[quote=temeculaguy]I could bore you to death with the reality of pensions and how they are calculated, but this is a fact. There are 368 people retired from sd county making $8,300 or more per month in pension benefits. There are 36,000 members, so 1% have pensions of 100k or more.
This is the second largest county in the state and the 5th largest in the united states, over 3 million people, and the thousands of blogs and posts are about 368 people. Let’s just keep some perspective. So before you assume that evey run of the mill government employee gets some fantastic deal, get the facts, they are probably just as out of touch as the perception that all realtors make 6 figures.
I am not protecting myself, I’m not one of the 368, but I’m also not an NBA player or a CEO, some have more than me and some have less. You just happen to run into some who had more, that doesn’t mean they all do. In fact the average gov’t pension in san diego county is $28,284 per year. But it’s more fun to scream about the rare exceptions.[/quote]
$100k/year pension is HUGE. At $100k/year, assuming you can retire at 50 and live to 80, that’s $3M over the retirement years, assuming you don’t get inflation adjustment through your retirement. If you live to 90, that’s $4M. How many in the private sector do you know that make $100-150k/year can save $3-4M for retirement?
Now, lets look at the average number you presented: $28,284/year. Assuming average public employee is similar to average private employee making about median income. In San Diego in 2009, the median house hold income was $59901/year. Assuming dual income, that’s $29950.5/person. So, average public employee pension is slightly less than your median income. Now, lets see how much $28,284/year is really worth over the retirement years. Assuming you can retire at 50 and live to 80, that’s $848,520 over 30 years. If you die at 90, that’s $1,131,360. That again assume that you get no inflation adjustment. How many people with in $30k/year income can accrue $848k-$1.1M for retirement?
Bottom line is, you don’t need to have $100k pension to make it not sustainable. Even your lowly $28k/year comes out to a huge number over the life of their retirement. We also know people have been living longer and longer every year. So maybe 80-90 might sound young 30-40 years from now.
