8 Tips for Talking to Your Boss About Retirement

If you’re ready to talk to your boss about retirement plans, there’s a good chance you’ve already done a lot of planning.

You may already have checked to see how your retirement savings stack up. Now, it’s time to sit down with your manager and talk about specifics.

When planning for that meeting, here are eight tips to help things go as smoothly as possible.

Before you approach your boss about retirement, it’s probably a good idea to figure out your plans. For instance, what’s the exact retirement date you’re targeting? This is the one that’ll go on your official retirement letter.

You should probably read your company’s policies regarding retirement, start dates, and paid time off. You may want to push your retirement date out until after you use any PTO that may not be paid out when you retire.

While you’re taking the time to read company policies and documents, you should include any kind of retirement agreement. For example, you may have signed a retirement contract when you first came to the company.

You may need to ask human resources for this agreement, or look on an employee portal. Perhaps the agreement has a non-compete clause. It may be helpful to go over the agreement with a retirement advisor.

In a time of direct deposit and your money goes straight to an account, you may be someone who rarely looks at your pay stubs. But this could be a good step to take as you prepare to talk to your boss about retirement.

Those pay stubs and other related documents have important information about health insurance costs and withheld taxes. This is information that may help you in planning for retirement and setting a budget after you leave your job.

Once you have solidified your retirement plans, it’s probably a good idea to schedule a meeting with your boss as soon as possible. After all, if you’ve started to talk about it with co-workers, there’s a good chance your boss could hear about it from them.

You’ll also want your boss to know as soon as possible and stay on good terms, especially if you’re planning to stay on for a bit after you give notice.

When talking to your boss about your plans to retire, you may start to feel guilty about leaving. While this is normal, you may want to prepare for these feelings to arise both before and after you give the news to your boss.

Additionally, while you may want to finish up any big projects you were working on, you should consider whether you want to agree to take on anything new.

You may want to practice the conversation you plan to have with your boss and human resources about your retirement plans. Some personal questions will likely come up.

For instance, your employer may ask about your personal finances or whether you plan to get another job after leaving. While you may need to provide some details for official paperwork, you are not required to answer personal questions related to your money or specific plans.

Even though you want to talk to your boss directly about your retirement plans, it’s likely they will direct you to human resources or another contact within the organization. Once you share your plans with your boss, they can tell you who to contact to share your formal retirement letter.

You should ask them if there are other contacts you need to speak with once you leave. As a retiree, you may need to work with a specific team that handles queries from retired employees.

This is an important step that could significantly impact your retirement budget, so you should ask for details about your benefits. Will they continue as a retiree?

Once you check your company policies or with human resources, you should do some price shopping. Even if some benefits may continue, you should shop around to see if it may be cheaper to secure some benefits on your own.

After years of hard work, you deserve a stress-free retirement. One way to achieve that kind of retirement is to plan ahead, including how and when you’ll let your manager know you’re leaving.

There’s plenty of research to do ahead of that meeting. Keep in mind that you’re not alone in going through all of this. A trusted retirement advisor or friend may be an invaluable resource during this time.