I’m a long way from retirement but I’ve got a really good friend nearing retirement from a LE agency in the next few years.

He’s got a number of choices with his retirement (date of retirement, lump sum option, etc) and, in talking with him, it’s evident that some expert advice could help; primarily, to make sure that what he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know, doesn’t bite him/his family in the ass later.

Anyone have a reputable advisor you’d recommend in the Waco/Temple area?

I am TRS state retirement, but I worked with a bunch of ERS people.
Depending on tiers and dates of entry and possible military service or other state service, it gets complicated.
My suggestion is to have him sit down with his state pension people and have them figure out multiple scenarios:
If I retire at first eligible day. How much?
If I retire one year later?
If I stay until my next annual year of service  is credited.( my system grants a year of service at 90days past the 01SEP fiscal year.)
If I retire at such and such date how will vacation and sick days be paid or added to my pension?
If I stay on the books and call in my sick time how much will my pension be?
Am I eligible for a draw?
Can I buy back time?
Have I taken out money that will reduce my pension,can I pay it back and annuitize some other accounts(401k,403B TSP?)

One of my friends found out, that if he retired that pay period he had $xxxx, if he stayed another year he would only add $15 monthly to his pension.
He came back to get a jacket he left. And went fishing.

My former significant other took out 5 years of service pay to buy a house-good idea. Bad idea -the money she took out was very low pay years of service from ERS during college, she eventually tripled her salary in her later state service ,but the money she gave up was a huge percentage of her final retirement package. I set up a repayment transfer for her over several years, but she started dating other guys, she had to work 4 years more to be eligible to retire and by my calculations she left a huge pile of money on the table.

The rules are weird, I bought my military time for $30000 and it was annuiized and effectively gained 11% annual return on my 401k transfer. I was eligible to “buy” a year as I had 400 hours of sick time on the books, but it was based on the final salary and my TRS percentage contribution, but the rate of return on that additional 401k transfer was an effective 7.5%.

The above is something he can do with the state pension people and does not cost anything.

Thanks for that reply

From talking with him, it sounds like they have some web based retirement calculator and he’s done some of that. He’s batting around taking a lump sum portion to pay off his house. I’ve told him several times to get a financial advisor or talk to another LE guy who’s been through this but nothing so far.

Jerry Simms, over at Wells Fargo investors has been good to me. Decent returns on my investments, and we both bitch to each other about the thieves in Washington and the federal reserve bank.

He's a solid guy, and works at the Wells Fargo tower by H.E.B.