Many employment extenders fall into one of four personas

Are you an employment extender? Wait, what IS an employment extender? Answers to those questions may be found in another question: Are you working or planning to work past traditional retirement age? If you answered “yes,” then you are an employment extender.

As employment extenders, you are by no means a monolithic group; you have different motivations, financial considerations and personal concerns that impact your work and retirement decisions. To better understand your differences and meet your needs, Voya Cares sorted employment extenders into unique groups based on your attitudes, beliefs, motivations, and behaviors. The resulting four segments — or personas — are based primarily on your motivations for continuing to work: the four employment extender groups are Want to Work, Part of the Plan (Working Longer by Design), Worriers, Need to Work.

If you are a Want to Work employment extender, you may be financially prepared to retire, but still enjoy working. To help you prepare to retire, when you choose, ask your financial professional or HR benefits specialist about:

• Help transitioning to retirement: Tools and guidance on how to best use benefits in your current stage in life, including integration with Social Security benefits and health care integration with Medicare.
• Personal finance tools and resources: A variety of online/digital tools and resources that help you see all of your financial and employee benefits information in a single place, estimate medical needs, calculate how long income streams will last, estimate long-term care needs and suggest places to live and living arrangements.
• Reinvestment of retirement income: Planning for collecting multiple streams of retirement income in addition to your salary, including required minimum distributions (for retirement assets from former employers), Social Security payments, and other retirement income, and how multiple income streams may be used to better prepare you for retirement.
• Continued versatility: Remote and hybrid work and flexible hours to help make working later in life easier to fit into your lifestyle.
• Education funding: Help with your grandchildren’s or other loved ones’ education through direct deposits to a 529 plan or student debt programs.
• Emergency savings programs: Help protecting your retirement savings against unforeseen circumstances using another source of cash that you can access as you need it to avoid tapping into your retirement funds.
• Tax efficient accumulation: To add to your retirement savings while minimizing taxes through 401(k) contributions, Roth IRAs and Health Savings Accounts.

If you are a Part of the Plan (Working Longer by Design) employment extender, you may always have planned to work longer to be fully prepared for retirement, and you still enjoy working. To help you prepare to retire, when you choose, ask your financial professional or HR benefits specialist about:

• Leave management: To maintain your position if caregiving responsibilities or illness or an injury may require you to be out of work for a brief or extended time.
• Reinvestment of retirement income: Planning for collecting multiple streams of retirement income in addition to your salary, including required minimum distributions (for retirement assets from former employers), Social Security payments, and other retirement income, and how multiple income streams may be used to better prepare you for retirement.
• Predictable streams of retirement income: Retirement plans that have annuity payout options to provide income that you can’t outlive. 
• Income needs in retirement: Help estimating expenses, including future health care and long-term care costs.
• Social Security retirement strategy: Guidance to help estimate the age when to begin collecting benefits, Medicare coverage options and determine family and survivor benefit eligibility. 
• Continued versatility: Remote and hybrid work and flexible hours to help make working later in life easier to fit into your lifestyle. 
• Health Savings Accounts (HSA): Not just for current health costs, but also for accumulating assets to cover future retirement health care costs.
• Long-term care insurance: Individual long-term care policies or riders added to life insurance policies to help ease the worry about future care costs.

If you are a Worrier employment extender, you may be working longer because you are afraid you are not ready to cover unexpected expenses. You may be able to save, if you have the time and a plan, but you don’t necessarily like working. To help you prepare to retire, when you choose, ask your financial professional or HR benefits specialist about:

• Health and wealth employer-provided benefits: To better understand of all the benefits available to you through your employer, including health, dental and vision insurance plans; pension plans such as 401(k) or 403(b), including maximum match and options providing predictable streams of income; group life insurance coverage; emergency savings plans.
• Retirement planning guidance: To help with personalized investment advice, maximizing benefit dollars across all benefits and estimating income needs in retirement.
• Wellness benefits: Holistic wellness benefits to help manage stress, including Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) and virtual mental health visits.
• Caregiver resources: In case you are ill or injured and need care temporarily, or you need to provide care to an aging parent or spouse, including special needs planning, employee resource groups and a health care concierge to help with the logistical and administrative tasks of caring for yourself and your loved ones.
• Leave management: Maintain your position if caregiving responsibilities or illness or an injury may require you to be out of work for a brief (or extended) time.
• Regular reviews: Prescheduled regular reviews of your plans to reinforce and adjust strategies and review your Social Security statement at least annually (ssa.gov). 

If you are a Need to Work employment extender, you may be working longer because you are not ready to retire. Even though you don’t necessarily like working, you may continue to work because limited resources make saving difficult. To help you prepare to retire, when you choose, ask your HR benefits administrator about:

• Prioritization and reallocation guidance: Applications to help balance health and wealth benefits dollars and help uncover sources of retirement savings.
• Debt management: Programs to help pay down debt, including credit card and student debt relief.
• Education on retirement topics: To better understand your Social Security retirement benefits, Medicare coverage options and long-term care planning.
• Retirement planning guidance: To help estimate expenses in retirement, including the possibility of needing care for yourself or a loved one and how to maximize your retirement savings match.
• Emergency savings programs: Help protecting your retirement savings against unforeseen circumstances using another source of cash that you can access as you need it to avoid tapping into your retirement funds.
• Wellness benefits: Holistic wellness benefits to help manage stress and work-life balance, including Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) and virtual mental health visits.
• Caregiver resources: In case you are ill or injured and need care temporarily, or you need to provide care to an aging parent or spouse, resources for special needs planning, employee resource groups and a health care concierge to help with the logistical and administrative tasks of caring for your loved ones.
• Leave management: To maintain your position if caregiving responsibilities, illness or an injury may require you to be out of work for a brief or extended time.
• Regular review: Prescheduled regular review of your plan to reinforce and adjust strategies and review your Social Security statement at least annually (ssa.gov).