[quote=CA renter]Regarding employees who can retire at 50…
Here is a table with average retirement ages for different positions (including those with the x% @50 plans). CHP has the lowest average retirement age, and theirs is 53 years. State correctional officers and firefighters have an average retirement age of 60, local public safety employees have an average retirement age of 55, and these are some of the most widely touted “young” retirees.
None of these classifications have an average retirement age of 50.
That’s not true. You can still retire at 50! Way to cherry pick again…
From the same:
“Typical Retirement Age. In most cases, public employees with several years of service become eligible for a pension benefit at age 50—even though the employee may be able to earn a greater pension benefit if he or she delays retirement until a later age. In the state’s three largest public pension systems, the average state or local employee retires at about age 60 (see Figure 1). Due to recent changes in benefits for newly hired state employees, the average retirement ages of state employees will tend to increase somewhat in the coming decades compared to the data shown in Figure 1.”
I don’t care why the average age is higher… Kids still in college… Want something to do until older… Want that summer house on lake Titicaca…
You can still retire at 50!
If I had my shit together I could have done fire science at the local CC upon graduation… and been in a crew at 20 or 21… And in eight years I could be retiring, according to this, and then been on a pension assuming I live to 80… for thirty years… The time equal to the amount of years I have worked.
So doing some basic math here under these rules…
“Peace officers and other public safety employees often are eligible for larger state or local pensions than other public employees. For example, a typical state correctional officer who retires this year with five or more years of service is eligible for a defined benefit pension at age 50 equal to 3 percent of his or her highest single working year’s salary multiplied by the number of years of service upon retirement (known as the “3 percent at 50″ benefit formula). ”
Using numbers from the SD gov web page…
•Firefighter Base Monthly Salary Range From $3275 to $5,564
If I retire at 80 percent range… Thats $4451 a month…
That’s roughly $53,414 a year. So using the above equation that yeilds a benefit of roughly $48,072. Without COLA… That is a benefit of $1.44 Million. With the COLA of about 2 percent (yes that is the maxium number but it is also the most likely giving the inflation index over the last 30 years).
I’ll agree to the statement that low pay on the front end and good benefits on the back seems to be the theme here but I would like to see this reversed. This is too much on the tax payers. Also this analysis does not take into account anything else. I am not sure but I would think there are health benefits that go along with the retirement package as well.
CE
P.S. The SD gov web page nows say 401K retirement package…
