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Retirement Shock: Need to Find a Job After 40 Years at General Electric

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Re: Retirement Shock: Need to Find a Job After 40 Years at General Electric

#11
post #8

Seems like an $85k/yr pension should be more than enough to retire on.

No kidding, at a 4% safe withdrawal rate, that's the same as a $2+ million nest egg.

That said, I think he's concerned that, given GE's trajectory, the pension will evaporate. What then?

Re: Retirement Shock: Need to Find a Job After 40 Years at General Electric

#12
post #4
post #2

Remember to set up auto-sale folks. Your retirement returns will be less than selling at a lifetime high price of whoever you work for. But you will not sell at the lifetime high price. Please don't forget to sell at all.

It took a lawsuit for my employer (Honeywell) to allow moving (out of Honeywell stock) of matched contributions. I still keep about 20% in company stock. It has done very well and pays a good dividend. To think that we were almost bought by GE years ago.

>I still keep about 20% in company stock. It has done very well and pays a good dividend. To think that we were almost bought by GE years ago.

I'm curious why you keep so much in Honeywell stock? For a very long time GE was a great company to have that would routinely give nice returns and dividends, and then things went downhill. Layoffs happened, and those people were faced with much lower portfolio valuations if they were heavily weighted in the company they work for.

Re: Retirement Shock: Need to Find a Job After 40 Years at General Electric

#14
post #11
post #8

Seems like an $85k/yr pension should be more than enough to retire on.

No kidding, at a 4% safe withdrawal rate, that's the same as a $2+ million nest egg. That said, I think he's concerned that, given GE's trajectory, the pension will evaporate. What then?

It's already only about 70% funded, per the article.

Re: Retirement Shock: Need to Find a Job After 40 Years at General Electric

#17
post #10
post #8

Seems like an $85k/yr pension should be more than enough to retire on.

Roughly $140 billion in GE stock-market wealth was lost in the past year GE has lost a substantial percent of its market cap this year. I wouldn't count on that pension sticking around for 30 years without being 'restructured'. And in 30 years it'll be worth $40k a year anyway.

I know it was only 1 guy, and an extreme example at that, but he is 61. Getting 30 years is great. Most men won't get to 91. He can also consider early retirement at 62.

Re: Retirement Shock: Need to Find a Job After 40 Years at General Electric

#20
post #4
post #2

Remember to set up auto-sale folks. Your retirement returns will be less than selling at a lifetime high price of whoever you work for. But you will not sell at the lifetime high price. Please don't forget to sell at all.

It took a lawsuit for my employer (Honeywell) to allow moving (out of Honeywell stock) of matched contributions. I still keep about 20% in company stock. It has done very well and pays a good dividend. To think that we were almost bought by GE years ago.

If you are a rank and file employee, I would suggest divesting entirely from your company's stock. From a risk perspective it's extremely dangerous as you are already dependent on your employer for your source of income. In the case that they do poorly you have the potential to lose both your income and your savings. Unless you have the ability to seriously affect the stock price, you are putting too many eggs into a single basket.
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