Monthly Archives: January 2019

Countdown to Retirement — Eight Months Out

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Once you decide to retire and begin preparing, the final months leading up to your retirement date go by quickly. Previously, we discussed the steps to take when you’re 12 months away from retirement. As we continue our Countdown to Retirement series, let’s take a look at what you should be doing eight months out.

Eight Months Out: Review Retirement Income

Some experts say that you need 80 percent of your pre-retirement income to maintain your standard of living once you stop working. There’s a good chance that your NYSLRS pension alone won’t provide that level of income. With retirement lasting 20 years, 25 years or even longer, it’s important to have a plan in place for the extra income you’ll need.

That’s why, at least eight months before your planned retirement date, you should start reviewing any other income you’ll have available. Some common sources include:

Check out our Straight Talk About Financial Planning for Your Retirement publication for monthly income and expense worksheets to help you assess your retirement finances.
Countdown to Retirement - Eight Months Out

Counting Down

Your planned retirement date is less than a year away. As the day gets closer, check out the rest of our Countdown to Retirement series for posts covering your retirement budget, what we accept as proof of your date of birth, what to do after you’ve filed your Application for Service Retirement (RS6037) and more.

Retirement and your credit score

Retirement and Your Credit Score

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Throughout your working years, you strived to maintain good credit. But if you’re retired, or about to retire, is a good credit score that important? The answer is yes, according to many financial experts. You don’t want to be burdened with debt in your retirement years, but you may need to get a car loan or refinance a mortgage. A good credit score will assure you can borrow the money at a decent interest rate.

But your credit score can affect you even if you don’t borrow money. A bad credit score could prevent you from landing a job or renting an apartment. It could even force you to pay higher insurance premiums.

Fortunately, maintaining a good credit score is not that difficult. In most cases, it’s a matter of continuing what you’ve already been doing.
Retirement and your credit score

How to Maintain a Good Credit Score

  • Pay your bills on time. Your payment history accounts for about a third of your credit score.
  • Don’t max out your credit cards. The ratio of debt to available credit is also a big factor. If all your credit cards have balances near the limit, your credit score will suffer.
  • Don’t close credit card accounts you’ve had for a long time. These accounts show your long history of being responsible with credit, helping to boost your score.
  • Charge something. Getting off the credit grid entirely can hurt your rating. So use a credit card regularly for some purchases. If you pay off the balance each month, you’ll avoid interest.
  • Check credit reports. Even if you’re doing everything right, misinformation in the files of credit rating companies can hurt your credit. (And, no, requesting a credit report will not hurt your credit score.)

Things like age and salary are not part of the credit score equation, so being retired does not hurt your score. However, lenders do take income into account when you apply for a loan, so you may find it harder to borrow after retirement, even if you have good credit.

Checking Credit Reports

Under federal law, the three nationwide credit reporting companies are required to provide you with a free credit report once every 12 months. But you must request it. You can do it online at www.annualcreditreport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228. (AnnualCreditReport, a website maintained by the three major credit reporting agencies, is the only free-credit-report site authorized by the federal government. Beware of impostor sites.)

Divorce Affects Other NYSLRS Benefits

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signing divorce documents

We’ve written here before about how divorce affects your NYSLRS pension, what a DRO is and why it’s required. However, NYSLRS members have other benefits besides their pensions. Divorce and DROs may affect some of them as well.

Ordinary Death Benefit

As with your pension, a DRO may direct you to designate your ex-spouse as a beneficiary for some portion of your ordinary death benefit. You should file the DRO with NYSLRS as soon as it’s officially accepted by the court. We will prepare a custom beneficiary form that complies with the DRO. Also be sure to choose additional beneficiaries for any remainder of the benefit and submit your changes to NYSLRS.

Post-Retirement Ordinary Death Benefit

Most Tier 2, 3, 4 or 5 members of the Employees Retirement System (ERS) are covered by a post-retirement ordinary death benefit. A DRO may direct you to designate your ex-spouse as a beneficiary for some portion of the benefit. You should file the DRO with NYSLRS as soon as it’s officially accepted by the court. Be sure to contact us to choose additional beneficiaries as allowed by the DRO.

Loans

NYSLRS members who meet eligibility requirements can borrow a certain percentage of their contribution balance. DROs may be written to prohibit members from taking future loans.

Outstanding loan balances at retirement reduce retirees’ pension benefits. Unless a DRO specifically provides that the ex-spouse’s share of the pension be calculated without reference to outstanding loans, the ex-spouse’s portion will also be reduced if a NYSLRS loan is not paid off before retirement.

Refunds

Occasionally, NYSLRS may refund a member’s contributions because of a tier reinstatement, membership withdrawal, membership transfer or excess contributions. If the member is divorced and NYSLRS has a DRO on file, the DRO will determine whether a portion of the refund must go to the ex-spouse. Generally, if the DRO doesn’t mention a contributions refund, the member receives the full amount.

Keeping Your Ex-Spouse as Beneficiary

A divorce, annulment or judicial separation removes a member’s former spouse as beneficiary of certain death benefits and retirement options, except as provided by the divorce judgment or decree, or a DRO. So, if you have gone through a divorce, annulment or judicial separation and you do NOT have a DRO, you must resubmit your beneficiary designation to NYSLRS to retain your former spouse as a beneficiary.

The easiest way to do this is by using Retirement Online, our secure, self-service web application. You can also submit a Designation of Beneficiary form.

Taxes and Your NYSLRS Pension

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Tax season is coming.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will begin accepting tax returns later this month. In late January, NYSLRS will mail tax information to retirees (and some members and beneficiaries) so they can file their taxes.

1099-Rs

NYSLRS pensions are not subject to New York State income taxes, but they are subject to federal taxes. By January 31, we’ll mail 1099-R tax forms to nearly half a million retirees and beneficiaries. We also mail 1099-Rs to beneficiaries who received taxable income from NYSLRS in 2018, members who have taken taxable NYSLRS loans or have defaulted on their loans, and those who ended their membership and withdrew their contributions in 2018.

A 1099-R shows:

  • The total benefit paid to you in a calendar year.
  • The taxable amount of your benefit.
  • The amount of taxes withheld from your benefit.

If you don’t get your 1099-R by the second week of February, you can request a reprint. This year, reprints will be available for calendar years 2016, 2017 and 2018.

1099-R Interactive Tutorial

1099-r tax form tutorial screenshot

Understanding your 1099-R Tutorial

If you have questions about the information on the form, we feature an interactive 1099-R tutorial on our website. It walks you through a sample 1099-R and offers a short explanation of specific boxes on the form.

Changing Your Federal Tax Withholdings

Because federal tax law was revised for 2018, you may discover that you had too little or too much withheld. You can change your federal tax withholding at any time by sending us a W-4P form. (A handy tutorial about the W-4P  walks you through the steps on filling it out.)

W4-P Tax form tutorial screenshot

Understanding your W-4P Form Tutorial

We offer a federal tax withholding calculator. Enter a marital status and a number of exemptions into the calculator to see how much we would withhold based on current tax tables.

For more information, please visit the Taxes and Your Pension page on our website.

NYSLRS’ Special Retirement Plans

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NYSLRSCertain PFRS and ERS members are under Special Retirement Plans manages more than 300 retirement plan combinations for its members, which are described in more than 50 plan booklets. But, for all that complexity, they breakdown into just two main types: regular plans and special plans. Under a regular plan, you need to reach certain age and service requirements to receive a pension. For instance, if you’re a Tier 4 member in the Employees’ Retirement System (ERS) with a regular plan, you’re eligible for a benefit when you turn 55 and have five or more years of service credit. Most of our ERS members are in regular plans.

Special plans are a little different. With special plans, NYSLRS members can receive a pension after completing 20 or 25 years of service. There is no age requirement; you can retire at any age once you have the full amount of required service credit. Both ERS and the Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS) have special plans.

Special Plans for Special Services to the State

As of March 31, 2018, seven percent of active ERS members and 98 percent of active PFRS members are in special plans. These members fill roles such as:

  • Police officer;
  • Firefighter;
  • Correction officer;
  • Sheriffs undersheriff, and deputy sheriff; and
  • Security hospital treatment assistant.

Public employees in jobs like these face dangers and difficulties throughout their careers. They fight fires, patrol our neighborhoods, assist ill patients and more. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for the challenging, sometimes life-threatening work they do each day.

If you’d like to learn more about your retirement plan, please visit the Publications page of our website and review your plan publication. If you’re not sure which booklet covers your benefits, you can check your Member Annual Statement, ask your employer or send us an email using our secure contact form.