Those of you contemplating retiring between now and December 1, 2015, and those who have to stay past December 1, 2015 may find yourselves asking the same question. At some point you will need to know how the new Actuarial Equivalency Factors(AEF) come into play with your retirement. The new AEF tables will be available for your consideration in draft form by no later than November 1, 2015, according to my sources at PERS. These new tables will take into account the reduction in the Assumed Interest Rate from 7.75% to 7.5%, as well as the newer, more modern, mortality tables based on actual experience of PERS members and retirees, as well as the more broadly applied tables from the IRS. We know that the “setback” for the 25 basis point reduction in the Assumed Interest rate is approximately 3 months. If you are able to retire on 12/1/15, but choose to continue working, you will need to work until at least March 1, 2016 before your benefit would be the same as December 1, 2015. However, we have not yet learned how the new mortality factors will play into the AEFs. Most information suggests that people are living longer than the last time the tables were iterated. I can’t tell you how much longer, but every month longer a person is EXPECTED to live, the longer PERS is EXPECTED to pay. This means that at retirement, your benefit is fixed (except for COLA) and it has to last as long as you are expected to live (it has to as long as you live, at the least, but the expectations are based on mortality tables). Lengthening of mortality means that your fixed benefit has to be spread out over a longer period of time, thus lowering your monthly benefit. This year is especially tricky for retirees on the cusp of retirement. Those in the situation of being able to retire based on age, service time, or a combination of both, will have to run the numbers to see whether going on December 1, 2015 or waiting makes the most economic sense. If you are in that situation, you are going to want to pay close attention to the new AEFs when they are available on November 1, 2015. You have a short month in which to decide whether to retire, or continue, and how much longer you’ll have to work before you cross over the benefit setback. I have been advising about 6 months, which seems about right, but PLEASE don’t take my word for it. Pay attention and get your hands on the new tables and do the figuring yourself.
Once the tables are out, I will be putting some example calculations here, and on the PERS newsgroup to show how the numbers are run. There will also be others available at the newsgroup to help newcomers and oldsters who aren’t retired to figure out the “cost” of the changes. I can assure you that this change will be non-trivial, and if you don’t pay close attention, you may allow sticky fingers to grab a piece of your retirement that you didn’t think carefully about.
