Folks, if you’ve spent your career at BMW in Spartanburg, Michelin here in Greenville, Fluor, Lockheed Martin, GE, or one of the other great manufacturing employers in the Upstate, there’s a good chance you’re facing — or will soon face — one of the biggest one-time financial decisions of your life: do you take your pension as a lump sum, or do you take it as a monthly annuity for the rest of your life?
Folks, here’s a question we ask nearly every couple who walks through our doors in Greenville, Spartanburg, or Anderson: “What happens to your plan if the market drops 20% the year after you retire?” More often than not, we get a pause, a shrug, and something like, “I guess we’d figure it out.”
