Benefit plan guides
Find the Guide Written for Your Plan
Most retirement decisions are not really about the market. They are about the specific rules inside the plan you were enrolled in, which nobody sits you down and explains. These are written one plan at a time, and none of them require a conversation first.
A pension formula, a cash balance conversion, an ESPP lookback, a match that vests on a cliff. These are not general financial planning topics. They are specific mechanics with specific deadlines, and getting them wrong is expensive in a way that is usually invisible until years later.
Each guide covers how the plan actually works in plain language, which decisions are irreversible once made, what the timing changes about your taxes, and the questions worth asking before you sign anything. Where the public record does not answer something, each one says so rather than guessing.
The guides
Written One Plan at a Time
Find your employer below. If it is not here, the section after explains what to do.
Qualcomm
A four-tier match, and what the last $14,000 of deferral earns
The match is written in dollars you contribute rather than as a percentage of pay, and the rate collapses as you go. What the full match is actually worth, the concentration question sitting behind a large RSU position, and what the public record cannot tell you about this plan.
Intuit
The ESPP lookback, and a flat 22% on every vest
A six-month lookback buying at 85% of the lower of two prices, with one clause that can quietly restart your holding clock. Alongside it, RSU vests withholding at a flat rate well below most people's marginal rate, and what closes that gap before April.
Northrop Grumman
Two hire dates, three match schedules, one cash balance pension
Whether you have a pension, an automatic company contribution, or a better 401(k) match was decided by when you were hired. The cash balance formula and which subplan lets you take it early, plus the legacy plan names that may be on your statement.
SDG&E
An open pension, and the 11% most people never reach
One of the few pensions still admitting new hires. The greater-of comparison that can mean your statement understates what you will be paid, the Schwab brokerage window inside the savings plan, and the deferral rate that captures the whole match.
Southern California Edison
Which formula applies, and the survivor benefit a lump sum gives up
Two dates settled whether you are grandfathered and whether you have a pension at all, and neither was your choice. The greater-of benefit, the cash balance mechanics, and the spousal survivor annuity the company pays for outright.
Service Corporation International
A match that rises with service, up to 125%
The match rate steps up at six years and again at eleven, while auto-enrolment starts below the level that captures it. The three tiers and what each is worth, the Schwab brokerage window, and the three-year cliff on company money. Covers Dignity Memorial locations.
Southern California Permanente Medical Group
A Keogh level chosen once, and one limit shared with the 401(k)
The Keogh contribution level is elected as an Associate Physician and cannot be changed or suspended afterwards. What that level actually applies to, the single annual limit it shares with the 401(k) Plan for Permanente Medical Groups, the brokerage window in both plans, and when the money can move after you leave.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals
When the salaried pension can start, and how it is paid
For non-union salaried employees. How the Supplement 1-A pension formula works, the two routes to early retirement and the reduction before 65, the forms of payment including a lump sum, the TSA and supplemental savings plans beside it, and what the 2025 and 2026 changes mean for anyone planning to leave.
Nationwide
A pension that is mostly an annuity, and a Savings Plan that is not
For long-tenured associates of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Which Nationwide Retirement Plan formula your hire date put you on, why the lump sum limits leave most of the pension as a monthly annuity, and how the Savings Plan match and BrokerageLink fit into the same retirement.
Not listed
Your Plan Is Not on This List
That is the normal case, not the exception.
There are far more plans than there are guides, and new ones get written based on what people actually ask about. Two things worth knowing in the meantime.
Most of what these guides cover applies more broadly than the employer on the cover, a cash balance conversion works much the same way wherever you find it, so the closest one is usually still useful. And if you have an old plan sitting at a former employer, that question is the same regardless of who you worked for.
Bring the guide. Ask the question it raised.
The guides answer what the plan does. They cannot answer what you should do, because that depends on everything else in your situation. If reading one leaves you with a question, that is a good reason to have a conversation, and a conversation is where this should start anyway.
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