FDNY Pension & 457(b) Calculator
Firefighters

1. 1Run the calculator. Your Pension Printout shows what the pension pays a month and what each survivor option does. It's free, and you don't need to give an email to see your figure.
2. 2Get your free pension guide. Ask for it under your pension figure. Within one business day Eslyn Hernandez emails you a guide built on the numbers you entered: a short PDF, a video that walks you through it, and the key points as slides.
3. 3Ask for your written plan. If you want the whole picture, answer one page of short questions and send your latest Fire Pension Fund statement. We build it before we talk: your pension, your 457(b), protecting your family, your job after the FDNY, and what you can spend, set side by side with what we recommend, plus a video that walks you through it.
4. 4Walk through it with us. A call with William Harrison, our adviser, and Eslyn Hernandez. If you then want help moving money, we fill in the forms and you sign.
5. 5Every year after, if you become a client. Once a year we sit down with you and go back over the plan with your current numbers: what the pension pays now, where your 457(b) and savings stand, taxes, and anything that changed at home. When something has moved, the plan gets updated. It's part of the advisory fee, with no separate charge for planning.

Why plan, and why with an adviser. The calculator answers one question well: what the pension pays. Retirement asks several more, most of them once, around the day you file, and each one changes the others. Moving the 457(b) changes when you can touch it without a penalty. The survivor option changes what your family has if you go first. Pay from a second job changes how much you need to draw. A plan puts all of it on one page before you file, so you're choosing with the whole picture rather than one box at a time. An adviser adds a second set of eyes on those choices, help with the Fund's paperwork, and a plan that gets re-run every year instead of going stale in a drawer.

What it costs. Nothing to plan, and no obligation. If you then want us to manage the money, the advisory fee and what it includes are set out in our Form ADV Part 2A. How working with us works.

See a sample written plan (PDF) · Start with the calculator

The sample is an illustrative firefighter, not a real client. Its figures are examples under stated assumptions; a projection is not a promise.

On a $120,000 final average salary, a Tier 3 Original member (hired 2010, retiring at 20 years) draws about $60,000/yr (roughly $5,000/month) before tax, plus the fixed $12,000/yr Variable Supplement Fund on top. This is a worked example on this hire date and salary, not your number — enter your own membership date, FAS and retirement date in the calculator above to see yours. This is general educational information, not personalized advice.

The NYC 457(b) (the NYC Deferred Compensation Plan, or NYCDCP) and an IRA differ most before age 59½. Once you leave City service, money you take out of the NYC 457(b) carries no 10% early-withdrawal penalty, at any age. Money rolled into an IRA generally loses that status and can become subject to the 10% penalty on withdrawals before 59½, unless an exception such as a 72(t)/SEPP schedule applies. Which one fits depends on when you expect to need the money and what each account costs you. Sirmium models the early-access window against the rollover decision for FDNY families. This is general educational information, not personalized advice.

A firefighter hitting 20 years is usually in the mid-40s. The choice on the table looks like one question, file now or stay, but it moves three sets of numbers at once. None of them can be answered alone.

The retirement piece. The pension at 20 is a lifetime floor, fixed by statute, and every year past 20 adds to it. But retire in your mid-40s and you will likely be retired longer than you worked, with a 15-to-25-year gap before Social Security starts. Something has to bridge those years, and the only account you fully control is the 457(b).

The tax piece. The pension is New York State and City tax-exempt but federally taxable. The 457(b) is where the tax decision lives: kept at the DCP, it is penalty-free at any age once you separate. Rolled to an IRA, the same dollar touched before 59½ can cost 10 percent. And the low-bracket years between your last FDNY paycheck and Social Security are among the cheapest Roth conversion years you may ever see. A WTC or accident disability pension changes the federal tax character entirely, which reorders which account gets drawn first; the specifics of your situation belong with a tax professional.

The investment piece. A pension plus the $12,000 VSF works like a large bond position with your name on it, so your 457(b) and IRA should not be invested like a civilian 45-year-old's portfolio. The floor is already built. But those same dollars have two conflicting jobs: paying the bridge years now and growing for the decades after. That is an allocation question, not a product question.

Every answer moves the others. Stay two more years and the pension rises, which fills more of your tax bracket, which shrinks the conversion window and changes what the 457(b) has to do and when you can spend it. The Pension Fund answers the pension question, the IRS answers the tax question, and the DCP answers the account question. Nobody answers across the seams, and the seams are where retirements are won or lost.

The calculator above asks these questions. Run them on your own numbers, then bring what you see to a free 15-minute call. Planning is free; specific recommendations come from William Harrison, the firm's investment adviser.