Survivor Annuity

[Ed]

Looking at retirement in less than three years and wondering if I should design a private insurance plan (a.k.a. pension maximization plan) to replace government's survivor benefit. Spouse is almost seven years younger and FERS survivor annuity of 50% beneift at 10% annuity reduction cost may be tough to beat privately.

Your thoughts?

Ed

[Wheels]

Something to consider. I believe you need to keep the FERS survivor annuity if you want your spouse to have access to your health insurance. Could be wrong though. I am not an expert, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Dave

[Spaf]

Ed,

[9 months and days to retirement.] :D

My plans: Keep the medical under OPM, keeping TSP for the time being, and going with the 50% survivors benifit. In the mean time, bills have been minimized, and several accounts set up to take care of 2 or 1. If it happens to come down to 1 then that 1 should have options of what they want to do.

However, you are at the time to start talking about the options with your spouse, and getting in the retirement mode. Getting all the facts and figures is your quest!

See, now you have something to do!

Rgds ;) Spaf

[yakers]

Well I think the survivor benfit is pretty good since it is COLAd. And you need some retirement benifit to keep medical coverage. But one other issue is risk. If you get an annuity you are dependent on the solvency of the issuer. I have seen some good figures about insurance VS survivor but they have not addressed the risk of failure of the insurance comapny. Ed wrote:
if I should design a private insurance plan (a.k.a. pension maximization plan) to replace government's survivor benefit. Spouse is almost seven years younger and FERS survivor annuity of 50% beneift at 10% annuity reduction cost may be tough to beat privately.



Your thoughts?



Ed