Already Collecting a Pension from a First Career?

Plenty of people retire twice. You put in twenty years in the military (or police, fire, or federal service), started drawing that pension, and then went to work a second career. Now you’re planning to retire from that job — a "double retirement." The good news: you don’t have to model two retirements. You model the second one, and the first-career pension comes along as an income stream.

New here? Build a baseline plan first with Getting Started. Background: Other income: pensions, annuities, and property.

The one idea that makes this simple

RetireRange treats everything before your retirement date as a working, saving phase — it tracks your contributions and growth, but not your working-years income or spending. So the years when you’re drawing a pension and earning a second-career paycheck don’t need their own model. You just set your retirement date to the day the second job ends, and add the pension so it keeps paying from that day forward.

In other words: one retirement date — the second — plus the pension as ongoing income. That’s the whole recipe.

The quick version

Set your retirement date to your second-career retirement.
Add your first-career pension as a pension income stream (the "Military Retirement" example is exactly this).
Run your plan. The pension pays out from retirement onward, reducing what you draw from your portfolio.

Step by step

1. Set the retirement date to the second retirement. On the Household tab, use the date your current (second-career) job ends. That’s when the model shifts from saving to drawing down.

2. Add the pension. On the income side, add a pension (details):

Label it so you’ll recognize it ("Military Retirement," "State Pension").
Monthly amount in today’s dollars.
COLA — how it grows: none (fixed), with general inflation, or a fixed rate you set. Military and federal pensions typically carry a CPI-style COLA; many corporate pensions don’t.
Survivor percentage — the fraction that continues to your spouse if you die first (e.g. a 50% joint-and-survivor election). This feeds surviving-spouse modeling.

3. Account for the pension money you collect while still working. The model doesn’t spend or bank it for you during the accumulation years, so:

If you’re saving that pension income during your second career, reflect it as higher account contributions (or a larger starting balance).
If you’re spending it, it’s part of your pre-retirement budget, which the tool doesn’t track — nothing to enter.

4. Run your plan. Save it as your baseline. From here, every other scenario recipe works normally — the pension is simply part of your plan now.

What to look at

How much the portfolio has to cover. Pension income offsets your withdrawal target dollar-for-dollar, so a solid pension can lift your success rate noticeably and shrink your early-year portfolio draws — which is exactly when sequence-of-returns risk bites hardest.
Taxes. Pension income is fully taxable ordinary income and flows into your yearly tax picture. A large pension can push you into higher brackets — worth checking before layering on Roth conversions.
The survivor’s plan. If your pension has less than a 100% survivor benefit, run what if my spouse dies first? — losing part of the pension is often the biggest financial shock a survivor faces.

Two things to know about timing

The pension only starts paying at your retirement date in the model, even if you’ve been collecting it for years. Each pension has its own start-date field, but income doesn’t apply during the accumulation phase — so enter the real date if you like, but the payout begins at your (second) retirement regardless. The COLA is anchored in today’s dollars and grown by inflation, so the amount at retirement comes out right either way.
If your spouse is still working, set their retirement date separately. The model keeps each person contributing until their own date; household spending begins at the primary person’s retirement.

If you have more than one pension (say, military and a later civil-service pension), add each as its own stream — there’s no limit.