Yesterday from 3PM-5PM I sat through a benefits class now that I am a regular employee. They were a lot of phrases thrown at us. 403B, 401K, stocks, bonds, and many others that are still kind of swimming around in my head. So if I want to retire one day and actually have money to live off of I need to decide between one of two options. One is once I hit 65 I will get a monthly check for X amount until the day I die. As I put money in this account the medical center will match it by half if I give up to 6% of my paycheck. Well they'll match half of it also if I give 4% of my check too, but the people who were in charge of this training were really pushing putting 6% in, which makes sense to me. The other option I could do is when I hit 65 I get a lump sum of whatever I have saved up and however much my place of work has thrown in. If I ever leave California and I chose to do the lump sum I can essentially "cash" it out when I leave. If I do the monthly plan that amount (whatever it is at the time I leave) will just follow me until I am 65. I don't know. It's a lot of information that I need to think about. My thing is how do I know I am going to reach 65? I know I can leave money to loved ones and everything. It just seems so far away. 40 years. This is the time I need to start thinking about these things for me because no one else will. They also talked to us about health insurance and HMOs and PPOs. Once again it's just stuff I really never had to think about.
Which leads me back to my main question: what if I don't reach 65? I know I can leave money for my kids or family if something were to happen to me. Except I don't have children and I can't imagine ever having kids at this point and time. I feel like I need to have an imagination to pick which plan I want to go with. Or maybe I just need to think about the worst and best case scenario. I have until Friday before I need to start throwing money in to my nest egg, or it's really just a nest at this point I guess.
It's hard being 24 with your adult life laying before you.
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