Summary: For many public school employees, a transition year is a fantastic benefit that can make a huge difference in your retirement finances. It’s definitely worth finding out if your school district offers it, under what conditions, and then investigating whether it might be right for you.
The working after retirement rules for PERA specify that retires can work up to 110 days in a calendar year for a PERA-covered employer after they retire (there’s no limit on non-PERA covered employment). While any PERA-covered employee can possibly take advantage of this, it works especially well for public school employees because our contract year naturally occurs half in one calendar year and half in the next, meaning you won’t exceed the 110-day limit in either year. Some – but not all – school districts offer this transition year benefit (sometimes referred to as 93/93 or 110/110), but often with special conditions. For example, in Littleton Public Schools you must have been continuously employed by the district for the previous 10 years in order to qualify, and the district does not pay benefits during the transition year. Check with your district to see if it’s offered and what conditions there may be. (In Douglas County Public Schools it is also working in the district the previous 10 years plus the permission of your supervisor.)
Despite this being around for a while, lots of folks are a bit unclear on the details (or unaware of it altogether), so I thought I’d use my experience as an example. I officially retired on June 1, 2017 and am now working a transition year with LPS. I currently have 29 years of teaching experience under PERA, plus I purchased 6 years of service credit, giving me 35 years of service credit that my retirement benefit is based on. Thirty-five years translates to 87.5% of my Highest Average Salary (HAS) if I choose option 1 under PERA (full benefit comes to me, but when I die the benefit stops). Since I chose option 3 (I get a reduced benefit, but when I die my spouse gets the exact same benefit until she dies), I’m getting about 91.5% of that which comes out to about 80.1% of my HAS. It’s important to understand that the factor that determines that reduction percentage changes, both according to your age and your spouse’s age and due to PERA’s current actuarial assumptions, but the changes are relatively small from year to year.
What this means is that during this transition year, I’m effectively getting 180% of the pay I would normally get, minus the amount I have to pay for my own insurance coverage. I’m adding on to my wife’s insurance (as is our daughter) so that comes out to approximately 5% of my salary, so I’m making about 175% of what I normally would. (Also, in LPS your pay for the transition year is “frozen” at what you made the previous year, so I do not receive the small cost-of-living raise I would’ve normally received.)
The other thing to keep in mind is that in addition to losing benefits, I’m “giving up” the service credit I would earn with PERA by working this transition year. I (and LPS) still contribute to PERA during this year, but I do not earn any service credit, which is effectively giving up 2.5% of my HAS. Because I’m 75% “ahead” from getting the benefit during my transition year, that’s equivalent to roughly 30 years of retirement. (Not exactly because of the time-weighted value of money, it is actually much longer than that because I can earn money by investing that 75% over those thirty years, but good enough for our purposes). So, with that back-of-the-envelope calculation, the “break-even” point is 30 years. If I live longer than that (which I have decent chance of), then theoretically not taking the transition year would work out better. In reality, because of the compounded investment returns that I can make on that 75%, it’s likely to be 40 years to break-even or perhaps a lot more, so for me the (financial) decision was pretty easy. (The fewer years of service credit you have, however, the closer you need to look at that calculation.)
There are other things to consider in addition to the “break-even” point when looking at the transition year option.
- Because you have to retire from PERA and keep working for your employer, you have to know you are going to retire (and commit to it) about 16 months before you will actually stop working for your current employer. For some folks, that’s difficult to do.
- As mentioned above, in many districts you’ll lose your benefits, which includes not only health, dental and vision, but things like life insurance and sick days (in LPS you get 5 sicks days for use during the transition year). So you have to figure out where you are going to get coverage (from a spouse, from LPS via COBRA where you pay the full premium, from PERACare, or on the individual market).
- During the two calendar years that the transition year affects, your taxable income will increase (both your regular income and your PERA distribution are taxable), and there’s a decent chance it will move you into a higher tax bracket. (In LPS you get two “paychecks” – one from LPS, one from PERA – for a total of 14 months, 7 in each calendar year.) This is especially true in LPS if you have a lot of accrued sick days, as LPS gives you a payout on those as well, for me that’s over $9000 additional taxable dollars for 2017 (this is not PERA-includable salary). This is why many folks increase their contributions to 401k/403b/457 plans during these two years.
- And it depends a lot, of course, on your personal financial circumstances and needs. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to retirement planning.
So, should you take a transition year (assuming your district offers it and you’re eligible)? It depends, and if you choose to work with me we will look at this very carefully, but it’s definitely something to know about, investigate, and perhaps even make some financial decisions prior to retiring based on the knowledge that you will be receiving this benefit.
Fisch Financial 