That stinks.
I'm assuming you were pretty well vested in the company's pension; what happened? Did they leave you high and dry or were you bought out and able to roll over into an IRA or something?
I will really have to try to keep this long story short, probably wonāt succeed, lolā¦
TLDR; versionā¦ they bought our pension out, and I rolled it over to a 401(k), but I donāt ever have the option of retirement insurance through the company.
After 16 years of work with them, in the midst of a family crisis, where me and ALAYWIFE had been seeking to have children for over 10 years, and had recently been blessed with the miraculous news that ALAYBOY was going to be born, I was given a layoff notice that was supposed to be permanent right around Christmas time. Talk about mountains and valleys rollercoasters of emotions. Within one to two weeks after the layoff I had a job lined up for next fall as a school science teacher, even though I didnāt have a teaching certificate. That was because I had a masters degree in science, and Ohio was very much in a crunch for science teachers. God was opening doors in a very amazing way. I had actually thought about being a teacher, but never wanted to abandon all that I had invested in my career to pursue that option. About the same time that I had that teaching gig lined up after only a couple weeks the company called me and said you can have your job back with the same pay and same benefits, like nothing had changed. I had to think long and hard about that because I was more than halfway to the goal of retirement. So in the end, I decided not to go the teaching route and elected to go back to the lab. All that meant that I would be eligible for full retirement at 53.5 years of age (17 years away at the time).
Fast forward to the next chapter, and the era of uranium enrichment ended with the decommissioning of my facility. That meant the deconstruction would begin in 2011. It was at that time that the prime contractor was chosen and the language that I mentioned in the previous post was floated past us. We had to make decisions pretty quick in order to retain our benefits and salary. Hukās advice should have been something that I followed, but I wasnāt thinking about 16-17 years down the road. My vocation in this area is one of the best career paths and salary packages in a fairly economically depressed area, so it was not that hard of a choice to continue with the company rather than trying to look for something else, which probably would mean relocation.
Their offer was to basically continue with the same job classification, salary and benefits, with the exception of the pension and retirement insurance. In lieu of the pension, they gave us a modest and compensatory incentive. In the grand scheme of things, it was really a hose job, but I capitulated. As it turned out, because of the fact that the site had a union and the sister company in Paducah Kentucky got an actual pension buyout shortly after their decommissioning occurred (largely due to Mitch McConnellās influence), our site supplied a similar buyout for salaried (like myself) and Union employees. If you compare the average lifespan for a male and assume that I lived to that age, the buyout was probably a third of the value of what a pension would have paid out, so even the buyout was a betrayal.
But worse than all of that, because I donāt have an extremely high materialistic outlook, I could have gotten by right now on my 401(k) and savings if I only had reasonable retirement healthcare insurance coverage. But you know what they say about wishing in one hand and crapping in the other, and seeing which one fills up first. I could choose my teacher-wifeās insurance option, but that would just mean that she works longer than we we want her to have to work.
One of the real kicks in the stomach was that I was working alongside people who were ā double dippingā, meaning that they retired and began drawing their pension, all the while working right beside me, doing the same job, making the same salary as they were the day before they retired.
Donāt get me wrong, God has been extremely good to me, and I am unbelievably blessed, in more ways than I can tell you in this already fairly long post. Many people my age have been caught up in that trend that occurred in the early 2005-2015 economy where business has began moving away from funding traditional pension plans, so my story is not all that uncommon. Itās still not pleasant to think about, and it is one of those few things that I have to fight that root of bitterness from popping up. Not so much because of the sheer financial reasons, but that is one of the factors that has contributed to my inability to pivot to full-time ministry. I could go on about this subject but as you see, it is already long enough and I know that God has all things happen for a reason and I take contentment and solace in Him and his sovereignty.
