the idea was you know, you're working, you're earning here, you're retiring, you're in a lower bracket, so maybe you get to take advantage of the difference in taxation in the future.

In the 90s, they added the Roth IRA, and about 10 to 15 years ago, they added Roth retirement accounts.

So they work a little differently.

So if you're if you've ever heard of Roth IRA, this is for the people with a Roth retirement plan who want to get the taxes taken care of up front.

You want to pay them.

You don't know what taxes are gonna look like in retirement, you don't know what they look like in the future, so you just want to pay it now.

So in the same situation, you make a thousand dollars, you contribute a hundred, maybe it'll feel higher because it's being taxed, but now all the growth on that money will be free of taxes when you get to retirement, assuming the account's been in place for five years and you hit the age of thresholds.

So if you want to get the taxes out of the way, you could absolutely do that with the Roth.

And if you think back to the chart where we showed kind of the difference between the growth and the compounded earnings versus how much you're contributing, um, it may be advantageous, especially if you have a long time, to um take advantage of the Roth so that you're paying it on the lower contribution amount as opposed to the higher growth and earnings amount.

The beauty of uh the 457, I know you're in open enrollment right now, so open enrollment can be tough because you have to make decisions, and then in case you want to make a change, you need a qualifying life event.

That's not true.

Um, the one thing about 457, if you take away nothing else today, is uh how flexible it is.

You control how much you contribute, you control the investments, you control um when you take the money out, when you retire, how you take it out.

Um, currently there's a thing called required minimum distributions, they don't kick in until 73 or 75.

So until that, you can decide if you want to take the money out or let it continue to grow tax deferred.

And then you also can elect a beneficiary, and that's who gets the money in case something happens to you.

And then portability, if you leave, you have the ability to roll to an IRA or another retirement plan.

It's also one of the easiest ways to save once you set it up, it continues as is.

So if you elect to do 5% or 10% into your retirement plan, it'll stay that way until you change it.

Um and you can see at the bottom, financial professionals typically recommend to save between 10 to 15%.

Now that's the goal.

If today you haven't enrolled or you're only doing 1% because that's what you can afford, that's okay.

You know, you work towards it as you get raises, as you get promotions, and move that number as you can.

So when can you get started?

There's no age requirement, and uh you can enroll immediately.

So if you're not contributing, you can decide at any time to contribute.

And you see the last line it says that you can do up to 24,500.

That is the limit for 2026.

However, uh 457 plans have multiple limits.

So the IRS limit for individuals is 24,500.

If you're over age 50 at any point in 2026, you can contribute an additional 8,000.

So whether your birthday is January 1st or December 31st, we treat it as if um as of January 1, you can do the full $8,000.

So anyone above $50 can do $32,500.

So there's a catch up contribution to make up for maybe those years where you weren't able to save as much as you want to.

There's also a higher super catch up for people whose attained ages in 2026 are 60, 61, 62, and 63.

So if you're 59 turning 60 this year, you can do 11,250, bringing it to 35,750.

Why is that number 11,250?

Well, the catch up used to be 7500 and it was 150% of that number.

So when they made the catch up eight, they didn't keep that one 12.

I don't know why, but if you're wondering why the number is kind of random, 11,250, that's why.

Also, 457 plans have a unique catch up.

So it's called the pre-retirement catch up.

So what it allows you to do for up to three years before you retire is you can double whatever the limit is.

So if the limit is 24,500, you can do up to 29,000 per year.

Excuse me, 49,000 per year.

Uh the way that works is you look back at your whole work history uh with the Nashua, and whatever you didn't use is used to determine if you're eligible to do that.

Um, but if that's something you want to talk about, we can take it offline and have that conversation.

Now, another thing that's changing in 2026, and this may not impact everyone, so you want to be aware of it, is starting in 2026, there was the Secure Act 2.0, and they made some changes to retirement plans.

And one of the ways they paid for it is they made it so that if you are earning over 150,000 in FICO wages, you have to do your post 50 catch up as Roth dollars.

Now, if you do not pay into Social Security, so you do not have FICO wages, this does not apply to you.

But everyone else, if you're over age 50 and you want to make the catch-up contribution and you earn more than 150,000.

So there's a couple of different hoops there.

Um, so this might not apply to a lot of people, but for those of you that does, if you make more than 150,000 and you're over age 50 in FICO wages, you have to make your uh catch up contributions Roth.

So just reiterating with pre-tax contributions, the growth is tax deferred, your current taxable income will be lowered, and that you may pay lower taxes later on because again, we don't know what taxes will be in the future.

Roth, it's the exact opposite, you're gonna get the taxes paid out of the way, tax deferral the same way, and then at the end, um there's no additional taxation.

And just a kind of a quick how does this look?

This is just in a assuming that someone made about 2,500, they contributed 6% to their retirement plan in the pre-tax check, assuming no other distributions, your check take home would be about 1998, whereas the Roth would be 1975, so a difference of about 23 dollars.

So I'm a big fan of Roth.

My wife's a big fan of pre-tax because she likes having more money in our check now because we have kids and they're really expensive.

So the beauty of it though is you have the ability to do both.

So if you want to do a portion of your money pre-tax, if you want to do a money portion of your money, Roth, you can do that.

It's just you have to do up to the whatever the income limit.

That's your limiting factor.

So if your limit is 24,500, you can do 5050, you can do 6040.

Um, just know that you can split it if you want to.

And in terms of this, we can educate you on it, we can offer it up, but we can't tell you which one to do.

So if you want to consult your tax professional and ask which one makes the most sense for you.

And then just the final side by side on pre-tax of Roth.

Uh, again, contributions are gonna be prior to tax withholding versus after tax withholding.

When the taxation, so the money doesn't get taxed until it leaves the account.

So with pre-tax again, it gets taxed at ordinary income.

People always ask me, is there a point where I don't have to pay taxes?

If I make it to 100, if I make it to 90, do I nope?

Whenever you take the money out, you will have to be uh taxed and it will be taxed at ordinary income at the time of distribution.

And then all the earnings, all the growth is taxed as or your income as well.

With Roth contributions are not taxed when you take them out because you already paid the taxes up front.

And then as a bonus, any tax or earnings and our tax-free as well.

So I'm actually going to take a pause there just to check in because we've been through a few slides so far.

Any questions so far about anything we've talked about?

All right.

So this is back to kind of that uh time value money calculation that I shared in the beginning.

So it's talking about compounded earnings.

And the second thing, if you take anything out of today, is there's a thing called the rule of 72.

So if you take the number 72 and you divide it by your rate of return, so let's say 7%, your money will double in 10 years.

In this, they're saying you know, a 6% rate of return.

So 6%, 72 divide by 6, your money would double in 12 years.

So if you invested $100 today in 12 years, it would be worth 200.

And then in 19 years, it would triple.

So again, they the rule 72 is very powerful.

It helps when you're looking at the different investments.

It helps you plan out into the future how fast is my money growing.

That's why typically you'll hear when we do recommendations that it'll push to put more money into the stock market.

Stock market tend to have higher rate of return, versus if you did it in a guaranteed phone or something earning maybe 2%, 72 divided by two, it would take you 36 years or almost your whole career before that money doubled.

Power of compound interest.

And again, uh big thing about the 457 plan is you are in charge.

So you get to change whatever you want, you make the decisions.

The only limiting factor is the IRS rules that pertain to how the contribution rate maximums.

Otherwise, you can change it at any time, you can stop contributing, you can increase your contributions and change the investments to whatever you'd like.

Another question I typically get is okay.

I have an old 401k, an old IRA, an old retirement plan from a job 20 years ago.

I don't know what to do with it.

Can I roll that money in?

Or if you're a new hire, I've just left a company, I have a 401k.

Can I roll that money in?

Typically the answer is yes.

The only exception, as far as I know, is a Roth IRA.

But otherwise, if you have a 401k, 403B IRA that you want to consolidate and have everything in one place.

We do have a team of specialists that will help with that.

Um, all you have to do is reach out to me.

We can make an appointment, and they will uh help with the rollover process.

Usually it takes a couple weeks.

Um, but the reason we like having rollover specialists is it's someone to talk to that can guide you through the process.

Um, because you know it can be intimidating to uh try and go through paperwork and and everything.

So this way you have someone who will guide you through it, and typically all they do is rollovers, so they're gonna know the other providers and kind of know the ins and outs.

All right, your plan also has a loan provision.

So I'll just kind of go over the plan loan provisions.

You're allowed to take one loan at a time.

Um, general purpose loans are 12 to 60 months, so it means you can borrow up to five years.

Uh you have the ability to prepay early if you'd like.

There's also what's known as a principal residence loan.

Now, this one does require some documentation, um, but you can extend that from five years all the way up to 10 years.

Costs associated with uh the loan is it's there's interest rate, but there's an origination fee of $50, and then there's a $25 a quarter fee to have the loan.

Um, what keeps it from being a taxable event is because you're paying interest on it, you're borrowing your money, but you're paying interest on it, so that keeps it from being a taxable bent.

So if you run into a situation where you need money and you know you've exhausted some of the other things, you can borrow against the 457 plan, and then repayment is done automatically from your bank account.

As of uh yesterday, the rate is 6.75.

So if you're thinking about taking a loan, you can compare that and see how that compares.

Um, but one of the things I know participants tend to like is the interest that's credited to the account is credit to you.

So you're paying yourself for the ability to borrow your money.

Um, so the interest rate at that point might not matter as much because it's not going to empower, it's not going to a bank or a credit card company, it's going to you.

So some people like to think of it as almost force savings.

All right.

So if you've decided to join the 457 plan, you've um decided how much you want to contribute, pre-tax and rough.

The last thing you have to decide is how am I going to invest the money in the 457 plan?

So we basically take it down to three different types of investors.

Do it for me, help me do it, and do it myself.

And really, it's there's no right or wrong.

It's just how much input and how much control do you want on the conversation about the investments.

So do it for me.

It's a personalized strategy.

It's what we would call my total retirement.

Um, it's a comprehensive plan.

We sit down with you, we go over the different forms of um investments that you have, different sources of income that you're gonna have in retirement, and then like I said before, we look at your goals.

And based on that, empower will generate a recommendation for you that you can accept.

Um, and then at that point, empower manage it for you based on any changes that you make to the financial plan or based on changes that happen in the market.

Very simple, very straightforward.

There is an additional cost for that.

Um, but it's one of those things that if you're the type of person who does not want to manage your retirement plan, we've got you covered.

And like I said, it's called my total retirement.

You can enroll online at Empower.com, or I would encourage you if you can sit down with me, we can have that comprehensive conversation and make sure it's set up for you properly.

So the help me do it investor is for someone who may say, okay, I know when I plan on retiring, I know kind of how much risk I want.

I don't necessarily want to farm this out to empower to do, but I or have it professionally managed, but maybe just give me some ideas of what I can do in the future.

Um, and that's where target date funds come into play.

Um your portfolio has uh target date options as well as what we would call online advice.

So online advice is where you can log on to the Empower website and just say, hey, based on what my retirement plan looks like, what would Empower offer me today?

So there's no ongoing management, there's no ongoing assistance, but based on where you are today, your goals, your hopes, your dreams, whatever you're planning for, what would Empower allocate?

So you can set that up through the website or by sitting down with me.

And again, just a kind of a brief overview.

Um, you do get more with the professional management, you get the advice implemented for you, but the overall it's really how do you feel about going?

Do you feel like the value is there to pay for advice, or are you just like, hey, I want a quick checkup and I'll I'll implement it myself.

So you're gonna take on a little more responsibility with the online advice.

And then the target dates, as I mentioned, target date funds are designed.

Um, I use the analogy of like multivitamins.

So if you think about it, there's some people who I'm sure go to GNC or health stores and they know what they need in terms of vitamins.

I do not.

I go, I pick out the gummy that looks cool.

It's from my age band, and that's kind of how target date funds work.

So it is to design to be diversification in a single fund.

Typically, what you do is you pick the year that closest corresponds to when you're gonna retire or when you plan on taking income.

So you may retire in 2035, but you might say, hey, I'm not gonna actually touch my deferred comp till 2040.

And so as a result, you might want to tie it more to 2040 than 2035.

Um, but these have been around maybe about 15, 20 years now.

And the idea was in the past, people would ask for advice, and it wasn't something that we could deliver.

So a target date fund would kind of deliver that advice, kind of implied.

And so this is how it works in terms of you know what we would call the glide path.

So when you're farther out from retirement, you can see when you're 40, 30 years, it's gonna be pretty much all in stock.

And as you get close to retirement, it starts to slowly move down to more money and fixed income.

Because while you're in accumulation, it's about trying to build the account as much as possible.

When you get into retirement, it's now more about stability and actually living off the money.

So they're designed to work not just to retirement but through retirement.

Uh so a lot of our retirement plans will have something like this, but usually with the target date funds, it's explicitly kind of shown in the uh fund lineup.

The last person would be our do-it-myself investors.

This is where you have a full suite of products to use on the platform.

They're different investments and fixed income stocks, and you get to choose.

You can pick your mix of funds, you can rebalance it.

You'll always want to check if you're doing it yourself.

There usually can be some limitations and some restrictions.

So you want to check that.

If you're about to do something trading out of a fund that maybe it's not the right time, they will give you a warning and they'll tell you if you know you have to wait and when to wait to.

But you get to monitor, you get to manage it.

And you can have again the full suite of products to choose from.

And it's important to really diversify.

As we've seen in the market recently, there's been a lot of volatility.

Having a more diversified portfolio that's not just US-based, but maybe included some international as those stocks have held up better.

Um, but the diversification is important.

I also used to use the analogy of like a basketball team.

You know, everyone's got to play their role.

So sometimes it's fun to have the guy who scores 40 points, but you do need the person who's gonna rebound and do some of the dirty work.

Maybe that's more of your fixed income and your bonds right now.

But you have diversification options, whether you choose to do it yourself, having empowered guide it or empower manage it for you.

All right.

So far.

So one of the things that's different about Empower is we believe that advice is important.

We like to say advice is at the core of everything that we do at Empower.

So we can sit down with our participants and offer advice based on their financial situation.

So we will look at in our retirement review, all the different things that you're thinking about retirement age, household goals.

Do you have a pension?

Do you not have a pension?

Spousal money, what are your plans, social security, whether you have it or not?

And based on everything, we can build a retirement plan for you.

We can talk about how much you're saving, how much you're investing, what would do you plan on retiring?

Is there flexibility there?

We can model out different strategies for you to see what's optimal.

And then also we can look at the different income sources because it really comes down to how much you have versus how much you're spending.

And then we look at the big picture.

We look at things such as gender, date of birth, retirement age, salary, contributions, account bounce, outside investments is a big one.

You can either choose to link your account through Empower, or we can just manually kind of placehold.

I tend to like when people link their outside accounts because I think it gives us a more accurate picture of things.

Uh, because those numbers, especially with the recent market volatility, are always changing.

Um big thing, spending needs.

You know, a lot of times you have your monthly fixed costs, but like what do you want your retirement to really look like?

Do you plan on traveling?

Do you plan on spending time with your grandkids?

What is it that's you know, your third act gonna look like?

And we can model that all into your retirement plan.

And then again, the fixed kind of income sources such as pension, social security, because having a pension, having social security, that's going to do some of the lifting so that not everything is gonna have to come out of the deferred comp account.

And then once we go through, we're gonna score out how likely you are to hit your retirement goals.

So we consider 70 passing.

Um we go all the way up to 99.

Typically, people who have pensions are gonna score a little higher.

Um, so we find that in government plans, they tend to score better because that pension does a lot of the heavy lifting.

But like I said, this is where we can actually have the conversation about making changes.

So if your dream is to retire at 62, but that's maybe not getting you to where you need to do, we can look at saving more, working longer, because every year that you defer retirement, it's less pressure on your balance.

All right.

So just a couple of things that we have for you.

Number one, we have the Empower Personal Dashboard.

So if you've been on the Empower site and we have some enhancements coming to that, you've probably seen that we have a lot more than just retirement available to you.

You can put your house on it, you can put your mortgage so you can get a real sense of your personal net worth.

You can link your savings accounts, you can have your um debts that you're working to, such as car payments, anything that you want to work on.

We have a lot of tools.

We really want it to be kind of one place where all of your financial information can live.

Um, there's a lot of tools in terms of calculators.

So we talked about pre-tax and Roth.

You can run some of those numbers.

If you're thinking about taking a loan, you can see the cost and how that would impact your account.

So a lot of things that are available to you through the website and also through the app.

The app is available through the App Store or Google Play.

Highly recommend it.

Um, I know right now we live in an age of scam and fraud, and I don't know about you.

If you call me, I assume it's scam or fraud because the only person who calls me is my mom and my wife.

Um, otherwise, there's a lot of fear out there, and putting your financial information out into those can cause some um consternation and fear.

But what would I tell you is if your account at Empower, you have a security guarantee.

If it were to get hacked, if something were to happen that was not your fault, we fully guarantee your account.

Um, so that's why we would highly encourage everyone to go on, make sure you've created your account, make sure you have a password, kind of set your flag that this is your account.

So if anything happens, you get notification.

You don't have to have uh the password and the username set up to uh get the guarantee, but it does help to have that.

Um, one of the things that tends to happen, especially like retirees who've left and they don't ever check their account, um, those can be places that hackers target.

So make sure at the very least, you have a personal email uh set to it, username.

So anytime that it logs in, you'll get a notification.

All right.

So as I said, my mom's a teacher, so I like to assign my homework at the end, your takeaways.

If you have not enrolled in the plan, enroll in the plan.

Um, you know, retiring or saving for retirement, rather, is super important.

You know, you want to have something saved for retirement, even if you have a pension, just something to enhance it.

So if you're not enrolled, we can't help you.

So please enroll in the plan.

Register for your online access.

If you enroll online, which I believe we have electronic enrollment here, um, you'll do that automatically.

But you do want to have access again, so you kind of like I said, plant that flag.

Think about the last time you increase your contribution.

Um, I know it's kind of the benefit time, so you'll be aware of what the costs are and everything associated with it.

See if there's a chance to increase your contribution.

If not, you know, pick a time once a year to check and make sure that you're saving enough.

Um, no one ever gets to retirement says, Wow, I have way too much save for retirement.

Money finds a home.

Um, retirement readiness review, schedule one if you can.

I'll be back here in June.

I'm gonna be at the two benefits fairs in May's, but sit down and let's have a conversation.

We can't really do that at the benefits fares.

Um, but that way you get a sense of where you're on path, whether today's your day one or you're retiring shortly.

You want to make sure that that's kind of set for you.

Um, so I highly encourage doing a retirement readiness review.

And again, that's where we can also offer advice.

It's within that uh conversation.

Updating your beneficiary, if you haven't done it recently, I know you're all doing it with healthcare right now, but make sure you check it once in a while uh with your defer comp, making sure you know life changes, divorce, marriage, um, adding children, you know, all those things are reason to check your beneficiary.

I can't tell you the number of times I've met someone who they set their parent 10 years ago, now they're married with kids.

So you want to make sure that you check that when you go online.

You can also set contingents.

So primary beneficiary for me, for example, is my wife.

My son is my contingent.

Anything happens to my wife and I, my son is covered.

Um, and the the important thing about beneficiaries too is it goes beyond probate.

So you can say, like, I have a will, and I said I left everything in my will, but the beneficiary would supersede that.

So you want to make sure that that's set.

And then again, you have the Empower Mobile app, which is a great tool.

So again, we are here to help with your money questions, whatever it is we we'd like to cover the 457 plan, but we can talk about those outside.

Another thing that's new with Empower is we do have empower personal wealth advisors.

So if you have money that's not in a retirement plan that you maybe don't have a financial advisor, or you're not happy with the financial advisor, or you want to get a second look, we can help with that as well.

Um, so that's a little newer to empower.

And um I think it's helpful at least once a year to have a sit down.

You know, if you're close to retirement, maybe twice a year, but you're 30 years out, maybe only once a year.

Just have that conversation, make sure you're on the right path.

I will tell you the one thing that I get consistently when I do retirement ready and risk reviews when we have those conversations, is people leave with a sense of okay, I'm better off than I thought, I'm in good shape.

Um, and I think that's a big lift because as we know, when you have financial issues, it bleeds into other areas of your life.

It can be stressful.

So let's kind of de-escalate that if we can and really just plan for the financial future you want.

I can help you, I can tell you all about the different investments, but I don't know what you want to do with the money.

You know that, and that's what's most important.

So last thing I'll say is if you need help from Empower, uh all my personal information is here, but you also have uh call center that's available.

The beautiful thing about us being based in Colorado is they go all the way up to 10 p.m.

Eastern time.

So us on the East Coast, we get kind of that extra benefit.

And what's crazy is we still actually have Saturday hours, so 9 a.m.

to 5:30.

They can't do transactions on Saturday because it's not during market close.

Um, at least it wouldn't be processed till Monday.

But you can call someone pretty much whenever it's convenient to you.

Um so if you have questions about the account, about the online access, uh, we do have those resources available to you.

And now I just have to go through some disclosures.

Don't worry, you don't have to read these.

All right.

So 29 minutes, I think I landed this plane, maybe a little longer, at least on that part of the presentation.

Any questions, comments, concerns?

Yes.

Yep.

So I'm just gonna repeat for the video.

So the question was when you retire, is it set how much you take, or can you kind of control it?

So the beautiful thing is you can do both.

If you want to set up a systematic, like let's say, you know, you're retiring before your social security eligible.

Social security doesn't kick until 62, and you're retiring at 60, and you're like, hey, I just want to use my deferred comp as a bridge to Social Security.

So I need $500 a month, and I want that sent to me.

They can help set that up.

Or you can do an ad hoc where you can literally just go into the app and say, Oh, I'm going on vacation, I want $2,000.

Please send that to me.

Um, one of the things I would encourage anyone before you do it is because taxes are withheld, you might want to call in just to make sure that you understand the impact.

It's pretty straightforward through the website.

They will do the math for you.

Um, but typically the minimum that they're going to withhold is 20%.

Uh but anytime we start talking about taxes and withholding money, I always encourage people to talk to your tax advisor, make sure you're withholding enough because you don't want to get a surprise.

Okay.

Yes, ma'am.

So the question is may you change the portfolio by yourself?

Absolutely.

So, like I said, there's three different types of investors within power.

If you're a do-it-myself and you want to go in and change your portfolio, absolutely can.

And you all you have to do is go to the empowered website and change, you can change basically both things.

Number one, think of it as the pie of money.

So what's in there currently, you can change that.

And then you can also change your future allocation.

So how the new money goes in.

So there's separate things that you can do.

Um with any of the point in time advice or the my total retirement, they will do that for you.

But if you want to do it yourself, you absolutely can.

And the only thing to keep in mind is some funds will have trading restrictions, like you can only move so much within 90 days.

They're usually not too aggressive, but just be aware of that, and there'll usually be a warning if you try to do anything that that's beyond what the fund allows.

Yes.

Correct.

Yeah.

So the question question that's not in question, but it's a question.

It's not a useless question.

So the question is you have a 457B, right?

And you have empower.

So what's the relationship ultimately?

So the 457B is what's provided by the city for you.

That's the retirement plan.

And I think 457B is just the section of the tax code that created it.

Um, and they go back probably 40 or 50 years.

And the city has the option of choosing who they want to work with as their vendor, and they chose empowered, thankfully.

Um, keeps me employed.

So, and and we we do the record keeping and we help with you know the meetings and and the education and and that sort of thing.

So the question is how do you enroll?

The the beautiful thing is you can just go to empower.com.

Um, because the city shares their data, all you have to do is put in your social security a couple other pieces of information, and then you can choose to enroll pretty straightforward.

If you have any questions, feel free to call me.

914 355, 6624.

Um, I can't always guarantee I'll get to you the same day because I'm on the road a lot, but um we're there to help walk you through the process.

Usually we can get done like five minutes.

Yep.

All right.

Any more questions?

All right, was this helpful?

Okay.

Perfect.

So that's what we want.

Like, get questions answered.

If there's anything in the future, feel free to reach out to me.

Happy to uh help with all your 457 stuff.

Yeah, so the question is the new maximum.

They typically we get it around November or December.

Um, we'll get an official from the IRS.

It's been going up by like 500, but it's weird.

Sometimes the normal limit goes up, but the catch up doesn't, or this year the catch-up went up and the normal limit.

But 500 seems like the last four or five years, how much it's been going up.

That's also if you're using the pre retirement um catch up where it's the one that doubles the limit, you can say, like, oh, I plan on doing this, and then as it goes up, they'll they'll they should be able to adjust that for you as well.

All right, thank you.