City of Henderson PERS retirement
We had a very interesting case the other day with a City of Henderson Fire Department PERS participant. A “nearing retirement” Henderson Fire Department employee (we’ll leave it at that) came in for a financial plan.
We reviewed his PERS payout options, his savings, household budget, and financial goals among other things… all in the process of creating a great financial plan for him.
Keep in mind, this is a guy who’s dedicated his entire career to taking care of other people – a public servant. So this wasn’t just any financial plan.
Jeremy and I took it upon ourselves to go the extra mile for this guy as I’m sure he’s done a thousand times for other City of Henderson residents.
Nevada PERS investing options
In the discovery process, we realized he’s using the ICMA 457 plan option. He also has two other investment plan options – Voya and Nationwide.
Naturally I wanted to see all of his investment options. Perhaps Voya or Nationwide have lower costs and more passive investing options for his Henderson Fire Department 457 plan?
Jeremy tracked down the Voya rep fairly quickly with our new client’s guidance. All Jeremy asked for was the investment options in the City of Henderson 457 retirement plan. Pretty simple right?
We never asked for any client information, and in fact didn’t even tell her the client’s name. We simply wanted the investment options that he has to choose from as a City of Henderson Fire Department employee.
If we can get the list of investment options, we can custom create an investment plan for him using the lowest cost and best mutual funds from all available options.
We don’t care whether he uses ICMA, Voya, or Nationwide. All we care about is he gets the best possible investment plan with the best mutual fund options. This is after all a pretty substantial part of his financial plan.
PERS Provides a GREAT Retirement!
His PERS – public employee retirement system – provides a great income with substantial inflationary increases over his retirement. However, given his financial goals, we had to build in additional savings and future liquidations from his retirement plan. That’s where the additional 457 plan information needed comes in.
The Voya rep refused to give us a simple list of our clients investment options. Crazy I know – all we wanted to do was analyze his ICMA options versus Voya and Nationwide. She refused.
What if her options in the Voya plan were superior? We would have likely recommended our client move his investment plan to her. She had nothing to lose in this case.
Nationwide won’t return our calls. They apparently don’t want our clients retirement plan business either.
To me either Nationwide and Voya’s City of Henderson retirement plan mutual fund options are horrible, or they should be jumping all over the chance to let us do the analysis for our client.
We’re unbiased. We work for our client, not the mutual fund providers. We just want the best plan for our client.
Long story short – if you’re a City of Henderson Fire Department PERS participant, you have a great retirement plan. Unfortunately for most retirees it may not be enough, and additional 457 plan savings may be necessary to accomplish your retirement goals.
Also unfortunate, is your 457 plan investment provider reps won’t provide us the information we need to advise you in the best manner possible. Do they have something to hide?