Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

A good question to ask your manager, who would likely enjoy getting you a good answer and going over what is best for you. Here expect no responder to have actually worked for state farm, or the one guy who lives here giving smarmy responses. Two responses here are good both the "why are you not using internal resources" and the "its taxable use it"

Talk with your manager, dont post at this place, its pretty much HCL spam and the no lifer who lives here giving childish responses.

Just retired. You must designate the percentage withholding on the application forms so it’s at your discretion. I kept my levels the same as originally set for my general payroll levels (which I kept moderately high) as I’d rather not end up owing money at tax time. But I generally am very careful about overspending in real time knowing that my take home pay is skimpy. May want to speak to your accountant about strategies that would work best for your own situation.

I retired in 2019, my last workday was August 16th. I used 60 days PTO (max I was allowed by management), my retirement date was October 1st. The taxes on the PTO days were my standard working tax rate. My leftover PTO days were paid in a lump sum and the tax rate was close to 40%. From a tax standpoint, much better to take the days. Besides, not working and getting paid was wonderful!

Around 2005 SF stopped allowing PTO to be used for pension calculations but many were grandfathered in depending on their age at the time of the transition. Call HR and find out if you are in the lucky group that still gets to add the unused PTO to inflate the pension

All of it is taxable. Take the lump sum and pay off debt or take a nice vacation. Give two weeks notice and there is nothing claims or anyone else can do. Some take the lump sum for the increase of health care from 62 to 65. This is if you have your 35 years of service.

It's really hard to believe that this information is not readily available to everyone there. The Farm really should create some sort of internal internet pages so employees could just 'look it up'.........

The lump sum no longer counts towards your pension if you cash it out. Depending on your department, they may let you use it up and retire while on PTO. In claims, they are not letting us do that anymore. I think they are capping it at 90 days before retirement can be used and cash out the rest.

That is if you have a choice between the two, they might make you cash it in, in the not so distant future.

Has to be your individual choice. They say “ time is money”……but it comes down to which one you want more.

It’s taxable and therefore it’s better to use than to cash out.