Somewhere in your first week on the job somebody from HR handed you a packet, walked you through it in about ten minutes, and you signed where they told you to sign. You had somewhere to be. It felt like paperwork.
That packet has been making decisions for you ever since.
Most members never go back and look at it. Not at year two, not at year ten, not ever. The defaults just run. And for a lot of guys those defaults are quietly costing them money every single pay period without any drama or warning to flag it.
This is not about what you should have done at orientation. It is about five minutes this week that could change what your retirement looks like.
Before Anything Else
Log into your 457 right now and confirm money is actually coming out of your check.
HR does not enroll you in the 457. That is the job of a representative from your plan provider, whether that is Nationwide, Empower, MissionSquare, or whoever holds your department's plan. That rep comes to orientation, walks you through the paperwork, and gets you set up. If you were a new hire who missed that meeting, got pulled away, or signed something and never followed up, there is a real chance your 457 has been sitting at zero while you assumed it was running. It happens more than you would think and nobody sends you a notice to tell you.
If you are enrolled and contributing, confirm your rate. Whatever percentage you set on day one is probably still what is coming out today. If you have gotten raises, step increases, or promotions since then and never adjusted that number, you are funding retirement at a rate a younger and less experienced version of you picked before he understood what any of this meant.
What Else Is Still Running on Default
Three other things in that enrollment packet matter more than most members realize.
Your pension enrollment. You were likely auto-enrolled, but do you actually understand what you agreed to? Contribution rate, vesting schedule, survivor benefit election. Most members cannot answer those questions without looking it up. Worth knowing.
Your beneficiary designations. This is the one that gets skipped the most and revisited the least. Your pension has a beneficiary form on file. Your 457 has a separate one. Your group life insurance has another. None of them talk to each other and a will does not override any of them. This money bypasses probate entirely and goes directly to whoever is named on those forms. If that form is blank, outdated, or reflects a different chapter of your life, there is no fix available after the fact.
Roth versus traditional 457. If your plan offers both, nobody explained the difference at the new hire meeting. Most members are in whichever version the rep enrolled them in by default. An upcoming issue breaks this down in full. For now just know the option exists and the default is not always the right answer for your situation.
Why the 457 Works and Everything Else Doesn't
Here is something I have watched play out over a career in this job.
Every account that requires a manual transfer eventually dies. Members open a Roth IRA with good intentions, fund it for a couple months, and then a slow overtime period hits or something breaks. The transfer gets skipped. Then it happens again. Then the account just sits there with $400 in it and nobody touches it for three years.
The 457 works because it never touches your checking account. The decision gets made once and the system handles the rest. Nobody has to find the discipline every two weeks. The money moves before the paycheck deposits and within a few months most people stop noticing it. That is not a character trait. That is structure.
In my time on this job the only accounts members stayed consistently disciplined with were the ones tied directly to the paycheck. Every other approach required ongoing willpower and willpower runs out. Automation does not.
That same structure can work for a taxable brokerage account. Fidelity, Schwab, and most major brokerages have routing and account numbers just like a bank. Call HR and ask if your payroll system supports split direct deposit. If it does, set up a route to your brokerage account and the money lands there before it ever touches checking — same mechanic as the 457, different account. (If you're with Fort Lauderdale, it does — you can set it up yourself in Infor under "My Pay.")
If your payroll system does not support it, the fallback is simple. Set up an automatic transfer from checking to your brokerage on payday. Same day the check hits, the money moves. It takes one extra step to set up and then runs on its own the same way. The result is functionally identical. Better yet, if you already have a second bank account sitting mostly unused — an old savings account a lot of guys have and never look at — route the payroll deduction there and have it auto-pull to your brokerage. The money never touches your checking, which is the account you actually watch, so you stop noticing the withdrawal every two weeks. The account you ignore becomes the one quietly building the position.
The Roth IRA is just as automatable, it just works through a slightly different path. Fidelity and Schwab both let you schedule a recurring transfer that pulls from your checking account on a date you choose. Set it for payday and the money moves the same day your check deposits. You never see it, you never have to decide, and the account funds itself every month without you touching it.
The one thing worth knowing is that you cannot route your paycheck directly into a Roth IRA the way you can with a brokerage account. The IRS requires contributions to come from you directly so the money has to land in checking first. In practice that one extra step makes no difference once the automation is set up. It still runs without you.
One more thing before you open that Roth IRA — there are income limits on who can contribute directly. If you had a high overtime year the math is worth checking before you fund it. A future issue covers the income thresholds and what your options are if you find yourself over the line.
All three can be running at the same time without you touching anything after the initial setup. 457 off the top before the check hits. Brokerage potentially straight from payroll if your system supports it. Roth pulling automatically from checking on payday. That is the whole system and none of it requires discipline after you build it.
The Case for Starting Small and Starting Now
The math on this is not complicated but most people never actually see it.
A 25 year old putting $100 a month into a Roth IRA and leaving it alone until 60 puts in $42,000 out of pocket over 35 years. At a 7% average annual return — a modest assumption by historical market standards — that account grows to roughly $181,000.
To land at that same $181,000 a 35 year old has to contribute $222 a month for 25 years. That is $66,700 out of pocket. Same destination, $24,700 more spent getting there, and ten fewer years of flexibility along the way.
The difference is not discipline or income. It is the decade that got skipped.
If you are in your first few years on this job that is the whole message. The amount matters less than you think right now. The date you start matters more than almost anything else.
If you are ten or fifteen years in and reading this thinking the early start ship has sailed, it has not. The math changes but the principle does not. You likely have more income now than you did as a probie, your major expenses may be more settled, and every dollar you automate today still has a decade or more to work before you separate. The best time to start was your first week on the job. The second best time is this week.
If you are close to DROP this issue matters more than you might think. Your final years are peak earning years. Base pay is at its highest, you may be picking up more overtime, and the kids are probably off the payroll. That combination means more discretionary income available right now than at any other point in your career.
The 2026 457 contribution limit is $24,500. Here is where it gets interesting depending on your age. Members 50 or older can contribute an additional $8,000 on top of that for a total of $32,500. Members who are 60, 61, 62, or 63 get a better deal — instead of the $8,000 age 50 catch-up they qualify for a special catch-up of $11,250, bringing the total to $35,750. You use one or the other, not both, and if you are in that 60 to 63 window the larger amount applies automatically. Members within three years of their plan's normal retirement age have access to a separate traditional catch-up provision that can bring the total contribution up to $49,000. An upcoming issue covers all of this in detail. For now just know that the contribution room available to you grows significantly as you get closer to retirement and most members never use it.
One note for higher earners. Starting in 2026, if your prior-year FICA wages from your department exceeded $150,000, your age-based catch-up contributions are required to be Roth contributions. This is measured per person on your own W-2 — if you're married, your spouse is tested separately on theirs, and filing jointly does not combine the two. It also only counts wages from the employer sponsoring the plan, so a second job's W-2 doesn't get added in. Check Box 3 on your W-2 and confirm with your plan rep before your next contribution change.
How much goes into each account depends on where you are in your career and what your retirement picture looks like. That is what Issue 4 is for. Right now the only wrong answer is nothing.
What To Do This Week
Log into your 457 and confirm money is actually coming out of your check. If you have not touched your contribution rate since you were hired, raise it by one percent today. One percent. You will not feel it after the first paycheck.
If you do not have a Roth IRA, open one and schedule an automatic transfer for whatever you can manage right now. If $50 a month is not realistic, open the account anyway and put in $10. The account that exists with $10 in it is infinitely ahead of the account that never got opened because the timing never felt right. You can raise the contribution the moment your situation changes. You cannot go back and start the clock earlier.
Call HR and ask if your payroll system supports split direct deposit. If it does, set up a route to your brokerage account and treat it the same way you treat the 457. If it does not, automate a transfer from checking on payday and the result is the same.
Then pull up your beneficiary designations. Your pension administrator has one on file. Your 457 provider has a separate one. HR has another for your group life policy. Regardless of where you are in your career confirm all three reflect what you actually want to happen. A promotion, a marriage, a divorce, a death in the family — any of those should have triggered an update. If it did not, now is the time.
I have watched members retire from this job with real financial security and members retire without it. The difference was rarely income. Most of us make similar money on similar pay scales working similar hours. The difference was almost always whether someone set the automation up early and left it alone or kept waiting for the right moment to get serious about it.
The right moment does not show up. You build it or you don't.
The members who built it did not do anything complicated. They set a contribution rate they could live with, automated whatever else they could, and let time do the work they could not do manually. Twenty years later the account statements looked like something they did not fully recognize because compounding is quiet until it isn't.
The ones who struggled were going to start next year. Then the year after that.
Got a topic you want covered, or a question about your own situation? Just hit reply.
Stay sharp, Steve Simac Shift to Wealth
Written by a firefighter currently in DROP, sharing what I have found useful along the way. Shift to Wealth is an educational newsletter. Nothing here is personalized financial advice. Always consult a qualified professional before making investment decisions.