Life changes

[GeddyWrox]

Spot on, Geen. Thanks.

[Radbird]

Congrats to both Geen and Geddy! Change can both scary and exhilarating, enjoy the ride!!

Geen - once you become a gazillionaire, please buy the Cardinals. Then I would like to apply for the position of pool boy at One Cardinals Way. Please hurry - I’m not getting any younger. Thank you for your future consideration!

[heyzeus]

I'm late to the party but congrats to @GeddyWrox and @G. Keenan for achieving the life changes they've been seeking.

It also means Geenan has time to post his review of The Hottie And The Nottie now, at long last.

[ThatGuy]

Congrats to both Geen and Geddy for making some big life moves! Obviously quite different situations, but it's always great to see people making needed (though difficult) changes. Hearty to salute to both of you.

This is perhaps not the right place for it, but while we're sharing, I experienced a "change" of sorts back in September when my mom (62) had to have a triple bypass after a heart attack. She made it through the surgery fine but had a mini stroke the next day. We're coming up on four months since this all happened, and she's doing really well (no ill effects from the stroke, in particular), but I was just so unprepared to be confronted with my mom's mortality. She's very active and generally healthy, so I remember driving to the ER the morning it happened and just being in a total daze. I've always been close to my mom, but things got a little complicated when I came out (not awful—I've just felt like the black sheep a lot), so in a weird way this heart attack business served as a clean reset for everything. It scared the [expletive] out of me, to be sure, but I'm enjoying the fact that our first instinct now is just to love and support one another instead of picking at our conflicting opinions.

[GeddyWrox]

Damn, that's scary! Glad things are good now though!

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Sounds like 2024 is off to a good start. Glad to hear it!

[heyzeus]

Congrats to both Geen and Geddy for making some big life moves! Obviously quite different situations, but it's always great to see people making needed (though difficult) changes. Hearty to salute to both of you.

This is perhaps not the right place for it, but while we're sharing, I experienced a "change" of sorts back in September when my mom (62) had to have a triple bypass after a heart attack. She made it through the surgery fine but had a mini stroke the next day. We're coming up on four months since this all happened, and she's doing really well (no ill effects from the stroke, in particular), but I was just so unprepared to be confronted with my mom's mortality. She's very active and generally healthy, so I remember driving to the ER the morning it happened and just being in a total daze. I've always been close to my mom, but things got a little complicated when I came out (not awful—I've just felt like the black sheep a lot), so in a weird way this heart attack business served as a clean reset for everything. It scared the [expletive] out of me, to be sure, but I'm enjoying the fact that our first instinct now is just to love and support one another instead of picking at our conflicting opinions.

I'm sorry you had to experience that, but it sounds like you've done a lot of reflection on what your mom means to you (and probably for her, vice versa). I'm glad your relationship is so strong, and hope her health stabilizes.

[GeddyWrox]

@heyzeus or anyone with experience navigating an amicable divorce... Looking for a little advice on how to consider a teacher pension...

My wife is a public teacher and has a pension plan with the Missouri system. The statements list a current value in real dollars, but that does not represent the amount she's likely to draw over the course of her retirement.

Example: (I'm not using actual numbers, but they're not far off)

Her statement says her account has $75,000 in it. But if she draws $2000 monthly for 20 years, that's $480,000. So far we haven't disagreed on anything, but on this she wants to go with the number on the statement. I want to go with the number that she's more likely to see. The difference is vast, as you can see.

Can anyone tell me what's standard when accounting for pensions while splitting assets during a divorce?

[Arthur Dent]

I have no idea about the divorce settlement part, but I think the concept you are looking for is called "present value" which calculates the value of future payments as an equivalent present lump sum assuming a rate of interest.

I'm guessing the pension actuaries calculated that the expected present of value of those future payments is around the $75k number because there is a large return on investment over that period. Dividing the payments over time or the lump sum today should be roughly equivalent.

Edit: The balance statement value may or may not correspond to the actuarial present value, which is the number you likely need and which will likely be much less than $480k.

[GeddyWrox]

I have no idea about the divorce settlement part, but I think the concept you are looking for is called "present value" which calculates the value of future payments as an equivalent present lump sum assuming a rate of interest.

I'm guessing the pension actuaries calculated that the expected present of value of those future payments is around the $75k number because there is a large return on investment over that period. Dividing the payments over time or the lump sum today should be roughly equivalent.

Edit: The balance statement value may or may not correspond to the actuarial present value, which is the number you likely need and which will likely be much less than $480k.

Yeah, I follow you on that. Here's how I'm looking at it.

We have two Roths, my work 401K, a rollover IRA from previous employers, etc. If we value her pension at the low number, and she gets nearly half of all of that other stuff, I'm going to have to work until I'm 70 while she's going to get to retire at 60 and live off of her pension + my retirement savings. That doesn't seem fair to me in the least.