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Thursday, November 14, 2013

PSPRS members: How is your pension doing?

For those interested in finding out the financial status of their pension, follow this link to PSPRS'Actuarial Reports By Employer.  This link is also available on the right sidebar.

The reports are in PDF form.  To find your employer's historic annual required contribution (ARC), go to PDF page number 33.  The ARC is what the employer must pay each year to PSPRS.  The ARC for employers varies from year to year.  Employee contributions for every active PSPRS member are currently fixed at 10.35% of pay, which will increase to the 11.05% in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2014 and finally, mercifully, top out at 11.65% in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2015.

To find your employer's historic funding ratio, go to PDF page number 32.  This will tell whether the pension is over or underfunded, and its funding status during the last ten years.

To see a breakdown of active, retired, DROP, and inactive vested members, go to PDF page number 12.  This also give the average pay or retirement benefit of each group.  Inactive vested members are those who have left a PSPRS employer but have chosen to leave their contributions in PSPRS.

While PSPRS invests for all the various state public safety entities, as well as for corrections officers and elected officials, each entity is responsible for its own pension.  If you look through various reports, you will note quite a disparity in funding ratios and ARC's between employers.  The lower the funding ratio is, the higher the ARC.  This means that the more underfunded an employer's pension is, the more money they will have to pay into PSPRS.  A higher ARC means that there will be less money for things like raises, equipment, capital improvements, and new hires.

How your pension is doing now will determine a lot about your future.
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2 comments:

  1. For ease of comparison between systems, you can review the consolidated PSPRS report. The list of systesm and their funding ratios begins on about the 60 page of this pdf, link below:

    http://www.psprs.com/Admin_Investments_and_Finance/2013%20Actuarial%20Reports%20by%20System/PSPRS%20Annual%20Valuation%202013.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for reading and posting this link. It is depressing to see how many entities are less than 50% funded. It makes one wonder what will happen if there is another recession in the next few years.

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