A snapshot of a public pension

[SHRED]

Not "gravy" at all.
In fact, it would be difficult to call this a retirement because after 20 years there is no way to afford it considering health insurance cost.
As you can see, one month of retirement check barely covers health insurance costs.

My guess is that this is fairly typical of a public worker pension.
With all the rhetoric about how gravy the public employee has it I thought a dose of reality would be in order.

This is a snapshot from where I work for a city in SoCal.
The position chosen is from our labor group and it is what is called a "benchmark" position. They use this position for figuring our wage comparisons.

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We do not participate in the Social Security program
We have no retirement health insurance benefit

74% of CalPERS participants receive $36K or less in annual retirement income
Our labor group’s average falls within that 74% range
CalPERS pension costs impact only 1.8% of the State’s General Fund

The following calculations assume age 55 plus 20 years of service eligibility as per our contract

Construction Maintenance Worker II at highest pay step

Annual Gross Pay
$45,219
CalPERS Calculation
2% x 20 years of service = 40%
PARS Calculation **see notes
.7% x 20 years of service = 14%
CalPERS + PARS Calculation
54% of wages

Yearly Retirement Income
$24,418 yearly retirement income
Monthly Retirement Income
$2035 per month retirement income

Current Monthly Health Insurance Costs for employee (plus one) retiring at age 55
Anthem POS $1,812.64
Anthem HMO $1,565.24
Kaiser $1,409.44
Blue Card (out of area) $1,776.84

** In order to receive the .7% PARS benefit the following restrictions apply:

Employee must have at minimum 20 years of service.
These 20 years must be served with the City of *** exclusively.
These 20 years are non-transferable to or from any other agency.
No exceptions.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Not far from the calculations used in my private company retirement. People retiring early have most

of their benefit eaten up my the cost of insurance.

[SHRED]

2. When Lieberman killed the 55+ Medicare buy-in option

He killed any hope I had of retiring.
At least retiring here in America.


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