Tag: retirement

Today is my official retirement date, but I’m not officially retired

August 2, 2024

Don’t laugh. I’m totally serious.

New retirees have an official retirement date, but the Teacher Retirement System of Georgia (TRS) doesn’t consider one officially retired until after receipt of one’s first pension check. This will happen by mid-August.

I’m not worried about the money, because I knew there would be a two week delay after my official retirement date for the first pension payment.

The issue is I can’t get the health insurance premiums adjusted to the correct retiree amount now due until TRS notifies SHBP/ADP (company contracted to manage health insurance billing) of my retiree status. This is done via an electronic data file update that is uploaded twice a week.

Every time I contact TRS, I get a different answer as to when SHBP/ADP will be notified of my retiree status. Two weeks ago, I was informed they would be notified on 8/1. Today, I was told it would be after receipt of my first pension payment. I don’t know what to believe anymore. There’s a system update happening this weekend and most premium bills are generated by the 7th of the month. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and things will update in the next few days.

I’m thankful for the anticipated retirement benefit and thankful for the health insurance. I’ll be equally as thankful to save $1700/month in insurance premiums.

Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels.com

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!

Get ready to jump through some hoops…

June 6, 2024

Backstory: I was a school librarian for 22 years before deciding to join my husband in early retirement back in May 2022. When I left, I was pension eligible, including health insurance benefits, but too young to begin collecting any pension payments. We had to wait two years. I was advised it would be a journey and would require a lot of follow-up and persistence on my part because I would be retiring outside the normal process.

They weren’t kidding!!!

In February, I applied for retirement benefits. Got all the paperwork submitted by mid-March, including unused sick leave verification. Whenever I periodically called to follow-up on my application status, I was told my file was complete. Be patient as they were working through the volume of end of school year retirement applications. If I didn’t receive my official retirement letter by the end of May, then I should contact them.

May 31st came with no official retirement letter, so I contacted them only to be told my application was incomplete and still pending. Why? My previous employer hadn’t submitted the official Retirement Certification Form (TR-8). No completed form, no approval for retirement benefits. Non-negotiable.

After some back and forth today with 3 different folks at my former school district, the required form has been filled out by a school district employee with the promise she’ll forward it to her contact at TRS. There’s a note on my calendar to follow-up on Friday if I don’t get a notice in the TRS portal that they’ve received the form.

I definitely want to be officially retired as of 8/1 in their system. Of course, I want the monthly pension benefit I earned, but of equal importance is to see our health insurance premiums drop by 75%! It’s been an expensive two years when it comes to health insurance. That’s all I’m saying. Would I do it all over again? Absolutely given our situation.