I’ll bounce in April, take the drag up and 15 years guaranteed in case I get hit by a bus the next day. I’m pumped

Just to be sure you understand it correctly. Ignore if it does not apply. I found lot of guys did not understand the guaranteed term option with tmrs. Most were thinking the 15 years started the day they died. It starts the day you retire. So if you retire and die 10 years later, the checks only continue for 5 years. I think they said this was not a very common option for people to use.

Yeah the lady explained that, but my luck is I retire, get hit by a bus 10 minutes later. The amount per month that it costs is pretty minimal considering.

I’m not in TMRS. At what percentage do they pay for 25 years? I’ll retire at 51 years old with 30 years, 90% retirement of my highest earning 5 years averaged together. Plus my other IRA, 401k, ROTH, and long term investments. I’ll continue to work, most likely in Real Estate until I’m eligible for Medicare

DROP wasn’t lost, it was reduced and controlled as it should’ve been from the start. If anybody that hired on believed that our pension could sustain while paying out 8% plus COLA, then the deserve everything they lost. The ones that designed it, got rich, and crashed it deserve an early death.

Now, when I hired on they preached about DROP and leaving with 7 figure retirements. I saw the writing on the wall and started my own retirements. If you don’t control your own retirements and are relying on a pension, well, best of luck to you.

If you leave 1 day before your 90 points or age 58. The multiplier drops to 2.0.
Luckily I had 26 years when the changes occurred. So I only have to do 30.

Ours caps it is 720 hours what they'll pay you for. 25, and +30 year men have thousands of hours banked. Call in sick for months to burn it down.

Oh but the last city manager to retire got paid for his 35 years of sick time built up. Guess it's nice to be the king.

One size does not fit all in this area.

I've been amazed at how much better my savings have performed since my former employer lost control over what I can do with it.

I decided I'm going to retire at 62. Only 42 YOA now. TRS will have 39 years total, (might buy a year, currently contributing heavily to a 457 plan, and will have a paid off house. Spouse is straight 401K. I think I will be ok.

Ain’t it a racket! Our City Manager makes more than the President of the United States, let that sink in. That [censored] hates police with a passion.

Make sure you do research on the fiscal status of the Pension Plan. Many are underfunded and project not to meet future obligations.

Project a reasonable rate of return for the lump sum, divide over a 30 year payout period and add 3% annual inflation raises to the payments. See how long the money would last and compare to the lifetime payments......

I've had a couple of companies offer payouts on old pension plans. I took the first and rolled it into my 401K because it was a pretty nice payout compared to the amount I actually had vested in the pension. I passed on the second because it was a really crappy offer compared to what they are offering me when I hit retirement age.

I retired at 53 from the company I worked for for 33.5 years and took the lump sum. I went to work for another company for 9 years and then quit working to be fully retired. It allowed me those 9 years to grow the lump sum and 401K that I had with them and build a second 401K with the new company. Now I can draw 3 times what the pension was going to be and still leave my kids a tidy sum to help them towards retirement. My biggest fear with a pension was the company going bankrupt, as the parent company did after is spun off the chemical side that I worked for. Also feared that the wife and I could get killed in a car wreck and the kids wouldn't get much.

How do they determine the lump sum value? I had a pension cashed out by a company and was never a fan of the way they determined the Net Present Value of that pension. The pay out was rolled into my existing 401K. Pensions are usually the better option, not many companies left that pay a pension and the ones that still do will try and get out from under that burden if they can IMO.

I'm sure they have some kind of formula, but on the one I declined, I think they purposefully lowballed everyone in the hopes that people would see a big number and jump on it. The more people that took the bait, the less they had to cover down the road. When I did a NPV on the number they were offering, I think I was going to have to have to get something in the 15% growth range per year to even come close to what the worst monthly payout was for the pension. I want to say the highest monthly payout on the "only pay me an not my spouse after I turn 70 or so" needed around a 20% growth rate per year.

I can start mine at 55 from a previous employer, they do not offer lump sums, but I will start it a lower monthly payment at 55 and reinvest vs waiting until 59 or 62