Find Financial Advisors for California Public Employees (CalPERS) Members: Q&A Insights from the Experts

Looking for a financial advisor who specializes in working with California Public Employees (CalPERS) members? You’re in the right place. Below, you’ll find advisors who understand California Public Employees (CalPERS) benefits and compensation — along with their answers to common financial questions from California Public Employees (CalPERS) members.

Whether you recently joined California Public Employees (CalPERS) or you’ve advanced into a management or executive leadership role over a multi-year career, making smart decisions about your income and California Public Employees (CalPERS) benefits can have a lasting impact on your financial future. For example:

✅ Do you know the right moves to get the greatest value from the California Public Employees (CalPERS) benefits available to you?

✅ If you’re thinking about leaving California Public Employees (CalPERS) for another job or planning to retire in a few years, are you taking the right steps today to receive all the compensation and benefits you’ve earned?

Why California Public Employees (CalPERS) Members Work with a Specialist Financial Advisor

Throughout the year, California Public Employees (CalPERS) provides its members with updates about their benefits, ranging from health insurance to a defined-benefit pension, a 457(b) or Thrift Savings Plan, and other benefits available to members. While the organization offers many useful resources and access to knowledgeable staff who can assist with questions, you’ll also find financial professionals not affiliated with California Public Employees (CalPERS) who specialize in helping California Public Employees (CalPERS) members make the most of their income and benefits.

Whether you work at one of California Public Employees (CalPERS)’s offices, from a regional hub, or remotely from home, you may have questions about your compensation package and benefits better suited for a financial professional who can offer unbiased advice and guidance.

Sensitive topics — like the steps you should take before quitting your job at California Public Employees (CalPERS) to work elsewhere, protecting yourself in advance of a layoff or workforce reduction, or deciding when you should plan to retire — are all conversations that may be more comfortable with a trusted financial advisor.

Should You Hire a California Public Employees (CalPERS) Specialist or a Local Financial Advisor?

You’ll likely find dozens of nearby financial advisors well-suited to help you reach your money goals with a personalized plan. But it can be harder to find a financial advisor who specializes in serving California Public Employees (CalPERS) members. Fortunately, many financial advisors offer virtual services, so you can meet online no matter where you (or they) live — which means you can hire a specialist financial advisor who lives hundreds of miles away if their knowledge and experience working with California Public Employees (CalPERS) members is the better fit for your unique needs.

💡 In the Q&A below, you’ll gain insights from financial advisors who work with California Public Employees (CalPERS) members to help them make smart decisions, get the most value from their compensation and benefits, reduce their money stress, and prepare for a comfortable retirement.

🙋‍♀️ Have a question not yet answered? Use the form below to submit your question. You can also contact financial advisors directly to set up an introductory call or contact them with your questions.

Q&A: Financial Planning Tips for California Public Employees (CalPERS) Members

In this section, you’ll learn how you can make the most of your California Public Employees (CalPERS) employee benefits and gain valuable tips from financial advisors who specialize in working with California Public Employees (CalPERS) members.

Financial Advisor Q&A  ·  California Public Employees (CalPERS) Members

Elias Young, CFP®

Fiduciary Financial Advisors  ·  Greater Sacramento, CA  ·  Serves clients nationwide

Specializes in financial planning for California Public Employees (CalPERS) members

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Elias Young is a financial advisor based in the Sacramento area who specializes in offering financial planning services to California Public Employees (CalPERS) members. Elias helps clients get the most value from their California Public Employees (CalPERS) benefits and compensation package so they can enjoy life and feel confident about their financial future.

QAs a financial advisor with experience helping California Public Employees (CalPERS) employees save for their retirement, how do you help them make the most of their employee benefits?

I help members of CalPERS by looking at their own individual financial picture, and helping to assess exactly how they should be utilizing things like Savings Plus. For instance, there is a 457(b) and a 401(k), so part of helping is assessing how to best utilize them.

QWhen you first speak with a California Public Employees (CalPERS) employee, what questions do you like to ask to better understand their unique circumstances and determine how you can best help them achieve their goals?

I like to take time to talk about what goals they have, and what kind of timeline they are thinking about when it comes to achieving those goals. I also like to find out more about them personally, to try to help take planning beyond the numbers and math to personalize the advice I am giving as much as possible.

QFor California Public Employees (CalPERS) employees thinking about leaving the company to accept a job elsewhere, what actions do you recommend they take before resigning and shortly thereafter?

I would encourage them to think about whether the new job is within a system that has reciprocity with CalPERS, which enables benefits to continue growing. If the new company involves leaving public service entirely, I would first suggest looking at the immediate opportunity costs (like if you miss out on vesting by leaving now), and then evaluating what your long-term plan looks like based on the new benefits package vs your existing one.

QFor California Public Employees (CalPERS) employees approaching retirement age, how do you recommend they prepare to make the transition from living off their salary to relying upon other sources of income?

First off, understanding that your pension estimate is not final, and to think about anything that may materially affect it (for instance, if you were divorced, is your ex-spouse entitled to any part of your benefit). After that, map out what your actual lifestyle costs are, and figure out how much income your other assets could potentially generate. Then, coming up with a longer-term cash flow projection to make sure things look OK, factoring in things like inflation, market volatility, taxes, etc.

QFor California Public Employees (CalPERS) employees who have managed their finances on their own to this point, what would you suggest they consider to help them decide if they should begin working with a financial advisor at this stage in their lives?

The question usually isn’t whether you’ve managed your finances capably. It’s whether the decisions ahead are the same kind you’ve been making. You may also be considering an earlier retirement, which requires intentionality. Much of what CalPERS members face approaching retirement is harder to reverse after the fact: pension option elections, the retirement date that locks in your age factor, whether to purchase service credit, how to bridge income if you retire before Social Security or Medicare begin.

Then, the years after your paycheck stops but before Social Security and required minimum distributions raise your taxable income are often your lowest-income stretch, which opens a window of time for specific strategies: Roth conversions, realizing capital gains in a lower bracket, and drawing from accounts in a deliberate order. The window is finite, so much of the value is in recognizing it and acting before it closes. Retiring earlier lengthens that window and gives those strategies more runway, as long as you planned ahead and saved enough to support the additional years.

QWhat are some of the unique financial planning challenges you commonly see among your clients who are California Public Employees (CalPERS) employees and how do you help them overcome these obstacles?

The recurring one is that a large guaranteed pension reshapes the plan, so standard advice written for people living off a portfolio doesn’t fit as well. A CalPERS member’s largest asset may actually be an income stream that can’t be rebalanced or left to heirs, which changes how everything else fits together. Things like how much to hold in stocks, how much cash to keep in reserve, and whether life insurance has a role have a different thought process. A few patterns come up often. Savings Plus accounts may also sit underused because the pension may feel sufficient, which can leave the early retirement and tax-planning years with less flexibility. Much of what I do is sequencing choices before they’re made, running two or three specific scenarios instead of general rules, and keeping each decision in view of the others.

QFor highly compensated California Public Employees (CalPERS) employees and executives, are there any special benefits you believe it’s important to take into consideration when preparing their financial plan?

The PEPRA compensation cap makes it more important to be taking advantage of Savings Plus. For members hired in 2013 or later, only pay up to an annual limit counts toward your pension. The higher your salary, the larger the share of your income that the pension isn’t replacing. That makes the supplemental accounts and your own investing more important. The theme is that a strong pension can mask how much of a high earner’s retirement still depends on decisions they’re making on their own, and the point of planning is to make those decisions on purpose rather than by default.

QBecause CalPERS members can purchase service credit (‘air time’ or prior service) to boost their pension benefit, how do you evaluate whether making that lump-sum or installment payment purchase makes financial sense compared to deploying those same dollars elsewhere?

This is where modeling alternative scenarios becomes important. For decisions like this, I like to run the decisions through financial models, measure what the pros/cons are, and to see if one choice or the other comes out as the better option.

QHow do you advise CalPERS members on coordinating their pension income with Social Security benefits, particularly given that some CalPERS-covered positions may be subject to the Windfall Elimination Provision or Government Pension Offset rules?

This one has become much simpler after the Social Security Fairness Act, which repealed both Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), and Government Pension Offset (GPO) rules. So now these no longer reduce Social Security benefits, assuming you paid into the system.

This is also a good example of the benefit of having a financial plan, and revisiting/updating it periodically to adjust accordingly as things change.

Considering a financial advisor who specializes in working with California Public Employees (CalPERS) members?

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Fiduciary Financial Advisors is a Registered Investment Adviser. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and there is no guarantee that any forecast or projection discussed will come to pass. Third-party data referenced above has not been independently verified by Fiduciary Financial Advisors.

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