My wife believed IPERS was all she needed when she started teaching. We got married and I made her put money into an IRA. At first 1/3 of what was going into the pension and 5 year late start. She now puts 1/2 of what goes into IPERS. If she retires at 60 (in 7 years). A 4% w/d from her IRA will be a couple thousand a year less than her pension.
Have to disagree that multiple states unions have gone bankrupt here in the US. A quick google search shows a few towns and cities have tried, without much success getting out of the obligation of paying the workers what they were owed. Corporations yes, and that is why the law was changed in the 70s forcing them to place those funds in an outside source and to fully fund their employees retirement.
How long did it take to sign her up for the online program, 15 minutes or so? So your wife got a letter at the end of 2024 stating that IPERS is moving away from yearly mailing to an online site, but she could still get the information in the mail if requested.
No it didn’t take a lot of time. Had two mailings. One was user info and other was password.
So will we, God willing, be in that boat in 13 months. What about inflation? Hope the savings keeps up with returns? Damn I sound old....
$3200/month is a small pension? That is more than the average SS monthly payment.
Last I looked my SS statement estimated my monthly payment to be between 600-700.
I get what you are saying, but how many thousands of people in Iowa are covered by IPERS, its just not school teachers, but people working for cities and counties, a lot of hospitals, the prisons, police, and fire departments. They would have to hire double the staff they have now, and most of these meeting, would be half empty, if they had them.
Then how do independent agents meet at minimum once a year individually with each of their clients? For the money in fees they bring in, you think they could have one person meet with a town of 500-1000 in a day. That person could cover a county in a week.
Why would you need to meet with anyone if you are on IPERS? Your IPERs payout is just a calculation that you can get online.
I don't know what to tell you, if you have any questions, give them a call or go online and you can get all your answers. I know that is not what you want to hear, but they schedule regional meeting all the time.
To understand how everything works. The majority of people I’ve talked to whether teachers or police force say they are retiring when they hit the number. When they get close, they realize that either it’s not as much as they thought, they didn’t save enough on the side, that it’s a flat rate and has no COL increases and other things.
Couple of things, few people actually stop working when they reach their rule of 88, you are 55 to a little older, and still years away from SS and even further from being able to get on Medicare. Some educators move to another state and draw their retirement but do keep working., But to completely stop working is not going to be in the cards for most people. It's just not, no matter how much they want to.
Gotta support you here. Folks had a ton of choices for payout options and it was super complicated. One way pays more but only til dad dies, another pays less but pays X years after he dies too. It was high stakes and hard to decide and too many options. It was really tough on them to figure.
There are seven options, if you meet with them, they will go through each option and you can decide which one is best for you. My wife and I sat down after looking at the choices and narrow them down to a couple and when we signed up in Des Moines, the gal we were working with, went through the pro and con of each option. I think we chose option 5, which pays less out per month, but when one of us passes, the remaining spouse continues to receive that payment until they also pass.
My wife asked at the state fair around 3 years ago what her payout might be because the papers sent to her was stating around 2k/month with a 5 year average of mid 60s. Which she would be 55 with 33 years in. Turned out the annual statement always quoted her at 87.75 instead of 88 for some reason.
The first one is because she would not be getting the last 3 months of the year in, their calendar year starts in the October to get that quarter in. I actually ended up with 34.75 for the exact
why send out info saying when you reach 88 you get this but she is a quarter short so they hit retirement by a good 40%.
Have you looked into a Roth IRA for her? I’ve never been in that situation, but I’m pretty sure you can still do that.
34.75 is not 40% short, only one quarter, so 25%. Its the way the calculate the service time. It's also why you see teachers starting the school year and then retiring after the first semester, because it gets them them that final quarter of service time. I have no clue why they calculate it the way they do, but that's why she will not get the full 35 years in. A lot of district pay you out in May of your last year so they do not have to make IPERS payments on you for the summer months. It saves them money.
