What happens if you die? Could your husband support himself without your pension until 62?
I guess he can finally go get a freaking job. KIDDING!! This is a great question, thanks for bringing it up.
So if I die before I start collecting the pension, he gets all of the money that I have contributed to the pension, plus interest. So, math time:
The last statement I have handy is from 2013, and says as of 6/30/13 I had $37,187 (contributions + interest). I went through all my pay stubs from then until now, and I've contributed another $24,459, giving us $61,646. I have no idea how much interest would have accrued since then and there will be another year+ of contributions (~$9k+) and interest. I assume he'd have to pay normal income taxes on whatever he got. Let's be conservative and just assume he nets $61k. Add that to the $579k we'll have in the stash at retirement time and that gives us $640k. At a 4% withdrawal rate that gives $25,600 per year, or $2,133 per month. Plus his VA income of $263 that's $2396/month.
Without me around, I think its reasonable to assume the following expense categories can be halved: OOP health/dental costs, clothing, gifts (no need to buy shit for my family), groceries, car registration, car insurance, and car service/replacement (since he'll ditch the 2nd car). That adds up to $542/month. Subtract that from our $3k planned expenses and we have $2458. Pretty darn close. We have some wiggle room in the budget with discretionary costs, so I think its doable, but do I want to leave him that close to the edge?
If I should die after I start collecting, he gets 60% of my pension amount, which would be $1238/month. Figure his expenses go down to the $2458 as described above. ($29,496/year, let's call it $30k). I'm not sure the best way to model this situation in FireCalc and cFireSIM, mainly because the $579k stash will have been drawn down... but by how much? If I input a $579k stash with the 30k expenses, VA money and reduced pension income starting in 10 years, it's 100% success, but I don't think that accurately reflects the situation since we'll be drawing the $579k down faster until my early demise. I'll have to play with this. The good news is he'll be 60 years old by the time I start collecting the pension, so SS wouldn't be far away for him.
I sat Mr Taggart down last night and ran this scenario by him, and basically asked what he would want to do if I died before him. The first thing out of his mouth was that he'd leave CA and go somewhere with a lower COL. Apparently he's put a lot of thought into this! :) Our house is probably worth $400k (after the remodel work) so he'd have a lot of potential there. He has family in Ohio, although he didn't seem enthusiastic when I asked if he might consider relocating there. One of the ideas we've kicked around for our retirement days is getting a camper and slow travelling the US, camping and hiking, thru-hiking the PCT and AT, and this is what he said he would want to do if I died. I think he'd have enough money to be able to do those things, especially if he chose to sell or rent the house.
In any event, I need to play with the calculators and spreadsheets and see if I can come up with more solid numbers for this situation (if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears). I think worst-case scenario is I get 100-200k of term life insurance on me, which shouldn't cost too much.
Thanks again for the responses!