All right. Well, here we are. Number two. Number two. Two of you do. Who knows how many to. It seems so daunting to. But anyway, glad you’re here. You’re out there sweating away, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. So hot. Terrible time to be. I feel terrible every time I drive by any law enforcement guy out there standing out there directing traffic, working an accident. Yeah. So he tried to stay in the car as much as possible. So, you know, I guess that helps promote the thought process of early retirement. Sure. Yeah. If you get asked quite a bit why you like you said, you know, all that gear heavier, is it? You know, is it pretty. Gets pretty hot, doesn’t it? I’m like. It does. Yeah. I just. I would think that would be the best motivation of all, you know, being out there in bad weather, you know, But maybe not. Maybe the politics. Maybe it’s the asshole people. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think you just. Can you honestly, the weather stuff, you just get used to it. I’ve got to say, the majority of my my friends and family that are in that profession seem to really like it. You know, they don’t they only gripe. I really here are people who get upset at the the political jockeying internally. I hear that. I hear that’s the most grumbling that I hear more than anything else. Yeah. Job is really the job is fun. The job itself is fun. That’s usually, you know, I always tell people it’s not really as many assholes as you deal with on the street. It’s really the kind of usually internal stuff that that frustrates people the most and all the, you know, not feeling like they’re supported by upper management, things like that. That’s usually the things that people really gripe about. It’s not usually, you know, you know, going into it that you’re going to be dealing with assholes. So that’s not a big deal. But you don’t expect to get it on the side of, you know, the other cops. So I think that’s where people get frustrated. Do you see a lot of do you see a lot of people like jumping out of the job early because it’s just the mental wear and tear that and the emotional side that you that some people maybe internalize from seeing all the terrible situations that you must grow up on. You see much of that for early retirement or people just like I want to do something else. I think when I started no, I think now that mental health has become more not prevalent, what’s the word? There’s been more of a focus on mental health, not just like military, but now they’ve started to focus, you know, like, you know, cops and firefighters see a lot of messed up stuff, too. So maybe they need to. And I think once you start to get into that, I think more people have been pulling the plug early because of that. They’re like, I don’t need to see another, you know, dead baby or, you know, another really horrific accident or something like, you know, things like that. So some people, yeah, they’re not. I think in the past it was always the you know, you put on a show a weakness like it’s always you’re always on, Does it matter? You hide your feelings. Yeah. You tough hide your feelings. You don’t talk about stuff like that. You don’t tell anybody that you’re hurting or whatever it is. And probably led to a lot of alcoholics and things like that or other other issues that came up because they’d find other ways to vent instead of talking about it with people. But one one thing that I will give credit to our department that I worked for, the department that I work for is they’ve been really they’ve put a big focus on it and they’re really big about, hey, talk about stuff and, you know, we offer counseling, you know, go see counselors and like their supervisors are good. Now we’re there if they see something. And maybe in the past they never talked about it. But now at least they’ll go, hey, everything’s good with you. Like, can I get resources for you? Like things like that. So. that’s good. It do. Do you know, I would. It’s do people I don’t know it seems like in a lot of government positions and again, me being from Florence, which is a generational government town. Yeah, right. From law enforcement through, you know, trying and trying em and assessors and everything else in between pertaining to government regulations. A in a county environment, it seemed like the goal with majority of people that were non-law enforcement was to get to retirement as quickly as possible, start pulling their retirement and then go right back into a different something else. That kind of double dip. Yeah, to double dip to get to that second retirement. I knew a guy who had three retirement pensions and it seemed like that was the path, but not with law enforcement. It seems like I don’t hear that so much, but I do hear like, I’m trying to get to my 20 or I’m trying get my 25. I mean, it could you had you have the option to stick around to your 65. I mean, you could. You could. Yeah. And so do people. I mean, if you like, the job is just because it’s physical. It’s yeah, I mean it does wear on you wearing wearing all the gear and I’ll be the first to tell you I have a bec I have back issues from work, I have hip issues now from work and it’s been and a lot of it I herniated disc in my back like the my second year on the job doing it like on on duty that led to you know few years of dealing with having a herniated disc on the right side of my body, which caused kind of my everything to kind of be off. But then you have belt and everything on your waist which jacks you up and you’re sitting in a car because you do sit in a car quite a bit like it’s not all, yeah, you’re out of your car doing stuff, but there’s definitely a lot of time spent in your car and it’s not comfortable sitting in a car with a belt gear duty belt around your side about that. So it, it, you know, it makes you sit in all funky. You take weight pressure up and pressure points. And there’s some of like the older cars that we’ve the newer cars that well, I shouldn’t say that because the newest cars that we have I don’t like the center consoles because they’re much bigger. So it makes you have to sit weird Again, we had a there was a time frame for like the last maybe the newest tahoe’s that we’re starting to get have this new center console and makes you have to sit like especially because of my, you know, my guns on my right side and it it does it hits on the thing so I have to kind of the just how I sit but there are some of the I guess they’re older cars now but like newer but older but they had more room there so I didn’t have to do that so I could just sit normally and my gun would go next to the seat, you know, was fine. But then getting out of cars too, like that’s something I don’t think people and that was something I learned after I hurt my back that most people don’t get out of. I would say probably it’s probably 90% of people exit your car the wrong way, and that’s eventually wears down the hip joint from that hip. And instead of instead of, you know, stepping out like that, instead of like turn your body and then stepping out, but then add gear on to that constantly. So then you’re putting all this wear and tear on hips and all your joints down there and it just and you’re in and out of the car all day long. So that’s just constant wear. Yeah. So it’s Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I just, I didn’t realize why people got out, but other than if it was a physical or that was mental, they just got tired of it. But that’s probably the most. But more likely the physical, You think I don’t. I mean, I always, I always tell myself that I was like. Like, I think like I said in the last one, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop, even though, like, you look back at things that I’m like, my mom has stuff. When I was little talking about how I wanted to be a detective and all this stuff, but like, to be like a patrol cop, like, I didn’t grow up. That’s not what I wanted to do. Or so maybe the investigative side of things is more along, like, and that’s why I like what I do now. I like that kind of stuff, and I enjoy that. Do you see the investigators sticking around a lot longer? Investigators do like they have. A they definitely they don’t have all the gear on all the time. And they go, you know, so they have a better, I guess, a better balance. It’s still a stressful job because like a lot of our detectives, they have gigantic caseloads that are unmanageable. Then you can’t you can’t keep up with it like you have property crime detectives and some of the you know, some of the other details where they just have, you know, however many I think one one property crime detective told me once that they had like 140 cases in their in their queue and they’re getting however many new ones a day in a week, like they’re never going to catch up. So they have stuff for their like once behind because they have to triage, they have to prioritize. Okay, this is a higher priority one. I got to focus on this one. Some of these other ones where I have like, you know, no follow up and no suspect info, things like that or no evidence they’re going to get pushed back. But then if you look at it from the grand scheme of things, from like a civilian perspective, you know, every person, their case, no matter what it is, is important to them. Yeah. And if it gets pushed off because they don’t have the evidence or they don’t have any follow up, you know, the detectives see that. But the victim is, you know, why the hell is mine taken? But yeah, otherwise it’s six months that has taken them to, you know. Well we got broken into here and nobody showed up and it’s just like, well what was. They took the call, the dispatcher took the call and I, we told them what was stolen, which was roughly around, I don’t know, 20, $30,000 worth of gear. Yeah. And then. Right. Well, here’s your case number. Turn it in. You sure it’s. Yeah. Nobody even showed up to even try to fight, because what do you do when you find the crackhead that that broken. Right. The other problem is and you guys maybe would have had some of this stuff just because of the price of everything. But a lot of people don’t keep serial numbers and that’s really how they track stuff. So like when you have like your say, your laptop gets stolen, if you don’t give like the model number and like the like the Brandon model number does nothing for sure, you know, for something out there and yeah, 100, 100, you know, iMacs or whatever. But if you had the sale number then they can track it. And not everybody keeps that stuff. They throw boxes away and they don’t know. Yeah. So that’s another issue. And I try to tell that the people like you know if you and that was actually something I had thought about in the past, like, you know, maybe that could be some kind of little side hustle like, you know, come in and document everything for people because that’s the stuff that they need. Interesting business concepts are all these little different spinoffs or don’t take whoever out there listen. That’s right. Yeah. Whatever. Somebody do it, call us or tire help once be part of that business plan. Yeah, I don’t know, I it’s not a bad idea. I mean, I mean, that’s actually a really good idea. People don’t do it. I’m telling you all the time. Calls all the time. They don’t do it. They don’t take any stuff that would help. So. So now you know what your your your business ventures is going to be potentially when you retire. I know I’ve heard you kind of talk about, you know, contemplating retirement because I think your what you’re eligible what, in like two years is it 2026. And so the kind of the question is, do you go do you retire and check out at that point and put on another career or do you continue on for another five or, you know, well select? So that goes back to your question. I can I’ll be 46 when I can retire. So I could have a whole other career collecting my pension and working and I could go work another job where you collect the pension or you collect some kind of, you know, and take 46 work for another 20 years and then technically collecting two pensions. You know, it does it it doesn’t I don’t think it happens as much with like the line level, like me, you know, patrol guys, detectives. But I think when guys start promoting and you get a little bit higher, you know, some of those guys can do it because they can they’ve put enough time in, you know, like just say, well, just say commander, commander level for our department. You know, they’ve probably put in 20 some years and then maybe they want to go be a chief somewhere. So they retire from my department and then go work somewhere else. Or maybe in another state. So now they’re collecting the pension from here and then they’re building another one from this new department. You know, it’s the retired fire guys that I’ve talked to or there, just fire period. One gentleman who I know who was the fire chief, I believe they’re in Glendale in the system, one in Phenix. But he was I had a really good conversation with him on one of our father daughter ski trips. And I had no idea how young the or the average lifespan of a firefighter was. I mean, they really die young sort of cops. And I didn’t realize I mean, have you heard it was morbidity tables? Have you heard what’s the average? I mean, well, they’re like there’s like 67 or 60. They say cops. It’s usually like five years. Like that’s the there’s five years after they retire. Easy. So you work all those year to collect the pension and. Yeah. And that’s nearly Yeah. And that’s why a lot of guys will keep working because they say one of the one of the reasons is you’re you’ve spent 2025 years of just day in and day out stress like high and low stress where you’re going. And that’s one of the one of the fun things about the job is also kind of one of the things that puts stress in your body. You know, like every day is a different day. Like you’re like, you know, like just for example, today, I go to a single car collision in the morning where this guy fell asleep and like had a seizure, runs into a pole. And then I go to another like, burglary call and then I’m going to, you know, going to another call where they think a guy is smoking drugs and he has a gun on him in front of a Fry’s. And then I’m going up to the call that I was telling you guys about. At the end of the day, where the Iraqi is, you know, Arabic speaking mom and dad, they want to get away from him because they think he’s overbearing and he’s like preventing them from leaving. So then you’re dealing with that. So it’s like up and down, up and down all day. And you do that for 40 hours a week for 20 years. You know, it’s not it’s really not good for you. And then a lot of the times, guys, like when I work third shift guys don’t eat well on third shift because there’s really nothing open. So then you get into that. You’re eating crappy your stress in your body constantly up and down, up and down, and then they retire and all this stuff goes away and your body’s just like, enough. All right. Yeah. So. Right, so. So you know what? If you mind me asking, it’s like, what’s part of your kind of what’s part of your thought process on what’s going to determine if you retire in two years or five years? I mean, how much of that I guess what percentage would you say is is financially relative and compared to just a desire to get away from the job, is it mainly financially driven? Honestly, it has nothing to do with financial stuff. I, I told myself and like I said, I didn’t get into law enforcement to be a patrol cop and I didn’t. If I’m still in patrol when I hit 20, I’m more than likely going to leave and I’ll go do something else. So but if I’m doing something else where I’m out of patrol and doing, you know, like there’s things in the department that that the nice thing about the department I work for, it’s a big department, so there’s a lot more opportunity to do things. But it’s also right now it’s really hard to move on. Our department is because of some, you know, poor planning, I guess is the best way to put it. Poor planning in the past has kind of put us manpower wise really in a bad spot. So it’s hard to. And that’s right. And that’s what I voiced is they need more patrolmen. Yeah, they need so they need you guys on the street. They need everybody. Because really, at the end of the day, patrol is the backbone. Like without patrol, right? Like things would fall apart. Like, you need to have patrol guys, and we don’t have enough patrol guys. And it’s not just our department. It’s pretty much everywhere. It’s not just and it’s not just in Arizona problem. It’s a nation problem like it just not enough people want to do the job like they did before. So in your in now the people that you do want are the people that do want to do it are getting recruited by all these departments. So you have to really, you know, as a department, you have to step your game up to be like, why should why should I go work for you as opposed to going to this department or this department like what makes me want to go here? So you see a lot of that now with like pay raises and they’re trying to like Glendale did something within the last couple of years. I don’t it was something with their insurance. I think Mesa did something too, that made it. You know, it’s a benefit like when guys look at stuff like, man made, you know, Glendale and Mesa are doing this with, you know, they’re after retirement health insurance, like why me should go work there as opposed to coming to Phenix or wherever Tempe or, you know, wherever. It seems like health insurance is definitely a big part of the retirement question is a big part. And, you know, being a health insurance agent myself and working with a lot of I typically work with more business owners and occasionally I’ll run across somebody who’s retiring out of the government sector. And one of the what used to be a really big thing for any government insurance was it was really good insurance. And it seems like that’s really kind of backed off a little bit like the health insurance that’s offered internally. I don’t know if it’s like some law enforcement side, but for a lot of other government sectors that their health insurance benefits are aren’t near as strong as they once were, you know, higher deductibles, higher out-of-pocket maximums, whereas it used to be really just a benefit rich programs. So I don’t know if that’s if it differs in the law enforcement either way. When you leave the when you leave the department, your only option is Cobra. COBRA. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And I really it’s expensive. It’s expensive. And I realize they have a they have another plan that you can jump onto, but it’s expensive. It’s a real expensive. And so when you leave, I know one of the big conversations I’ve had is like, well, and because again, you guys are riddled with challenges. Yeah. Bad hip, like I said, bad knee bad. This stuff’s going to go wrong. You’re you know, you’re in I belong to maintenance. Yeah. And I’ve always been into like, take like I like to work out. It’s one of my stress relievers, but there’s a lot of guys that don’t that don’t take care of themself that way. And that’s another thing Like, they don’t, you know, the really at least, you know, I can’t speak for nationwide. I can speak for, you know, most most of the departments here. But there’s really no standard once you get out of the academy, you know, our department, you can get you can go and do our, like, physical tests once a year and you can get a basically a day off. But other than that, it’s not mandatory like you just an incentive to get people to go do it. So, I mean, it’s that’s part of the I think that’s part of the problem, too, is, you know, you’re don’t take care of yourself. You don’t eat right. And you’re stressed out constantly up and down, all that stuff, like I said. And then and it makes health insurance more important to you when you’re getting older. And like, that’s the thing. Like, I know for a fact there’s a guy there’s a guy that I work at. He’s not on my squad, but he’s he works in our my precinct and he’s getting set to retire and he didn’t really take a lot of his not just pension, he never worked a lot of overtime. So his pension is pretty modest that he’s going to get. And he didn’t put a lot of way in like some of the other things that we can do with the department, like the deferred comp, things like that. He didn’t put a lot of money in that. So there’s not a lot of money that he’s going to be getting from that. So he’s really kind of and he doesn’t really have plans after like he doesn’t have some job set up that he’s, you know, leaving to go do. So he’s kind of on a really set income. So then you throw in government pay for health and COBRA. Yeah. Or something like that. Now you’re really taking big chunks out of your I mean, the good thing is now that everybody out there, especially law enforcement officers, need to understand is they can get guaranteed issue insurance individually before you start to work for a company and to get group insurance to cover all your preexisting conditions. Yeah. So the good news is you can people can find plans, but the bad news is for those people who are looking outside of going to another department, they they’re going to be in the individual market. You know, what people refer to as Obamacare That takes on preexisting conditions and the networks are not as strong. Yeah. So if there’s anything that’s really strong about your guys’s plan still is that you have a large network of providers, hospitals, you know all the different health care system it yeah. And even being here in Central Phenix, it’s massive in the Obamacare stuff but when you’re used to just being able to go anywhere. Yeah right And all of a sudden you’re told you can’t go there, it’s kind of a slap in the face for you. And so I just talked to plenty of people and I know they have a hard time with that. So, you know, that being one of the financial concern, you know, what other what maybe other kind of financial concerns, because it sounds like you really finances aren’t what are driving you. And it sounds like this other guy. Finances aren’t driving him either way. He’s saying I’m out. Yeah. It’s like I mean, so I mean, you just you feel like, you know, I mean, obviously you you have a calculator. You can go into on the air that you have access to see what you’re gonna be able to pull and you can see how you can maximize that. So when you’re on the job now, I mean, do you really fully understand that? Do you have anything showing you the opportunity cost of putting your money over here versus putting your money in another vehicle? Yeah. I mean, there’s there’s stuff on there on our on our pension website. You can kind of mess up the numbers and see like, you know, if I work, I think I kind of mentioned it before, they you can go on there like if I worked this much or if I get my high three to this number, this is what I’ll get if I stay 25 years and then do drop, this is what I get. This is what my drop will look like if I do it at 20 based on so I can mess with those numbers. I haven’t really messed around a lot with like my deferred comp and stuff like that. Like you can go into it, but I, I don’t know that much about that stuff. So I haven’t really I’ve never really ever touched it like So when you say you haven’t touches, I mean you funded it because that’s an option right. Or is it. You know I’m afraid that I so I have funded it but I don’t really I don’t know enough about the things that they invest in to like mess with it because I could there’s there’s ways for me to do it like, you know, kind of self-directed things. But I don’t know enough about it where I would feel comfortable going in and messing with it. So I pretty much have just been told, touch it, just leave it there. Yeah, I mean, it just like basically pick a, a risk level and then that’s what it put it at that and just leave it alone. And that’s pretty much what I’ve done. So, so is there a lot of I mean, so I know the state has hired a company to help with the education side and I guess they’re available for you, right? I mean, do you find that a lot of the you and your colleagues are actually utilizing that? I mean, is it do you feel like, you know, I mean, not to you know, I’m not trying to throw them under the bus. Just curious how much that benefit is utilized. Would it be helpful to talk to an independent person that’s outside of the system? Is that something that is desired, not desire discussed? I mean, I, I don’t know how much they use, how much people use it. It doesn’t seem like every once in a while maybe it seems like maybe like once a year we’ll get somebody from like nationwide because that’s who the city contracts to do that stuff. Like out of free copies through nationwide, though, somebody will come in and they’ll come into briefings and they’ll, you know, they’ll talk about it. But really, other than that, unless you’re reaching out to them, they don’t you know, they don’t really do that kind of stuff. And then even some of the like the like the financial advisors that we can go to, like I use one like I switched over to a financial advisor, I don’t know how many years ago from Nationwide was from nationwide. They use I believe Charles Schwab is who they direct the funds through, but and they have stuff on their website where you can go in and see podcasts or, you know, or you know, things like that, little snippets about this and that. But if they don’t really come out the briefings and do that like that, and if they do, it’s like once every couple of years they’ll have somebody and it’s more to drum up business like, Hey, we’re available, you know, this is what we can do for you. And then but the last time I, I mean, I couldn’t even tell you the last time one of those like somebody in that room came out. And so what are there? You know, it’s just kind of curious about some of the other benefits that you guys have access to after retirement. So what as far as like long term care or is that something you guys have access to once you’re retired? I realize if something were to happen to you now, I would assume that there are some benefits in place if you were to, heaven forbid, get in a car rollover and be a Perryville paraplegic. Yeah, there’s there’s a few there’s a few different there’s some that I mean when you’re not working, does that do you guys have any kind of other benefit to assist outside of what money you’ve saved up. Any other insurance that you guys have to tap into or they have? There’s, there’s a few different life insurance products that they offer through like our union and then through the city. But most of them are optional. There’s a couple that aren’t that I think that you get, but they’re like, I this past open enrollment, I elected to do a few of the ones that were listed on there that I wasn’t doing before because they were optional. You know a couple of there’s a couple life insurance ones that were on there. There’s a period to have a conversation about those to see what you guys have access to and yeah, you know, and see which ones are what are called portable. Yeah. I mean you can, you know, take them what they when you leave and how that suggests I assume a lot of those insurance plans offered through your plans are typically there while you’re employed. Well so there’s one that I know that we have and I’m pretty sure it’s only available to us while I’m working. And I really honestly don’t know much about it. They call it a pep account. There is one through nationwide, but then there’s also another smaller one that’s through our union. I don’t know much about it other than you can only use the funds while you’re working is about the only thing I’ve ever been told. So I. But I as I said, I don’t know much much else about something you fund able that’s I don’t know but I just feel like that’s a good that’s a good topic them for a future conversation. Yeah because I log into my nationwide and it’s I can see it there. I can see how much money is in it but I, I’d have to look at like my statements. I don’t know how I don’t remember if it’s something I partially funded in the city. Pay some of it too. And I think I think the one was our union. I think part of our dues that we pay go into that to pay it. So I will have to again as we have this is what episode two. Yeah. So as we it’s good I mean it’s good for me because I honestly don’t know. I just I know I can log into my nationwide account. I see it there. I really don’t know much about it. So and I’m good at asking questions. Yeah. So I’ll keep asking questions. You can’t find the answers on the answers and then and we can bring those up in future topics and, and that’s kind of the goal of this whole podcast here is to just kind of open up. Let’s just take, let’s pull back and just have a conversation, see what you know, what you don’t know. And, and I think that’s actually now that we talk it out is what’s going to drive our future topics. Yeah. You know, so like maybe the, you know, for episode three maybe we should just, you know, talk about you. Okay, let’s talk about your life insurance benefits. You know, let’s get some information about those life insurance benefits and and see what you have on the job. And when you leave what you know, what you leave with. Yeah. And what you lose and you know, And does it make sense to bring in some additional benefits? Does it matter to you and why should it matter to you? But it’s good getting to know you again and start to understand a little bit more about the departments and everything. So it’s probably and take a few episodes of that just kind of to just to get a better understanding. And it’s very obvious that there’s some things you need a better understanding. yeah, I was saying I could I could tell you right now there’s probably a lot of the stuff that like, like I said, the first one I probably did myself a disservice for not being more diligent with some of this stuff and learning more about it. And now I’m getting close to the point where I can retire and I I’m not as knowledgeable about it as I probably should be. You know, I probably there’s things I should have, you know, maybe dove into a little bit more earlier on and just have been more aware of I know for a fact one thing that I do kind of kick myself for was the deferred comp and not putting and not maxing that out earlier. As soon as I could, you know, because I know guys that basically when they started, they were maxing that sucker out and there, you know, the money that they got in there is pretty good. Pretty solid. 36. Yes, pretty significant. And that goes in. That deferred comp goes in. That’s it goes into a pretax account. I don’t know that. I don’t know that. Wow. Yeah. All right. I’ll find out. All right. We got some questions for you. All right, man. Well, I think you know, so two in the books and we look forward to having more of these conversations and we look forward to inviting those who are watching and to send in some questions for future episodes, because that’s our we’re also looking for other guests just to come on here to have discussions. Our intention is to bring on financial professionals, lawyers, pension professionals, insurance professionals, but also just the every day law enforcement officer to answer your questions in a very layman’s, most laymen’s way possible. That’s the goal. Yep. So thanks, brother. Yep. Talked to. Thank you. Hey, guys, if you’re enjoying this content that Officer Tyler are putting together, we’re trying to build a community of law enforcement officers, of professionals. We’re trying to bring resources, guest speakers, professionals alike to have conversations. Let’s open up the dialog so if you’d like to join our community, please click on the link in the resource section. Here are the comments and we’d love to hear from. They still listen to the show this week. If you have any questions just posted in the comments and we’ll try to get to them, see if we can address them. Must get through as many as we can in next week’s episode or maybe in a future episode. Our goal is to definitely work and find other professionals like yourselves who have the questions, right? Yeah, you know, and want to be a guest, would like to come on and maybe showcase some of your expertise or some stories that you for to share so people do not make the mistakes. You know, there’s a lot people just want to hear. They want to learn to other people say, yeah, if we missed something or we misspoke, let us know. Yep.