welcome to Beacon Education
Seminars for Federal Employees and Agencies
welcome to Beacon Education
Stephen Zelcer's Seminars for Federal Employees and Agencies
Financial Literacy & Pre-retirement
Enjoy the benefits of having an accomplished financial planner speak, teach and explain about federal benefits, and your money.
Customize your classes
You decide what you would like your employees to learn.
Leadership & Management
Incorporate business fundamentals into your seminar.
Prepackaged off the shelf Training
Choose from the topics below or suggest one when you speak with Stephen.
WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL SEMINAR?
Know your audience!
This is an ironclad, inviolable rule.
Want your employees to be engaged? Give them the topics they are interested in.
Want your employees to fall asleep? Give them a topic that they don’t really have an interest in.
This rule – know your audience – is so obvious, so intuitive, yet training officers still encounter employees that “kvetch” about the classes they offer. Why?
Because, it turns out that, not only must the training officer know their audience and select the topics of interest, but the instructor also needs to know the audience – the instructor needs to know the questions of interest, what questions will the audience ask, what decisions are weighing on their minds when they ask these questions, and can the instructor give the panoramic view of a subject that satisfactorily answers the questions.
This, too is obvious, but let me illustrate:
Imagine you’re a training officer, and you survey your employees and they tell you they are all interested in a comprehensive training on the Thrift Savings Plan. Excited with your survey results, you schedule a full-day training on the TSP. The day comes and the class fills, and the instructor reads off their power point slides, all the data they were able to copy and paste off the internet.
After a day of sleeping thru the training, your employees return to their desks and get a class evaluation emailed to them. They score the survey poorly and include the following comments:
- “Eh”
- “Didn’t need to be a full-day training”
- “I could’ve gotten the same information reading a brochure. Didn’t need a class for that.”
What could the training officer have done differently? They could have hired a trainer that knows their audience…
…And, my guess is, that’s why you’re on this page.
I’ve learned a lot about Federal employees over the years. Through my experience of personally delivering over 300 pre-retirement seminars, teaching thousands of Federal employees, and working 1-on-1 with hundreds of federal individuals or couples, I’ve learned (and am still learning!) the questions that are really pressing on the minds of your employees, and I have arranged my presentation to be as engaging as possible.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what federal employees are saying in my testimonials below.
It’s time for your agency to deliver the full “know your audience” experience. Contact me today to get started.
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Beacon Education Offerings
Lunch & Learn Topics
Top Retiree Mistakes: Working for 30 years is a long time, right? Well, retirement could last just as long, if not longer! Learn about some key pitfalls that await the unprepared retirees, and the ways to avoid them. Take the right steps now to increase the longevity of your finances and your retirement.
• What’s your retirement game plan?
• Is L-Income fund right for retirees?
• Long Term Care woes!
• Estate Planning woes!
Eligibility for benefits: How do you qualify?
• Computation of benefits
• Benefits for family members • Survivor benefits
• Taking early vs. late
• Spousal Benefits
• Is Life Insurance necessary for everybody?
• Calculate what amount if insurance your survivor needs
• Assess what type of Life Insurance policy is best for you:
• FEGLI, Survivor Benefits, Term, Whole Life
“Is there a chance you will outlive your retirement income? Not if you have an annuity! But not all annuities are created the same. Find out the pros and cons of different annuities, including the TSP annuity.”
• What is an annuity?
• Fixed vs. Variable annuities
• The different TSP annuity payout options
There are specific retirement times in a year, a month, a pay-period that will yield you more money.
Learn how to:
• Maximize COLAs
• Minimize taxation
• Get paid the quickest
• Get free money!
Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Over our careers we have a lot of money pass through our hands. Learn the ways to capitalize on this money simply by minimizing your losses. In this course we’ll explore commonly overlooked, underutilized and misunderstood techniques to retain as much money as you can before it slips away. Topics will include:
• Understanding negative rates of return
• Scheduled losses: taxes & debt
• Lost opportunity cost
• Comparing negative returns to positive returns
• Repaying Loans (student, auto, home, credit cards)
People plan for retirement and they plan for death (ie. Estate Planning), but people neglect planning for that period in life between retirement and death. It’s not the happiest of topics, but the need for long term care my compromise the best of retirement and estate plans. Learn what you can do, in this class on Long Term Care. Topics will include:
• What is Long Term Care (LTC)?
• How much you’ll need to self-insure
• Medicaid Planning
• Factors that influence the cost of LTC insurance
• What you can and can’t get with LTCFEDS
“Pay taxes now or pay taxes later? Or do both? Learn how to strategize the taxation of your TSP as well as your other investments”
• Tax savings adds to your overall investment return
• Now vs. Later
• Non-Qualified accounts
• Tax Diversification
Financial Literacy & Pre-Retirement Topics
•CSRS & CSRS Offset –computing your pension.
• Eligibility for retirement
• COLAs • Maximum CSRS pensions
• Early retirement –VERA & VSIP
• CSRS Offset interaction with Social Security
• Disability Benefits
• Hi-3
• Creditable Service
• Deposits and Re-deposits –understand the calculations
• Military service and how it affects your pension
• Survivor benefits –In-service & post-service death
• Voluntary Contributions program
• Sick leave & Annual leave
• Choosing a retirement date
• Taxation of your Federal Pension
• Important forms and resources
• FERS & TransFERS–computing your pension.
• Eligibility for retirement
• COLAs
• Early retirement –MRA+10
• VERA & VSIP
• Disability Benefits
• Hi-3
• Creditable Service
• Deposits and Re-deposits –understand the calculations
• Military service and how it affects your pension
• Survivor benefits –In-service & post-service death
• Sick leave & Annual leave
• Choosing a retirement date
• Taxation of your Federal Pension • Important forms and resources
•Health benefits before and after retirement
• Eligibility and enrollment rules
• Pre-Tax payment of premiums
• FEHB for survivors before and after retirement.
• Relationship to Medicare
• How does Social Security interact with your Federal pension?
• Eligibility for benefits: How do you qualify?
• Computation of benefits
• Disability provisions
• Benefits for family members • Survivor benefits
• Taking Social Security “early”
• Taking your spouse’s benefit
• “Windfall Elimination Provision” (WEP)
• “Government Pension Offset” (GPO)
• Is Life Insurance necessary for everybody?
• Determine what amount and type of Life Insurance policy is best for you
• Life insurance before and after retirement
• Investing in Life insurance?
• General coverage rules
• Basic life insurance and available options
• Eligibility and cost
• Parts A, B and Part D of Medicare: the basics
• When to enroll?
• Late Penalties
• Do you need Medicare if you already have FEHB?
• Primary vs. Secondary Coverage
• What is Long Term Care (LTC)?
• Eligibility and enrollment
• Medicare/Medicaid and LTC
• How much you’ll need to self-insure
• Benefit choices and types of care covered
• Factors that influence the cost of LTC insurance
• Cost of living adjustments
• Health Care FSA & Dependent Care FSA & Limited Expense (LEX) FSA
• Eligibility and enrollment rules
• Allowable expenses
• Tax treatment
• FSA vs. HSA
• Understanding negative rates of return
• “A penny saved is a penny earned!”
• Raising the standard of living
• Managing your money and staying out of debt
• Mortgages, Refinancing, Reverse Mortgages
• Credit and Credit Cards
• Other forms of debt
• Strategies for saving on your taxes today
• Understanding “Income” and Income Tax
• Investments and taxes
• Cost Basis, Capital Gains and Stepped-Up Basis
• Roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA
• Taxation of TSP -Roth vs. Traditional
• Non-qualified accounts
• Taxation of your Federal Pension
• General rules and procedures
• Agency Contributions & Matching
• Catch-up contributions
• Inter-fund transfers within the TSP
• TSP Loans and In-service withdrawals
• Post-Service Withdrawal Options
• Required Minimum Distributions
• Beneficiaries
• Investment Options –The C, F, G, I, S and L funds
• Bonds vs. Bond Funds
• Bonds vs. Stocks
• The 3 components of Growth
• Investment policy statement
• Understanding Rates of Return
• Identifying Risks
• Understanding time horizons
• Timing the Market -Seriously!
• Growth vs. income portfolios
• Defining your investment “Need”
• Diversification & Correlation
• Standard Deviation, Modern Portfolio Theory & Efficient Frontiers
• Investments and taxes
• Sequence of Returns
• How to avoid running out of your TSP
• Protection strategies and Insurance
• TSP Annuity
• Personal Game Plan:
• Define your retirement “Want”
• Personal Wellbeing
• Daily Structure
• Financial Game Plan:
• Define your expenses
• Regular Expenses
• Irregular Expenses
• Define your income sources
• Define your investment need
• What is estate planning?
• Probate and how to avoid it
• Ownership & Titling of property
• The functions of Wills
• The functions of Trusts
• Estate and inheritance taxes • Gifting & Charity
• Planning for incapacity
• Guardianship and conservancy
• The Various Powers of Attorney (POA)
• Living Wills & Advance Medical Directive
• Medicaid Planning
Leadership & Management Topics
Using one of the world’s most widely used leadership model and assessment, the Leadership Challenge® Workshop is designed to help aspiring and accomplished leaders alike achieve their personal best and improve their effectiveness in a leadership role. The workshop is based on the Five Practices of Exemplary Leaders described in the bestseller “The Leadership Challenge” by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. Through a series of exercises, the workshop enables leaders to identify their strengths and development needs, clearly communicate values, inspire others to achieve a shared vision, search out opportunities to innovate, build collaboration and teamwork, and recognize the accomplishments of others. Participant materials are purchased through The Leadership Challenge organization
This workshops is designed to help people build more effective leadership and working relationships based on an understanding of different behavioral styles. The FIRO-B workshop is based on the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO) theory of personality and leadership style and its research-validated model. Similari