Fundamentals of Retirement Planning

InFRE is NPEA’s trusted partner for providing retirement-specific professional development, retirement counselor certification and plan administration certificate training courses designed specifically for public sector defined contribution and defined benefit plans.

Being aware of how to plan for retirement at different career stages provide the groundwork for understanding the broad variety of factors that affect how well an employee achieves their retirement goals. This course will focus on how to implement the principles of retirement planning to achieve retirement preparedness.You will learn about:

• Retirement planning across the lifecycle
• Helping pre-retirees understand the importance of preparing psychologically, socially, physically, geographically, as well as financially, for retirement
• Retirement mindsets and behavioral finance
• Financial and retirement goal setting
• Retirement risk management
• Elder care and elder fraud
• Key tax and estate planning strategies for retirees

Perfect for those with new to intermediate level retirement knowledge and skills, this is Course #1 of the InFRE® Certified Retirement Counselor® (CRC®) Certification study program.

Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP)
Employees who work for a Social Security-exempt agency for some or all of their careers may be impacted by the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). Workers and their employers need to not only understand the financial impact of the WEP on a worker but also possibly the impact on a worker’s spouse. The good news is that the WEP effect is not as severe as the rumor mill makes it out to be, and there are potential ways to reduce the financial impact.

And then there’s the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Workers need to recognize the GPO’s impact on their choice of using a voluntary retirement savings plan through their employer, such as a 401k or 457, and the impact on them if they anticipate receiving spousal or survivor benefits from Social Security.

If your agency/system pays into Social Security and your members are “off the hook,” why might you still want to know about these two topics? Employees nowadays are changing jobs and employers more frequently than in the past, so you may already have members in your system who worked in the past for a Social Security exempt agency. Or your members’ spouses might have worked for an exempt agency, and your member may look to you for education and understanding on these topics.