Retirement Earnings Test Calculator
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Complete the form to see the effect of the Retirement Earnings Test on retirement benefits. Please note that the retirement earnings test always uses the normal retirement age applicable to retired workers. Exempt amounts under the Retirement Earnings Test |
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| Your estimated earnings: $ If you reach your normal retirement age this year, enter only those earnings made prior to the month you reach this age. The retirement earnings test does not apply once you reach normal retirement age. |
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| Is the current year the first year you are receiving benefits? Yes |
Arkansas Teaching Salaries And Benefits
As you consider your career and future retirement, its important to take into account how youll position yourself to live a healthy, prosperous life. In the state of Arkansas, however, these considerations weigh less heavily in the minds of teachers.
Thanks to an expansive support system that provides Arkansas educators with numerous benefits, teachers are better prepared to tackle issues that arise with health and retirement. By offering teachers a number of options regarding the directions of their health care and retirement, the state of Arkansas ensures their workforce remains strong.
Learn more about becoming a teacher. Contact schools offering teacher education/certification programs in Arkansas.
How To Calculate Your Standard Trs Benefit
To calculate TRS retirement benefits, use the following formula:
*An individual who, as a TRS member on Aug. 31, 2005, was at least 50 years old, or met the Rule of 70, or had at least 25 years of service credit should use the three highest years of salary for this calculation.
Note the exceptions listed here that describe reductions in the standard annuity based on standard age at retirement.
If you have questions about your TRS benefits, call 1-800-223-8778 or visit the TRS website.
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Current Financial Health Of The Arkansas Retirement System
Currently holding more than $7 billion in assets, APERS continues to build its contribution financing and total assets. In addition, APERS offers pension to more than 45,000 active members and more than 1,600 retired members.
The majority of its funding comes from investment returns. Specifically, the state system generates its return rates through investments in domestic equities, domestic fixed income, international equities and alternative investments.
APERS suffered an extremely low return rate in 2009 , according to its 2016 Annual Financial Report. However, its return rate significantly increased in 2016. This ultimately improved the performance of its retirement system.
Enrolling Canceling And Making Changes To Your Arbenefits Coverage
Enrolling as a new hire or during Open Enrollment
You can enroll in ARBenefits coverage within 60 days of your hire date or during Open Enrollment To enroll during either of these periods, you will need to log into your ARBenefits Member Portal. Check out our How to Enroll Online Guide to view more information on how to do this through your ARBenefits Member Portal.
Enrolling due to a qualifying event
You can also enroll, cancel or make changes to your ARBenefits coverage within 60 days of a qualifying event To make changes due to a qualifying event, you must submit an ARBenefits Change Form along with the supporting documentation below. To enroll for the first time due to a qualifying event, you must submit an ARBenefits Election Form along with the following documentation.
Documentation to add a dependent
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Overview Of Arkansas Retirement Systems
Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System Eligible employees for this plan receive retirement, disability and death benefits. Offered under APERS are also two additional options: the Deferred Retirement Option Plan and Partial Annuity Withdrawal .
Arkansas Judicial Retirement System The AJRS pension system, while primarily for those holding judicial offices, contains two tiers of membership. While the eligibility requirements for each vary, both allow members to receive a range of retirement benefits.
Arkansas Teacher Retirement System For ATRS, your membership depends on your employer. Offered under this system are a range of benefits, including lifetime retirement benefits, disability and death benefits.
Arkansas State Police Retirement System ASPRS offers pension and retirement benefits to state officers and contains two tiers of membership. Under ASORS, eligible officers also have the choice to be non-contributory members.
Arkansas State Highway Employees Retirement System ASHERS offers eligible employees a range of perks, including early retirement with reduced annuities, disability and death benefits.
Arkansas Local Police and Fire Retirement System Established for police officers and firefighters, LOPFI provides various retirement benefits, pension and retirement plans to eligible members.
What To Do If You Still Have Questions
Dont leave without getting your FREE copy of my latest guide: Top 10 Questions and Answers on the Windfall Elimination Provision. You CAN simplify these rules and get every dime in benefits you deserve! Simply click here
If you have questions, you could leave a comment below, but what may be an even greater help is to join my. Its very active and has some really smart people who love to answer any questions you may have about Social Security. From time to time Ill even drop in to add my thoughts, too.
You should also consider joining the nearly 400,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel! For visual learners , this is where I break down the complex rules and help you figure out how to use them to your advantage.
And dont leave without getting your FREE copy of my Social Security Cheat Sheet. This is where I took the most important stuff from the 100,000 page website and condensed it down to just ONE PAGE! Get your FREE copy here.
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Can I Borrow From My Arkansas Teacher Retirement
Can I borrow from my account? No. By definition, the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System is a DEFINED BENEFIT PLAN. One of the specific provisions of a Defined Benefit Plan is that there are no stipulations allowing members to borrow from their accounts. Nor do we have any provisions for loans by our membership.
How Do I Create A Paycheck For An Employee
Employers typically have two basic options for creating paychecks:
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If You Only Qualify For A Teachers Retirement System Pension
If you have never paid Social Security tax and only qualify for your teachers retirement, its likely youll never receive a Social Security benefit.
Although this makes perfect sense to some, others think its still pretty unfair that this isnt true for everyone. For example, if you had chosen to stay at home as the household manager, you would not have paid into the Social Security system. However, you would be eligible for spousal and survivor benefits.
These intricate Social Security regulations and how differently they may affect a workers retirement income make it critical that you plan ahead and prepare. Before you make your elections on your teachers pension, you must consider how your monthly cash flow would change with a spouses death.
As a teacher, you have plenty to keep up with and these complex rules on Social Security dont make it any easier. Thats why its important to have a quick and easy source of information at your disposal so can make the best decisions for you and your family.
What Should You Do With Your Paycheck Stub
Pay stubs are used to verify payment accuracy and may be necessary when settling wage/hour disputes. For this reason, employees may want to save their pay stubs, but arent required to do so. Employers, however, must keep payroll records for the specific lengths of time mandated by federal and state governments.
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The Ua 403 Defined Contribution Plan
The UA 403/457 plan is a defined contribution and does not pay a specific benefit when you retire. Your retirement benefit is dependent on the earnings or losses of your investments. You contribute a percentage of your pay, and the university will make a matching contribution. At retirement or separation of service from the university, you can withdraw this money in lump sum amounts or over time, subject to plan limitations. Before you have retired, you may begin to withdraw this money at age 59½.
Offering retirement options for regular 403, Roth 403 and 457 plans, the university’s defined contribution plan gives you the option of investing with TIAA and/or Fidelity Investments. You can choose to invest with one or both companies and transfer accumulations from one company to another, subject to restrictions.
Contributions to the UA Retirement Plan
The university contributes an amount equal to 5% of your regular salary when you contribute 5% or less. The university will match any contributions you make over 5% up to a maximum employer contribution of 10%. At no time can the combined employee and employer contributions exceed the limitations established by the Internal Revenue Code.
You may contribute to your 403 plan in one of two ways:
Employee Voluntary 402 Contribution Limits for 2023
| Plan | |
| $45,000 | $60,000 |
You will only participate in the 457 plan if you reach your 403 limit before the end of the calendar year. The 457 is not eligible for ROTH contributions.
Arkansas Teacher Retirement Plan
All teachers in Arkansas must contribute 6 percent of their monthly salary to their personal retirement funds. These contributions are automatically deducted from your paycheck. While employed, you will not have access these funds. Should you leave your job before reaching retirement eligibility, you can request a refund of your personal contributions plus any interest earned by your contributions.
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What Are The Benefits Of Working For The State Of Arkansas
When you work for the State of Arkansas, you have access to health and dental benefits, retirement plans, life insurance, disability coverage, paid leave, wellness programs and much more. If you are looking for a rewarding job opportunity and excellent benefits, join our talent community and apply today!
Access To Affordable Health Insurance
Teachers in Arkansas have access to the ARBenefits program, which provides a number of different health insurance plans for teachers to choose from. There are three major plans provided to teachers with varying qualities. Teachers pick from the following plans:
ARBenefits GoldContains the maximum amount of benefits with the lowest co-pays, co-insurance, and a $0 deductible, but also has the highest monthly premium cost for the member. The network for this plan is through Health Advantage.
ARBenefits SilverFeatures a $750 deductible with a lower monthly premium. This plan is a blending of the Gold and Bronze plans, offering a budget conscious but still substantial plan to teachers. The network for this plan is through Qualchoice.
ARBenefits BronzeThe most affordable health insurance plan with the lowest premium, but features a deductible of $1500. Plan has no co-pays, but prescriptions and medical services apply to the deductible. The network for this plan is through Health Advantage.
For example, consider a relatively common medical service, such as delivering a newborn baby. If you went to the hospital for delivery under the ARBenfits Gold Plan, approximately $5,782 of the total $7,540 cost would be covered through the plan. With this plan, the patient would only pay $1,750. However, under the Bronze plan, the plan would pay $4,840 of the cost, leaving you to cover the remaining $2,450.
Under each ARBenefits program, the following health care practices are covered:
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How Does Arkansas State Retirement Work
Employees contribute 6.0% of salary out of each paycheck to the contributory pension plan. The average retirement benefit is $20,760 per year, or $1,730 per month. ATRS covers 71,195 active school employees and 34,160 retired school employees and beneficiaries.
Teacher Deferred Retirement Option
T-DROP is the Teacher Deferred Retirement Option Plan found at ACA § 24-7-1301 et. seq. If a member elects to participate in T-DROP, the retirement annuity benefits are frozen and any subsequent benefits in the ATRS plan will accrue in the T-DROP account. T-DROP benefits, a portion of the retirement annuity benefits for which the member is eligible, are deposited monthly in the member’s T-DROP account. T-DROP accounts accrue interest on June 30 each year at 3% compounded annually. The ATRS Board of Trustees retains the right to provide an increased incentive interest rate during years of outstanding investment returns. Upon retirement, T-DROP benefits may be annuitized with the regular retirement annuity, distributed as a lump sum payment or a combined distribution of annuity and lump sum payment. A lump sum payment of a member’s T-DROP account is taxable to the recipient but is eligible for rollover treatment from the IRS as a single distribution.
In order to participate in T-DROP, you must be an active member in ATRS or a reciprocal plan and you must have 30 years of credited service for full participation, which can include service credit with an Arkansas reciprocal plan . However, for those members with 28 years of service credit but less than 30 years of service credit, ATRS allows early participation in T-DROP with a reduction for early entry.
Benefits of T-DROP:
| Final Average Salary |
| $593,172.90 |
How does T-DROP work:
T-DROP Participation:
Post T-DROP
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How To Understand Your Social Security Benefit If You Worked In Both
This may surprise you but your Social Security statement does not reflect any reduction in benefits due to your teachers pension. Theyll wait until you file to tell you what the reduction is if you qualify for both a teachers retirement and Social Security benefits.
Understanding if a reduction in benefits will apply to you, and how much that will be, does not have to wait until you file for Social Security. You can get a good idea today by understanding the key differences between the two rules which may reduce your benefit amount:
From a very high level, you should understand that the WEP rule only applies to individuals who are eligible for a Social Security benefit based on their own work history and have a pension from work where they did not pay Social Security tax.
Meanwhile, the GPO rule only applies to individuals who are entitled to a Social Security benefit as a survivor or spouse and have a pension from a Federal, state, or local government job, in which they did not pay Social Security tax.
Heres a look at how each rule would impact your benefit.
Calculating How The Wep Will Affect You
I know this is a lot to follow, so if you want to take a shortcut in figuring out how the impact of the WEP, you may want to use my free calculator.
This calculator will tell you:
- The amount of monthly Social Security benefit you can expect after the WEP reduction .
- The number of substantial earnings years you already have
- How additional years of substantial earnings will affect the WEP penalty
To use this calculator youll need to get a copy of your earnings history from the SSA. You should only put in your years of earnings that were covered by Social Security.
- My article on the potential repeal of the WEP
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If You Choose Early Retirement
If you decide to start retirement benefits the month you turn 62, you will get benefits before you reach full retirement age. We reduce your monthly benefit to 70% because you will get benefits for 60 additional months.
Your age 62 retirement benefit is $618 per month. If your full retirement benefit had not been reduced by WEP, your age 62 retirement benefit would have been $977.
The Social Security Rules Teachers Need To Know
In the 1970s and 1980s, laws were passed that amended the Social Security rules to keep individuals from double dipping, or receiving both a Social Security benefit and a pension from a job where they did not pay into the Social Security system.
The results of these amendments are two rules that could impact your ability to claim your full Social Security benefit as a teacher: The Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset .
These provisions reduce benefits for those who worked in a job in which they:
This is not limited to teachers. Other professions that often fall into this group include public sector workers like firefighters, police officers and numerous other state, county and local employees.
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If You Were Employed But Werent Covered By Social Security
In the beginning, Social Security didnt cover any public sector employees. But as many states dropped their own pension plans and adopted coverage agreements with the Social Security Administration, things have changed.
Today there are still 15 states that participate solely in their own pension plans instead of Social Security:
Those states are:
If you are a teacher in one of those states, the rules for collecting a Teachers Retirement System pension and Social Security can be confusing and maddening to try and figure out.
Thats especially true if youve paid into the Social Security system for enough quarters to qualify for a benefit, which is fairly common among teachers.
Many teachers find themselves in this situation for a variety of reasons. For some, teaching is a second career, after theyve spent years working in a job or a state where Social Security taxes were withheld.
Others may have taught in a state where teachers do participate in Social Security. For example, teachers in my town, which is divided between the states of Arkansas and Texas, could qualify for both.
If they worked in Arkansas for at least 10 years and then taught in Texas , they would qualify for both Social Security and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.
UPDATE: Dont leave without getting your FREE copy of my latest guide: Top 10 Questions and Answers on the Windfall Elimination Provision. You CAN simplify these rules and get every dime in benefits you deserve! Simply .