How Does FEGLI Work?

How Does FEGLI Work?

How Does FEGLI Work?

The Federal Employee Group Life Insurance (FEGLI)  policy falls in a category called “Group Term.” Group Term is a life insurance policy offered by employers to their employees.  You are covered for a set amount of coverage usually related to your salary, for as long as you work and continue to pay your premium in retirement.  To be eligible for the FEGLI program all you have to do is work for the Federal Government. Health is not an issue at all if you sign up when you first start employment. This makes it very attractive to those people with existing health problems.

If you want to take a deeper dive to learn more about what FEGLI is.

When you begin working for the Federal Government, you are automatically enrolled in the program. The plan that you get automatically is the “Basic” Plan which covers your salary plus 2 thousand dollars. The federal government partially pays for a portion of this. If you work for the Postal service, your Basic is completely free. The Basic plan also offers double the coverage for employees under the age of 35 with no additional cost. “Option A” is an option to add $10,000 of insurance. “Option B” allows you to add a multiple of your salary to the insurance amount, up to five times.

Option B has very different pricing than the other options. Pricing is based on your current age and adjusts every five years. This 5-year adjustment is for ages ending in 5 and 0. This can get very costly the older you become as the premiums jump significantly doing your 50’s. An example of this is

Mary Age 50 making $100,000 a year

At 50 pays $55 a pay

At 55 pays $100 a pay

At age 60 pays $220 a pay  

Option C is the part of the plan that provides protection for your spouse and children. The protection is in multiples of $5,000 and $2,500. The spouse multiples are for $5,000 and the children $2,500. You can get up to 5x for each multiple.

You can increase FEGLI options during certain life events (Marriage, Childbirth, Adoption, etc.) as well as open enrollments. Open enrollments, however, are very rare and this should not be something that an employee waits for. In fact, one just passed in 2016. So the next one is likely far off.

The way to be proactive in this regard is to consult with a professional to see what your options are outside the government employee coverage. You can enroll in a private plan at any time no matter the life circumstances.

Is An Outside Term Policy Better Than My Life Insurance Policy Through My Job?

An Outside Term policy can be better than your Life Insurance Policy through your job if you have good health and a vision of how you want to leave your life insurance. For example, you’re a 45 years old who just picked up Life Insurance through your job, your term life insurance is going to be increasing every five years for the rest of your life in most cases. Whereas if you have your personal policy, that policy will be fixed for 10 years, 15 years; 20 years or 30 years. You won’t have to worry about the price fluctuation; you have one set price for the rest of the term of that policy. So, in that case, it makes it easier to plan when you have your Individual Policy, plus you can get a plan priced on your health instead of the overall group. This works if you’re healthy, it does not work if you’re unhealthy. So, you just have to consult your Financial Adviser or Life Insurance Agent to see which works best for you. But, Typically an Outside Policy works better for you because you can manage the cost easier.

How She Blew 200k.

How She Blew 200k.

While working at a bank in the summer of 2006 I got to see first hand what a person with newly inherited money without proper education can do with money. My first week on the job there was a woman for the purpose of this writing we can call her “Mrs. Pam” she came into the branch made a deposit and I saw she had well over $200,000 in her checking account. I had no clue how this woman got this money I just knew something seemed off. She didn’t carry herself like someone that earned the type of income that could amass this much money in a checking account. As the weeks went on I saw Mrs. Pam come into the branch almost every other day making some type of withdrawal or ordering some type of Official Check. Her money dwindled by the day.

 

One day Mrs. Pam came in with her children and they sat and ordered 5 separate official checks for huge sums. They were planning a family reunion that was going to be funded totally by Mrs. Pam. This reunion ended up costing Mrs. Pam well over $60,000. Her funds were pretty much gone. I remember coming into the branch one day and saw her account at $17,000 I almost panicked. I then went deeper into her account and saw that before I started at the branch Mrs. Pam’s average monthly Non-Sufficient Funds was at 3 per month. She was heading right back to ground zero. I then asked a coworker what happened and the person said Mrs. Pam’s mother left her the money. This came as no surprise to me as it all made perfect sense now.

 

Needless to say in the next two months Mrs. Pam was right back at her negative balance habits and it got so bad she had to close the account because she didn’t have enough to cover her last NSF fee buildup. I could see the lack of control Mrs. Pam had the lack of awareness on what to properly do with the money. At the time I didn’t have the education but now I see her mistakes and empathize with her for doing what she thought was best.
Education and holding each other accountable with that education is key. Had Mrs. Pam’s Mother told her “Pam I want to make sure you get this, I want you to study financial literacy and come up with a plan for what you will do with your inheritance” This story would have been totally different. The only thing missing from Mrs. Pam story is a conversation and an education.  An inheritance without a solid conversation is a setup for disaster.

 

How to Advance in Your Federal Career with Alex Tremble

How to Advance in Your Federal Career with Alex Tremble

As a Federal Employee, you probably have a desire to get as high up the GS Scale as possible.  I interviewed Alex Tremble and he gave the following tips to increase your marketability as a Fed.

  • Write down 3 things you want to accomplish at your job by the end of the year.
  • Write down the steps you will need to accomplish those goals.
  • Step outside of your comfort zone and network. Pick one person in your agency that you are interested in their line of work or you are interested in what that office does? List a few questions to ask and also develop your “elevator speech” 2mins (don’t take more than 30 mins of their time)
  • Look for detailed opportunities within your agency. Always a good way to add skills to your resume, and more networking opportunities. Hope this helps and gives you the boost you need. P.S. If you want to talk to me about your Federal Benefits schedule time here. Fedlegacycall.com

Below are a couple of highlights from the interview our team picked out for you.

William Smith, Jr CEO of Fed Legacy  

All right, excellent, excellent story, right. But some of the people don’t hear. And I’m sure the majority of clients aren’t at that level. Right. So the everyday, everyday worker, so to speak, right? Because what I’m hearing you say use political savvy to get what you want, instead of griping about it, for the most part, right? Use your resources, right? for lack of a better term. So for the everyday worker, right, you know, how could they How have you seen people like that utilize this, utilize, put it back?

 

Alex Tremble

Okay, it doesn’t get lower than me, right doesn’t get a 23-year-old kid starting off trying to create an executive program. So when I first got asked to create this program again, I know no one I know, I’m not in that level. The first thing I did was go on LinkedIn. Yeah, I looked for every possible senior leader, you know, someone who, who either wasn’t executive in the government outside the government. So who did research on that topic? Different groups, I just started sending messages to everyone. Just, Hey, my name is Alex Trumbull. I’m trying to create this. I love to get 5, 10, 15 minutes of your time. And from just that one exercise, I had a whole lot of people just come back and they’re having conversations with me. So I remember one conversation specifically. It was the one top executives at GE I’m pretty sure everyone knows who GE is the massive Corporation. And he was mentoring me for months on how to crank it. And I asked him, I said one day I said, What? Why are you talking to me right now? And he said So why are you talking? I say I’m some 23-year-old kid. And here it is super successful executive, why are you spending your time talking to me? And what he said to me afterwards has stayed with me. I tried to share as much as I can. He said because you asked, most people won’t ask. And see, I’m a man of probability, right? I want to increase the probability. I’m not that smart. But I do like to follow smart people. So if you look at Warren Buffett this investing, Maven, right, he knows what he’s talking about. He says, what do you say be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy? Right? So what does that mean? If you translate that, to relationship and networking, when others are afraid to network, that’s when you should network? Because there’s less competition, right? So if others are afraid of reaching out to successful people, what should you be doing? 

William Smith, Jr CEO of Fed Legacy

So real man. I did this exact same thing with my business last week, man. I’m in a circle, some very successful guys. One of these guys owns a huge company in America. Big company. I’m not gonna say the name but we’ve all recognized the company. I sent a text message to him detailing out exactly what I wanted. I was scared man, I sent the text out. He didn’t respond for like three or four days. He finally responded, said I’ll think about it. But let’s talk next Friday at 930. This is last Friday, we had to come see. When we got on the phone. He said I thought about it. I’m gonna do it. And he gave me all the homework I need to do and everything. But I would have never got that if I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have even gotten to a circle if I didn’t even ask. Yep, years ago about mentorship, man. So I want to just kind of bring this down to people on the phone like, yeah, so like, again, this The purpose of this call is I you know, I’m dealing with people every day, you know, and a lot of you all want to retire? Well, that’s the reason why we started. Because we want to make sure our people can retire Well, on time with confidence, and leaving the financial legacy intact, right. Now, when it comes to getting ahead, high three, getting your high three up, and moving up in the government. You can’t just do it just sitting around. So what’s up, right, you can’t do it that way. So the stuff that Alex is talking about is just going that extra mile, right. And now this is the stuff that when you say you know, my coworker, they don’t do nothing or whatever. This is the behind-the-scenes hard work, right? And so this is the stuff that a lot of times our people miss out on when it comes to just, I call it a game, right? It’s just a game. He’s given us good game, like, alright, if you want to get ahead, why don’t you just look up the people that are high up in your department in your agency, and get on LinkedIn? And just ask them a simple question.

Alex Tremble

Yeah, sure. I have a mentoring group mentoring program, which I really enjoy doing. Because it’s, I feel like it’s dynamic. And the people have been through my programs, I’ve always said it was really dynamic because we meet on a monthly basis. And every time we meet, there’s an opportunity for the individual get new information, and then test it, that’s what’s really important is getting started, right, you’re going to try something it’s going to work or it’s not going to work and you’re going to retool, and every single month you get better and better and better. And so that’s where I use the mentoring program for us consistently, being able to help people find tools, fine-tune their strategy in their plan, and so on and so forth. Then I also have my actual course that have online networking course. And it’s a seven, seven-week course, in-depth, dive into how to build relationships, and strategically network, and then everything is built on and based on science. So my background is in IO psychology. So I have a master’s in IO psychology. And then I really dive into the research in regards to, you know, how do people influence other people. And that’s where all this stuff is coming from.

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