04/02/2026
From Phil Rand in Interventional services! Thanks Phil!
For union nurses at EMMC, we’re going to be able to choose to stay with our old Defined Benefit Plan (Bluefin) or supercharge our 403b to an “enhanced” 403(b). Basically comes down to where, how much, and when EMMC puts additional money into our retirement.
I wanted to make a tool to find out when you might be better off staying with continued Bluefin contribution versus enhanced 403(b) contributions. With the help of AI and some quality time with the summary plan descriptions, I was able to come up with this web app.
It basically runs a bunch of simulations to see how likely you are to be ahead with one versus another, based on your age, years of service at the hospital, your target retirement age, and whether you use target date retirement funds versus pure stock funds.
Obviously, this is not financial advice; your situation is unique and you may have different goals not accounted for by these plain numbers. This is also NOT in any way endorsed by the hospital. It’s just a tool to give you a sense of how the numbers might work for you. Anecdotally, if you’re younger than 33 or so you’re probably better off with the enhanced 403(b), assuming you put in enough to get the full match (you must contribute 8% to get a full 6% match from the hospital), and if you’re older than early 40s or so you’re more likely to be better off sticking with Bluefin.
Again, this tool assumes you do the full match in your 403(b). If you don’t, I wouldn’t use this tool, and I might prefer the Bluefin option.
