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A printed document covering the four decisions you cannot take back once your papers are in. Every figure is sourced and every assumption is listed, including the ones it had to make for you.
Already built your Pension Printout on the NYPD page? Bring it across and most of this is already filled in. It is yours to print whether or not you ever speak to us.
Your answer so far
The order is the CFP Board's seven-step process, which is also the order a licensed adviser is held to. Sections 4 and 5 — your current course, and the alternatives — are the two most plans skip.
A short series on the decisions this tool cannot make for you. Your plan stays in your browser either way — we never receive it.
Done. Check your inbox.
About your pension figure. This page does not work out your police pension again. It
uses the figure your Pension Printout produced from the Fund's booklets. That figure leaves
out the longevity enhancement the booklets add by rank and years of service (Tier 2 booklet,
p.17; Tier 3 booklet, p.14-15), so if you retire with 25 or more years, or as a captain or
above, it is likely low. The $12,000 Variable Supplements Fund payment is carried as its own
line only when it is counted: when your Pension Printout counted it, or when you answer yes
to the VSF question under "What arrives once you stop". It is a flat amount set by law that
never rises with inflation (Tier 2 booklet, p.19; Tier 3 booklet, p.20). When it is counted,
note that the booklets prorate its first year by the full months you are retired in it; this
page does not know your month, so your first year may read up to $12,000 high.
Tier 3. Escalation is full from your 25-year date. If your pension starts after your
22nd anniversary but before your 25th, you get 1/36 of the escalation rate for each month
past the 22nd, and at 22 years or less none (Tier 3 booklet, p.18-19). This page applies
exactly that share of the rate. If you are collecting at twenty, no escalation reaches you
(RSSL 510(c)). Your booklet does not say whether the City cost-of-living increase does,
and the state law on it suggests it may, so this page carries your pension flat, which is
the low side. That is a question to put to the Fund in writing.
Your pension is also cut from age 62 by half your primary Social Security benefit, whether
or not you have claimed it (Tier 3 booklet, p.15). So claiming at 67 means five years of the
reduced pension with no Social Security against it. The booklet works the cut out from your
age-62 benefit and fixes the dollar amount when you retire (p.15-17). This page does the
same: it scales the Social Security figure you typed back to age 62 with Social Security's
own reduction for claiming early, and holds the cut at that dollar amount for life. The
booklet counts only the public earnings you have service credit for, and this page cannot
separate those from private earnings, so if you worked a private career before the police
the cut here is bigger than the booklet's and your figure is on the low side.
Tier 2. This page adds the City cost-of-living increase: half of inflation, never
below 1% or above 3%, on the first $18,000 of your pension only. You become eligible once
you are 55 and have been retired ten years, or once you are 62 and have been retired five,
whichever comes first. For a service retiree who receives the VSF, each increase is taken out
of the VSF payment until 62 rather than paid on top of it (Tier 2 booklet, p.23; NYC Admin
Code § 13-271(b), or § 13-281(b) for superior officers). When the VSF is counted this page follows that: the increases
build from the age you become eligible, your total check stays level until 62, and from 62
you receive the whole built-up increase and the full VSF. If your savings run out before 62,
the increase never reaches you. When no VSF is counted there is nothing to take it from, so
this page pays the increase from the age you become eligible.
Every tier rule is set out in full on your Pension Printout.
Everything here is worked out on your own device. There is no account, nothing is sent to us, and we never see what you enter. Your answers live in this tab and nowhere else — not in a link, not saved to this browser — so closing the tab clears them, and nobody else can pull them back either. Print the plan before you close it if you want to keep it.