Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.
Welcome to Reyna Retirement. Reyna Reyes has dedicated her career to helping people make smarter financial decisions. Reyna Retirement is all about breaking down complex financial concepts into language you can actually understand. Now here's the co founder of American Federal Benefits Consultants, Reyna Reyes.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Most of y'all got into your federal employee scenario for the Bennys. Not just the Benjamins money but also the benefits the other Bennys. What are those benefits? Life insurance, health insurance, dental, vision, survivor benefits supplement, tsp, all kinds of stuff. But I want to address the health insurance for you today. Many of y'all have retirement upon you. Maybe it was forced upon you and maybe it was put upon you for such a time as this. I think that's a quote that I just mixed up there. Some have greatness thrust upon them, some are born great and some are pushed into it. But you have health insurance that is a federal plan. Remember first, every year, every open season, you have open enrollment and you can make changes every doggone year you can change from Blue Cross to Geha to APW to mail handlers back to Kaiser and all back around again. From the back to the middle under ramp again. And it doesn't matter, all of that counts to the five year health insurance requirement for you to be able to keep your health insurance forever after you separate from service by retiring on an immediate annuity. So what life, what health insurance plans are there? There's a ton of them. I just listed almost every single one. The most common one I see across the universe is Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Blue Cross has three different versions, Focus, Basic and standard. Standard being the highest metallic, right? It's more the gold, platinum, whatever version. And many people have it. Some people have basic. But I want you to see here what you're looking at and remember a couple of things. Number one, maybe you have a family. Maybe you are no longer paying for a family. Maybe your family has aged out. Maybe your family is also federal. And if you are married to another federal or postal employee, you're one of my Twinkies. You know who you are? Twinkies are two of the same little cake in a little package. So I have termed you, I have dubbed you Twinkies. And let me tell you what your options are. Whether you're Twinkies or not. So we can go from there. What I'm showing you here is you see all the different silhouettes, right? So we've got three heads, two heads, one head, right? Different people. So obviously one head is self only coverage. Self plus one is two heads and the family is three or more. So let's pretend you've had a family of five and you've had Blue Cross standard all this time and you retire, you will be paying 920amonth. If you retire here in the year 2025, this is monthly. In retirement you get paid monthly, not bi weekly like you're used to. So some people look at this and they're like, oh no, my health insurance premium doubled. No it didn't. You're getting paid half the time. It's the same amount of money. It's just half of the time of the payment. Now it goes up like maybe 50 bucks from what you're used to. It's after tax dollars compared to the pre tax dollars you were used to while you were working. So what's great about pre tax dollars, it saves you money while you're working. But then in retirement you don't have this employer provision any longer. You're going to pay with post tax dollars from now on. So what I want you to know, first of all, you can make changes to health insurance. Every open enrollment, which is end of the year, November, December to be effective in January, or if you have a life event, marriage, baby, divorce, adoption, all those kinds of things allow you to make changes. There's even a change when you get access to Medicare. So holler out to my Medicare people. Come talk to me when you're ready. You have a ton of choices and we need to weigh them out. Now retirement feels like a life event to you, it's a life event. To your shared services and to opm, it is not a life event. So that's not a reason you can make a change to your health insurance plan as in Blue Cross standard. You can't go switching up to basic or you can't go over to Focus or to an APW plant. You can't make changes like that at retirement. Now you can go to self only whenever you feel like it. That's pretty cool.
And let's say your children age out. That's a life event, so. Oh well, it's not a life event but it's a reason that you can reduce down to self plus one. So take inventory of who you have on your health plan. Look at your Les or your pay stub, leave an earning statement, that is, and come to this magical site. This is the OPM FEHB site. And you literally can Google OPM FEHB and it will pull it up. You pop in your zip code and pick a new attempt because you will have been retired by now and you can see what you're currently paying and what your code means. And doggone it, if you have family coverage and your kids are in their 30s, you're paying for somebody who's not covered. And many people believe that when HR sent them a letter, hey, your kid aged out, that they automatically got put onto some less expensive coverage because there's only two people left covered. No, that's not what happens. Can't. Never could. You got to do that yourself. You gotta tell them, hey, I know you told me that my youngest aged out, but I need self plus one now. No longer family coverage. Now, I mentioned Twinkies before. If you're taking inventory and you're like, let's see who's on my health insurance. Well, there's me and my spouse. And my spouse works at the VA and I work at the post office. We're Twinkies. If you look around and it's just you and your Twinkies and you don't have any kids on your health insurance, my recommendation to you is to both go self only. Let's do a little mathematics here. You see self Only on basic.245, 18 times 2. If both of you have self only Blue Cross Basic, you will both total be paying $490.36 per month.
What does it say here on Blue Cross? Self plus one for the same doggone plan. 593.
So who just saved you $103 a month? Raina did. So that's a huge thing. Let's check and be sure it follows all the Blue cross stuff. Yeah. Okay. 378.76 times 2. 757 per month. Let's make that negative and add it. So you're saving 74, 79amonth because Raina's awesome. No, I'm kidding. It's because this is the way the prices are, so it doesn't happen on every plan. There are some plans, like some of the union plans and some of the Kaiser plans out in the West. Oddly enough, some of their family plans are less expensive than south plus one, which boggles my mind. But I'll be talking to people. I'm like, you've got family coverage and there's only two of you for the past 10 years. What you doing? And we pull it up and I'm like, I see what you're doing. No, never mind. Because it's less expensive to have family than so plus one in some cases. My point is do an inventory. Do a checkup from the neck up. See what your code is and what it means and make sure you're not paying for somebody who doesn't exist. I have been able to help people get refund. Wow, excuse me. Refunds for overpayments. And I've had people move from one place to another that where that current insurance that they had didn't even exist. So I've got a magical letter I've drawn up and I helped her kind of get this thing done. My biggest claim to fame on a refund. How about a $30,000 deposit in her bank that she thought was a scam because of the of the amount of money that was deposited in her account. But no, it was the refund of all the overpayments that she had sent to her insurance company because number one, she changed states and they never changed her plan. Number two, she had children age out and some family members, you know, changed status and so she was overpaying like a champion. So she got $30,000 back two months before retirement. Who's her best friend? I am so wanted you to see that. Take in, take, you know, take all your stuff into account and if you need help understanding what your codes mean, reach out. We can help you decipher them and we can pull, pull out the little magnifying glass and, you know, call Watson in and we'll be your Sherlock and we'll find the answer. We'll talk to you soon.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Reyna. Retirement. With a strong commitment to ethical standards, Reyna works hard to find the right solution for each individual or family who reaches out for advice. To contact reina directly, call 850-450-6500. That's 850-450-6500. Or to reach the team at American Federal Benefits Consultants, call 1-800-872-8857. That's 1-800-872- 8857. You can also go online to AmericanFederal.org not affiliated with the United States Government. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. These opinions are not intended as investment advice, nor do they predict future performance of any product. All information provided is believed to be from reliable sources. However, we make no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of any statement. The information is intended to be educational in nature and does not provide a guarantee or specific result. All copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. American Federal Benefits Consultants is an independent organization, not a government agency or affiliated with the Federal Government or any state government. The terms CSRs, FERs, FELI, and FEHB are all registered trademarks of the U.S. office of Personnel Management, American Federal Benefits Consultants, Agents, Consultants, or any independent contractors do not not provide tax, legal or investment advice and do not engage in the solicitation or sale of securities. Consult with your tax advisor or attorney regarding specific situations.
