The letter from the Maryland State Retirement System sat on my desk for almost a year. Yes, I’m one of those.
The thing was, they wanted me to call or write them with my current address—the IRS had forwarded the letter—just so they could update their records. I couldn’t see why it mattered, since I’d quit the half-time Kent County Public Library job at least 25 years ago. But a tiny voice inside me said, hey, you never know, so after one attempt to phone where I got put on hold, I kept the letter folded in a pile of other things I promised to take care of and never did, but might someday. My intention was to write a physical letter, since I hate talking on the phone, and one afternoon about six weeks ago the golden impulse struck, so I sat down to do just that.
I dug out the letter and unfolded it completely for the very first time. Way down at the bottom, it said: “You can also email us at…”
Oh. Heh. And of course I did.
A few days later, I received an email that read in part:
Based on a review of your account, you have a vested benefit which you were eligible to start collecting at age 62. To begin the process of collecting a benefit, we suggest that you complete a form 9, Application for an Estimate of Service Retirement Allowance. You may download the form from our website…etc., etc.
Now this was news to me, but I downloaded the form and mailed it off immediately. If they were wrong, I’d just as soon get the money first and then have them try to get it back. For a few days I had great fun with this, imagining how soon I could pay off my credit cards or buy a Jeep. But I knew my few years as part-time office manager couldn’t possibly count for much of a “vested benefit”—though even 30 bucks a month would help, I told myself. And then I forgot all about it until this afternoon, when I walked out to check the mail.
In the box was a packet of forms to fill out to receive my benefit, the cover letter said. Reading the whole thing this time looking for the bottom line, I found it: $35.03 per month for the rest of my life, OR a lump sum payment of $4,545.80 and never darken their door again. Anticipating my response, the helpful lady in Baltimore had highlighted every line in the instructions relating to the lump sum payment. It was like I didn’t even have a choice.
Those forms won’t be sitting on my desk as long as that first letter, and I won’t feed it all to Mr. Visa, though he’ll get a hunk. I want the passage of this money through my checking account to knock over chairs and and scare the dogs. Let ‘em know what’s coming down the pike. Get ready for more, you bastards!!!
I know what to do with this stuff now.
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I’m a great mocker at bureaucracy, but sometimes you have to take your hat off to the beast. We unitary individuals racket through time carelessly, forgetting or renouncing whole tracts of our lives, mislaying thousands of objects, discarding people, just moving on as the great river messily carries us along with everyone else. But back there in Maryland the machines and their operators hadn’t forgot about you, John. They remembered every hour of time you spent in the service of Kent County, knew the time had come for you to get what was due to you and calculated your entitlement precisely. More than that, they went searching for you through the wide world like the faithful shepherd searching for the lost sheep of the parable and, when they found you, really gave you little choice but to take money from their outstretched generous bureaucratic hands.
Ordinary humans don’t act like that. Most of us would be happy to avoid paying an old debt, never mind seeking out the debtor – if we hadn’t outright self-complacently forgot the debt in the first place. Or, more likely in today’s litigious world, raised pettifogging defences against doing what we’d promised to do so long ago.
So, dear Maryland State Retirement System, until a better candidate for the job comes along, I dub you the last righteous human institution. You may be the Good Lord himself.
The thing is, I was sure I’d cashed out when I quit that job all those years ago, but evidently not! Or there was some matching contribution lying around somewhere, earning interest. It can’t have been much.
Pretty amazing, though.
Money!! Welcome to the world of tech buying indecision!! Whatever you buy will be obsolete the moment you pay for it. Welcome to the world of Frustration Plus!
I’m not buying anything except a pair of shoes! I owe Visa and Amex. We want to move, and I’ll need a deposit on a new rental. We have to go to Iowa in September. Right there I could spend this boon three or four times over.
But the vibes are encouraging. Let there be more!
Here’s a slightly more cynical way of looking at what they are offering: That 4500 bucks they want to pay you is good riddance for them. That principal sum could never, under any reasonable actuarial assumptions, generate the income required to pay your $400 monthly stipend for the rest of your life (with normally a half-pay survivor’s benefit to the spouse thereafter). And just the administrative cost of spitting out and sending off the monthly checks and annual tax slips and keeping track of you would add many thousands more over time. –I take back my over-blown praise – their motivations are as compromised as those of all our dodgy institutions.
By the way, before you spend that money, it would be wise to check with them as to how much they intend to withhold as tax deductions at source.
What “$400 monthly stipend”??? THAT I’d take.
Oh sure, there will be tax taken out. We ARE talking about Maryland, after all.
Unexpected money. I like it!
Yes, GRAB THE VIBE!!! It can happen to you, too.
$400 annually. I misspoke. Wishful thinking, no doubt. But a pretty good annual return on $4500.
Yes, it is. And after about 11 years, my total take would surpass $4,500. But I don’t know that the dollar will even be around then, and Mr. Visa is very hungry.