Thirty-nine, single mother, $54,000 in student loans. She owned the largest asset most people her age will ever hold and had never once looked at it.
Tanya is 39, teaches in Georgia, and is in her seventh year of creditable service. She's raising a two-year-old daughter on her own. She earns about $102,000 and owes about $54,000 in student loans that had been sitting in deferment.
She'd been putting off this conversation for years, for a reason she said out loud in the first ten minutes:
“I don't have anything to plan with.”
She had the largest asset most people her age will ever hold, and she'd never once looked at it.
The number she didn't know
Georgia's teacher retirement system is a defined benefit pension. Tanya's projected high-2 salary lands around $116,117, and by 60 she'll have enough service to produce a pension of roughly $5,225 a month — $62,700 a year, for life.
Add Social Security at 62, estimated around $2,000, and her guaranteed floor at 62 is about $7,225 a month.
Against her current fixed costs — a $1,700 mortgage and ordinary living expenses — that's a substantial surplus. Not “she's fine and should stop thinking about it,” but “she is not starting from zero, and she needs to stop treating herself as though she is.”
That reframe was the most valuable thing that happened in the meeting. Everything after it was mechanics.
The gap sitting in the middle of it
Her pension starts at 60. Social Security starts at 62.
That's two years where the second stream isn't flowing. It's not a crisis — the pension carries her — but it's exactly the kind of thing that gets discovered in the moment instead of planned for in advance. And discovering it in the moment is how people make bad decisions about claiming Social Security early and permanently reducing it.
We named it, sized it, and put it on the calendar twenty years ahead of time.
The debt, handled honestly
Fifty-four thousand dollars in student loans, coming out of deferment, on one income with a toddler. That's real and it isn't going away by being ignored.
The move was to get her onto an income-driven repayment plan immediately — not because it's clever, but because the alternative was a standard payment she couldn't sustain, and an unsustainable payment eventually becomes a default. Payment first, optimization later.
I want to be clear about the order of operations, because it's where a lot of people in my business get it backwards: we did not fund a retirement product before stabilizing the debt. A retirement contribution that gets liquidated in two years to cover a loan payment isn't retirement planning. It's a delayed emergency.
Then, the supplemental piece
Once the repayment plan was in place, we modeled what an additional funded income stream would do at three different contribution levels. The largest of the three would raise her guaranteed retirement income by nearly 50% over the base case.
I showed her all three, told her what each would cost her monthly today, and let her pick. She's the one who has to live on what's left.
Twenty-one years is the entire advantage. Tanya can't out-earn her way to security on a teacher's salary. What she has instead is time, a pension most private-sector workers would trade for, and the ability to make a decision now rather than at 58.
No question gets waved off.
Every account, every election, every date on the calendar gets examined — including the ones that turn out not to matter. You will never get a recommendation you can’t explain back to me in your own words. If something falls outside my lane, I’ll tell you that plainly instead of guessing at it.
When we’re finished, you won’t just have a plan. You’ll understand exactly how it works, and why it works for you.
Client names have been changed and identifying details omitted or altered to protect privacy. Figures reflect projections prepared at the time of each engagement and are specific to that individual’s circumstances. They are not guarantees and are not a recommendation to buy or sell any product. This content is for general educational purposes only and is not financial, tax, legal, or investment advice. Stream Income Group is an insurance and financial services firm. Any guarantees referenced are backed solely by the financial strength and claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Please consult qualified tax and legal professionals regarding your individual situation.