Like many “Gen Xers”, Debra, a 45-year-old aviation journeyman, has been steadily striving to achieve financial security. While Debra has remained gainfully employed over the years, the burst of the dot.com bubble and the Great Recession in the early 2000s resulted in periods of lagging salary increases and limited opportunities for promotion. A participant in the IAM National Pension Fund, Debra is looking forward to col - lecting a retirement benefit after 25 years of service but knows that her monthly benefit will not be enough for her to maintain her current standard of living in retirement. With mount - ing student loans and credit card debt, plus saving for a daughter off to college in a year, Debra is searching for a way to continue to meet her current living expenses without sacrificing her retirement savings goals. With 20 years or more to go, now is the perfect time for Debra to make slight adjustments to her retirement sav- ings plan to ensure her personal savings goals keep pace throughout her retirement journey. The IAM National 401(k) Fund is a valuable per - sonal savings tool that can be used as a primary retirement savings vehicle or as a supplement to a retirement benefit under the Pension Fund. Debra may elect to have a percentage of her compensation automatically deducted from her paycheck and contributed to the 401(k) Fund before federal income taxes are with- held. We think of these automatic deductions as paying your future self, first! Making pre-tax contributions to the 401(k) Fund could lower Debra’s taxable income and allow her to take advantage of compounding interest. Generally, “compound interest” allows your retirement savings to grow faster because, for each year that your contributions are invested in the 401(k) Fund, you can earn additional interest on any interest earned in the previous year. As a result, the interest continues to compound each year. If Debra elects to have a percentage of her pay automatically deducted and deferred into the 401(k) Fund today and continues to make small percentage increases annually, her investment elections * plus compounding inter- est, subject to earnings and losses, over the next 20 years could allow Debra to comfortably save tens of thousands of dollars more toward her retirement savings goals without significantly impacting her current quality of life.  *Past performance is no guarantee of future results. SETTING SAIL SHIFTING DIRECTION: DEBRA’S STORY JOURNEY TO RETIREMENT OCTOBER 2022 04 “I WANT TO SAVE MORE FOR A COMFORTABLE RETIREMENT.”