Tag: financial-planning

Excited for what’s next

July 10, 2024

Last night hubs and I celebrated my birthday at The Blue Ridge Grille in Buckhead. It’s one of our favorite places to celebrate extra special events. The food and service were superb, as usual. I think the last time we were there was to celebrate hubs retiring from Home Depot. That’s been well over two years ago.

Anyhow, this particular birthday meant I finally achieved the “magic age” for my teacher retirement benefits to kick in. (No more mortgage level health insurance premiums either!) We celebrated what’s ahead as we finally exit the holding pattern we’ve been in the past two years. Retirement officially begins August 1st.

We don’t expect much to change when it comes to our day-to-day activities. We’re just excited to have the funds previously earmarked to pay exorbitant health insurance premiums now available to tackle some minor home improvement projects and put toward a couple more bucket list trips. Sadie is also slated to get a new dogmobile (my SUV) by year end.

We’ve also started thinking seriously about where we’d like to live in retirement. That’s a tough one. We love our location and neighborhood, but are not happy about future plans for our area. I’ll be attending a DOT open house today about the future express lanes coming to the top end of I-285. I’m curious to see how they plan to add toll lanes in each direction with all the multimillion dollar homes along the proposed path between Vinings and Sandy Springs. I’m more interested in how the planned entrance/exit ramp less than 1 mile from our home will impact the surrounding residential neighborhoods.

Dining table decorated for birthday celebration
Cute table decorations that greeted us when celebrating my birthday!

Retirement conversations

March 4, 2024

Today, hubs and I had lunch with some long-time friends. They wanted to pick our brains about excursions offered by the Rocky Mountaineer. We’ve taken trips aboard the Rocky Mountaineer in both the USA and Canada. If they are only going to take one trip, our recommendation is to do the Canadian Rockies excursion from Banff/Lake Louise to Vancouver. They were planning to go in 2025. Now, my friend texted to say they’re going this year instead! Enjoy!

Photo by Ali Kazal on Pexels.com

Another conversation ensued regarding what we both do all day since we’re now retired. In our friends’ situation, the husband is retired and the wife is still working. Apparently, he’s bored and trying to figure out what to do. Al shared about volunteering with Team Rubicon. Our friend’s face lit up. His wife was happy to see him get excited about something. A mutual friend who retired at 54 advised my husband to always have at least one thing scheduled on the calendar each week, so he’d have something to look forward to. The rest of the week would fill in. Very wise advice.

I work part-time on Mondays and sew with friends on Fridays. Each week, there’s usually something Sadie related (therapy dog visit, groom, play date, hike with friends), quilt guild related and my sewing biz related. I try to keep at least one weekday completely clear for whatever I want to do. Sundays are usually reserved for family. The funny thing is no two weeks are ever the same.

Over the past month, I’ve spent a fair amount of time following up on my retirement application and health insurance matters. We’ve made the final hurdle into the “retiree” category on our health insurance. (Yay!) What no one tells you is that each transition (active employee – COBRA – retiree) requires a “new account” with the health insurance provider and there is a 7-10 day delay while everyone’s system updates. From what I understand, it’s due to COBRA rules and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to speed up the process. Hopefully, Anthem will show us with active coverage again by Friday. What if something happens before then? It’s a hassle, but we’ll have to pay out-of-pocket and get reimbursed or ask the provider to delay billing for a few days.

There’s a teacher retirement/health insurance FB group I follow. More than a few folks mentioned having to resort to getting an attorney involved to resolve issues with situations outside the norm (like mine). Hmmm. I looked into renewing my lapsed PAGE membership as their legal team are experts on dealing with SHBP and TRS issues. Turns out, my part-time employer is a participating “school system” in PAGE. You bet I renewed ASAP! To me, the $175.00 is money well spent as I navigate the next six months or so.

Then, I asked myself, “How did I ever handle all the crazy stuff like this when I worked full-time?”