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Hi, my name is Susan MacLennan.
At the Directions: Pre-Retirement Planning seminars
held around New York for Executive Branch state
employees, many of you told us it would be helpful to have a
video from the seminar to review.
We understand there is a lot of information to consider when
planning your retirement, so we created this series of short
videos as another tool for you.
Welcome to the Video Guide -
Planning Your Successful Retirement!
Remember, these videos only provide some highlights.
For additional information, please refer to Chapter 9 of the
online version of the Self-Help Guide
to Pre-Retirement Planning.
This is available at worklife.ny.gov, which is the
Work-Life Services website.
The video you are about to view is entitled An Introduction to
the Retirement System and Membership Information.
Bonnie Clark, an Information Representative from the Office
of the State Comptroller, explains your pension benefits
with the New York State and
Local Employees Retirement System.
This video includes information on pension benefit factors,
vesting, in-service death and disability benefits,
and your tier.
Hi, my name's Bonnie, and I work for the New York State and
Local Retirement System.
First, I want to thank you for taking the time to seek out
information regarding your pension benefits.
Your pension will probably be one of the biggest pieces of
your retirement, and it's very important that you understand
how your benefits are calculated.
Let's begin with some of the basics.
When you retire, your pension will be calculated using
something called a "Defined Benefit Plan".
Our defined benefit plans are fairly simple formulas.
We insert a few pieces of data into these formulas and after a
few calculations the results show us how much the Retirement
System will pay you after you retire.
Because these formulas are so simple, for most people it's
relatively easy to estimate what your monthly retirement benefit
would be if you retired on a specific date - even if that
date is years into the future.
While these defined benefit formulas may be simple to
calculate, we've found that the more difficult part of this
process is making sure that all of the data we need to use in
your calculation is accurate and up-to-date.
For example, in the Service Credit portion of this
presentation I'll explain to you how important it is that you
contact the Retirement System if you don't think that you're
currently being credited for all of your public employment in
New York State.
If there is even just 1 day of creditable public service
missing from the Service Credit portion of your final pension
calculation, you could receive less money than you should every
month for the rest of your life.
So it's really important that we work together now to ensure that
when it is time for you to retire that we'll already have
all of your data accurate and in our hands.
If we can do that then the actual retirement process turns
into a fairly simple process for everybody involved, but most
importantly - it makes it simple for you.
There are 5 main pieces of data that we'll need to use when we
calculate how big your monthly pension check will be.
These five items are your membership Tier, the total
amount of your credited public service, your final average
salary, or FAS, your retirement plan and your age at retirement.
In this series of videos I will be focusing on your service
credit, your final average salary and your
retirement plan calculations.
It's important to mention that contributions that you may have
made as a member of the Retirement System will not be a
factor in the calculation of your monthly pension benefit.
In addition, any contributions that your employer has made to
the Retirement System are also not part of the calculation
of your benefit.
Before we get too far into the benefit calculations, I'd like
to take a minute to discuss a couple of other topics related
to your membership with us.
The first is something called vesting.
Male: What does vesting mean?
If you're considered a vested member, it simply means that you
have enough credited service to qualify to collect a monthly
pension benefit once you're old enough to do so.
Members of the Employee's Retirement System in
Tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4 need to be credited with the
equivalent of 5 or more years of full time service to
be considered vested.
Please note that if you're buying back some previous public
service, you must still have a minimum of 2 years of service
credited in your new membership before any additional service
you have purchased can be credited to you.
And once you've accumulated the minimum of 5 years of service,
vesting is automatic - there's no form to fill out.
The other benefits I want to mention are the in-service death
benefits and disability benefits that are part of your
Retirement System membership.
While these benefits may not be a big part of the discussion
once you've reached the pre-retirement planning phase of
your career, you should be aware of what benefits are available
to you and your beneficiaries if you were to pass away or become
disabled before you retire.
Please review your Member Annual Statement for information
regarding your death benefit, and contact the Retirement
System if you think there might be some possibility of you
becoming disabled in the future.
OK....let's get back to the good stuff.
When calculating your pension, the first thing we look
at is your Tier.
In the Employees' Retirement System, or ERS, there are
currently 6 Tiers of membership.
Your Tier is based on the date you first joined
the Retirement System.
This is also known as your Date of Membership.
Members who have a date of membership
before July 1, 1973 are in Tier 1.
Members who have a date of membership
between July 1, 1973 and July 26, 1976 are in Tier 2.
Members who have a date of membership
between July 27, 1976 and August 31, 1983 are in Tier 3.
Members who have a date of membership between
September 1, 1983 and December 31, 2009 are in Tier 4.
Members who have a date of membership
between January 1, 2010 and March 31, 2012 are in Tier 5.
Members with a date of membership
on or after April 1, 2012 are in Tier 6.
The laws that created each Tier of Membership determine the
rules and restrictions that apply when we're coming up with
the data used to calculate your benefits.
Each Tier has its own set of rules, so it's important to know
which ones apply to your Tier so you can plan for
your future retirement.
In order for us to focus our pre-retirement planning efforts
on our members who are closer to retirement eligibility, these
videos will contain only information for
Tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Employees' Retirement System.
It's very important to note that you should contact us
immediately if you have ever been a member of the New York
State Employees' Retirement System at an earlier date in
your career, or if you ever had a previous membership in another
one of the public retirement systems in New York State.
In addition to ERS, there are 7 other public retirement systems
in New York State.....the NYS Police and Fire Retirement
System, the NYS Teachers Retirement System, and the 5
retirement systems administered by the City of New York.
So if you've ever had a previous membership in any public
retirement system in New York State, please contact us to
discuss whether or not that older membership would change
the pension benefit that you have earned.
If you worked in some type of public employment in New York
State in the past, but you're not sure if you actually joined
a public retirement system at that time, please contact us and
we can take a look for you.
Viewing the remaining video segments will give you a chance
to learn much more about the retirement process.
Remember - the key to effective pre-retirement planning is to
get started sooner rather than later.
If you do it right, the actual retirement process is
really quite easy.
Good luck.
We encourage you to view the other pension videos and to
visit their website at osc.state.ny.us/
You may also call to speak with a representative at
1-866-805-0990.
Thank you for viewing this video segment and for your service to
New York State.
We wish you a successful retirement!