Powering Your Retirement

10/06/2026

Do you know which formula your PG&E pension runs on?

Depending on when you were hired and whether you're union or management, you fall under one of three plans.

Take Mark, who has 32 years of service and a final salary of $257,508.

Under Union Final Pay, he's looking at about $10,451 a month.

Under Management Final Pay, which uses his final 36-month average, it's about $11,337.

Under Cash Balance, the benefit is an account built from pay credits and interest, and in this example it reaches roughly $753,619 by age 62.

It's the same career and salary, yet totally different outcomes.

Then age 62 shows up, and your retirement date, pension start, Social Security, 401(k), and health insurance before Medicare all land on the table at once.

Those choices push on each other, so an estimate looked at by itself can point you the wrong way.

Before you pick a date, get updated estimates from PG&E for more than one retirement date, then line them up next to everything else.

Simply pull up your latest estimate and see which of the three plans it's built on.

09/22/2026

Do you have any idea what your RMSA is going to pay for after your time at PG&E?

Maybe you don't, and your answer is just to point at the balance.

But that balance is a notional account PG&E uses to pay a percentage of your eligible medical premiums. Think of it as a coupon book: 55% off before Medicare, 30% off after.

That percentage drops looks pretty bad, but it really isn't, because Medicare premiums are so much cheaper that fewer dollars leave your account each month anyway.

I've seen RMSA balances last into someone's 90s, and I've also seen them run dry in under a decade, depending entirely on when you retire and how long you go before Medicare.

Then there's your spouse, they get their own RMSA, built from $5,000 a year starting at your age 45, but without your service credits.

In PG&E's own example, an employee retiring at 62 starts with roughly $153,000. Their spouse starts with roughly $128,000, before a dollar even gets spent.

Before you set a retirement date, ask how much gets used monthly before Medicare, what your spouse's account looks like at their age, and how sensitive it all is to rising healthcare costs.

Your RMSA is a good benefit, knowing the balance and understanding how it works are two different things.

If your estimate's been sitting in a drawer, it's worth pulling back out.

08/25/2026

Estate planning doesn't feel urgent, so it's easy to put off for another year, then another.

It can be overwhelming, which is why it's easy to delay.

Thinking of yourself getting sick or potentially passing away is a tough thing to grasp.

There are four documents that cover some of the most important decisions you can make: a will, a trust, a financial power of attorney, and a health care directive.

Each one answers a question your family shouldn't have to guess about when something unexpected happens.

Who can make decisions on your behalf? Who receives your assets, and who's in charge if you can't be?

Even a plan you signed years ago can fall out of date without you noticing. Say, an old executor, an outdated beneficiary form, a decision-maker who no longer makes sense.

A few hours now can spare the people you love from court delays, confusion, and unnecessary stress later.

Read the full breakdown here 👉

Estate planning can feel overwhelming, which is why most PG&E employees tend to avoid it. No one wants to plan for becoming sick, losing capacity or passing away.

08/11/2026

Retiring rich sounds like it takes a lucky stock pick or a six-figure salary.

But really, it just takes consistency, which is the kind of habit you barely think about once it's automatic.

Picture someone who starts saving $5,000 a year at 22. That's about $417 a month, which is nothing close to a windfall.

They just keep going, increasing the contribution as their income grows, year after year, for more than 40 years.

By age 66, the ending balance comes out to roughly $3.46 million.

Repeating the same ordinary habit longer than most people stick with is way better than just one brilliant investment call.

The early years are the hardest part, when you save for a decade and the balance barely seems to move.

Then, once compounding takes over, your money will start pulling more weight than you even are.

By 66, the growth in a single year was worth more than four times what was contributed that year.

Pay yourself first, increase your contributions as your income grows, and stay invested when the headlines get scary.

That's the whole plan, and it works only if you stick with it.

Read the full breakdown here 👉

Tons of PG&E employees assume that retiring rich requires a high income, a lucky investment, or the ability to predict the stock market. But wealth is usually built in a much less exciting way.

08/04/2026

Your child could retire with more money than you've saved by 30.

The crazy part? They'll never have to work a single day to earn it.

No, it's not a scam. Yes, it may sound political (but I promise it's not).

It's called a Trump Account, and the name may cause you to pause.

It's a new type of IRA built for kids.

Parents, grandparents, even employers can fund it, and your child doesn't need to earn anything to qualify.

Every child born between 2025 and 2028 gets $1,000 seeded by the government, just for opening one.

Families can add up to $5,000 a year on top of that.

Let it sit and grow for 18 years, and your kid could walk into adulthood with a six-figure head-start most people don't get until their 40s.

We put together a full breakdown for PG&E families, covering how these accounts work, when a Roth conversion makes sense, and why funding your own retirement still comes first.

Read the full breakdown here 👉

When PG&E employees first hear about Trump Accounts, some immediately focus on the name. “I don’t like Trump.

07/28/2026

A couple earning $220K a year just cost themselves over $100,000 in tax savings.

They didn't overspend and they didn't skip their 401(k) match.

They simply just picked the "safe" health insurance plan.

Once open enrollment rolled around, the thought of an $8,000 medical bill felt a bit scary.

So, they chose the low-deductible plan, the one that feels more comfortable now.

But comfort often comes with a price tag. 💰

That choice closed the door on one of the most powerful tax tools available to high earners: the HSA.

Triple tax advantage, deductible contributions, tax-free growth and tax-free withdrawals for medical expenses, forever.

A lot of retirees will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on healthcare.

The question is will you pay with taxable dollars, or tax-free ones.

If you're maxing your 401(k), saving diligently, and still defaulting to the low-deductible plan out of habit, this one's for you.

Read the full breakdown 👉

Your health plan choice may affect your ability to use one of the most effective long-term tax strategies available. In fact, the most financially secure households—whether you’re one of them or not—overlook their health plan.

07/21/2026

A couple, both 61, sat down for their "final stretch" review.

Paid-off house, with a solid pension and a 401(k) that looked healthy on paper.

By every account, they'd done everything right.

Their advisor asked a question: "Do either of you know what happens to this income in year 25?"

(Generally bad advisor for having only asked the question now.)

Neither of them had an answer.

They'd never run the numbers past year 10 or 15.

Inflation at 3% a year meant their $8,000 a month today could need to be closer to $19,000 a month by their 90s, just to keep their same lifestyle.

Healthcare costs are climbing, property taxes climbing, a pension that pays the same dollar amount whether it's 2026 or 2056.

They were behind because "we think we're fine" had never actually been tested.

The new Super Catch-Up rules letting workers 60-63 contribute more.

Congress is handing out one more shot to fix a plan nobody stress-tested yet.

Read more here 👉

Millions of Americans are running out of time. The retirement contribution limits were raised by Congress because of it.

07/07/2026

A few months after their mom passed, three siblings found themselves arguing over her house.

Not over whether to sell it, they'd all agreed on that part from the start.

The fight came from the fact that the trust barely had any cash in it.

The IRA went straight to the beneficiaries.

The brokerage account had transfer-on-death instructions.

The checking account was jointly owned years ago for convenience.

By the time everything settled, the trust held the house, a few personal belongings, and the whole job of dealing with it.

That job landed on the oldest son, named trustee because he was "good with money."

Within a few weeks he was covering a $9,000 property tax bill, renewing the homeowner's insurance, replacing the locks, keeping the utilities on, and paying cleaners to get the house ready to list.

The trust didn't have enough to cover any of it, so he paid out of his own pocket, planning to reimburse himself later on.

The whole time, his siblings kept asking the same question, "when do we get our share?"

People miss this frequently when they set up a trust.

Avoiding probate is great, but a trust with no liquidity hands your trustee a stack of bills and your family a reason to turn on each other.

If your plan moves everything around the trust, it's worth asking what's left inside it to run the thing.

Read more here 👉

A lot of estate plans do their one job and skip probate, and still leave a single child carrying most of the burden… along with most of the resentment that comes with it. A few months after their mother has passed, three siblings found themselves arguing over her house.

06/30/2026

There are few heartbreaks that compare to losing a spouse....

While money is likely the last thing on your mind after losing your significant other, it's a financial turning point.

It catches a ton of people—retirees especially—off guard.

After a spouse passes, things start to shift almost overnight:

One Social Security check disappears, and the pension can start shrinking, depending on a survivor election made years earlier.

Taxes can start to climb, because the surviving spouse now files as single instead of married, then Medicare costs can rise later through IRMAA surcharges.

All while the bills barely move.

That's why age 60 can quickly becomes one of the most important turning points in a widow's retirement.

It's the earliest you can claim your Social Security survivor benefits.

Your income just dropped, so claiming it early on feels like the obvious right move.

But claiming early permanently reduces that monthly benefit, and it can shrink your income flexibility for the next 20 or 30 years.

You often have more room to maneuver than other Social Security recipients.

In some cases, you can take your own smaller retirement benefit first, then switch to the larger survivor benefit later, once it's grown to its maximum.

So the question worth sitting with goes a little deeper than "When should I take Social Security?"

Read the full article to see how it all fits together 👉

06/23/2026

So you retired (or are retiring) from PG&E.

Your tax bill looks low, your CPA's happy. You move on...

That may be one of the most expensive things you can do in retirement.

The years between leaving work & your RMDs kicking in are often the lowest tax-rate years you'll see for a long time.

Temporarily lower income, more flexibility over what you recognize and room in the bracket that won't stick around forever.

A lot of PG&E employees let it pass by without a second thought—because a small tax bill can feel like a big win.

But inactivity is still a decision.

Every year without a plan is a year you can't get back.

By the time RMDs, Social Security, & Medicare premiums all stack up together, the flexibility you had at 60 is long gone.

This one's worth a read if you've retired recently—or if you're getting close 👉

PG&E employees tend to focus on age 59½ as the end of the IRS penalty, but for some retirees, it also marks the start of a rather crucial tax-planning window. Let’s take a recently retired PG&E supervisor who sits at the kitchen table in March, reviewing his tax return.