I'm blessed to be a member of the Public Employees Retirement System and yet challenged by the complexity of managing the details inherent in the blessing. Today I've been struggling with figuring out all the paperwork that I need when I meet with an adviser for an individual counseling session tomorrow. The biggest issue is, "What should I do with my IAP account?" I've made a tentative decision. At least I think it's tentative. I have thirty days, I think, to rethink. Maybe. I'm kind of confused.
I have a bad head for money and have been so caught up with other stuff related to the approaching life-change that I haven't given this material as much consideration as I should have done. One of the troubles with PERS is that any decision one makes is made forever. Another problem with PERS is a website that looks like it was constructed by gnomes in the early 1990s and not assessed for manageability since. (It's as easy to navigate as the Bering Sea.) And of course another issue are the attacks on the system made by those who hold the idea that pensions are payments for not working rather than deferred payments for work already performed.
I have rarely given much thought to money except during the few times when I've been extremely poor. There was that one school year when I was separated first from my spouse and then from my job as a grad student at ISU. I was cashing the few checks I got at grocery stores and sticking the rent money on a run-down furnished apartment in the freezer box of a 25 year old refrigerator. That was the year I gleaned food from garbage cans behind Albertsons and Smiths, took various items to pawn shops with no plan to pick them up and sold plasma.
But I always knew I had a way out. Some people don't have that hope. Those of us who do are either blessed or lucky, depending on one's theological perspective.
So, that's what I've been doing all evening rather than contributing something worthwhile to this blog.
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