Retirement planning never starts too soon

  • Published
  • By Mike Molina
  • Editor
DENVER --  Officials at the Air Reserve Personnel Center here held a preretirement seminar for civilian employees, Aug. 27-29. 

Nearly 50 employees attended the free seminar, which covered topics such as computing monthly retirement annuity, preparing a will, estate planning, life and health insurance, flexible spending accounts, long term care planning, thrift savings plan, and investments and strategies. 

"These are things you need to look at now," said John Russell from DPB, who attended the two and a half-day seminar. "I want to be prepared for my future." 

Mr. Russell retired from the Air Force and has been a federal civilian employee for two years. 

The seminar was open to employees, and their spouses, regardless of time in service. Similar training offered elsewhere is only available to employees nearing retirement, said Barbara Powelson, ARPC human resources specialist. 

"One of the things we wanted to do is to have people at all stages of their career (attend)," Ms. Powelson said. 

The Office of Personnel Management encourages federal employees to plan for retirement at least five years before the date they want to retire. 

More than one-third of ARPC civilian employees will be eligible for retirement by the end of 2008, Ms. Powelson said. 

Christy McCready has been at ARPC for 23 years. She said the seminar taught her about the large amount of information employees need to consider when planning for retirement. She only wished she had taken the training sooner. 

"This taught me about things I should've been doing 20 years ago," Ms. McCready said. "There's a lot of work you can be doing now to prepare." 

Preretirement seminars are held annually at ARPC. For more information about retirement planning, contact the ARPC human resources office at Post 2-D-13, or Ext. 6-8322.