TX LE mandatory retirement age

[Joe Mac]

I will. What I could unofficially gather so far is that your SSA benefit will in no case be 'zeroed', but it will be impacted to a varying degree based on how much and how many years of SSA you contributed too:

- A higher number of years with substantial SSA contributions will result in a comparatively LOWER WEP impact.

- Vice versa for a small number of SSA contribution years, your final SSA benefit will be impacted more.

This could be of interest for you: https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirem...anner/wep.html

Bottom line, from everything I could gather, the person you spoke to was probably mistaken.

Thanks much.. I only had about 4 years of SSA taxed employment during college and after, then 27 years on the PD, now 3 years of taxed security/EP work since. I'm only working 3-4 days a month now, but it pays well and keeps the SSA credits rolling in. It will be another 12+ years before social security age, so if I keep working a bit (albeit very part-time) I should have around 20 SSA contribution years before it's time to draw. Hopefully that will be enough of a monthly benefit to keep me in bourbon, if nothing else.

[Jeff22]

MTP: did you pay into Social Security while you were working your primary job?

[Borderland]

Please share what you learn. I'm retired from the PD, still a long way from social security age, but I have enough credits from other jobs to qualify. Without taking the drastic step of actually sitting on hold to (*gasp*) talk to a live human on the phone, I've been unable to suss out whether the windfall provision will eliminate any social security benefits I would otherwise get.

The WEP section on the SSA web site is rather cryptic, but does note that while WEP will reduce your benefits, it will not eliminate them entirely. However, a fellow retiree from my agency did call and talk to them; he was told, "oh, you won't be getting anything", because our pensions are too fat... We're both hoping the person he spoke with was mistaken.

Seems like it wouldn't have anything to do with how fat your pension is or isn't. I thought SS was based entirely on what you paid into it. For instance, I have a state pension with 30 years in the system plus a full draw on SS. When I was working I always paid into SS every month. I also paid into a state retirement account at the agency where I worked. My paycheck took a pretty big hit but I'm enjoying the proceeds now in my golden ? years. I've been retired for 10 years.

I know some systems opt out of SS. In that case you don't pay into it and no soup for you. Or if you have various jobs and pay into it sporadically you may get a reduced benefit.

I think one can go to the SS website and get an account. That would show you how much you paid in and how much you can expect to receive when you hit retirement age. Be patient when you do it because they think everyone's a scammer unless you can prove otherwise.

[luckyman]

I will. What I could unofficially gather so far is that your SSA benefit will in no case be 'zeroed', but it will be impacted to a varying degree based on how much and how many years of SSA you contributed too:

- A higher number of years with substantial SSA contributions will result in a comparatively LOWER WEP impact.

- Vice versa for a small number of SSA contribution years, your final SSA benefit will be impacted more.

This could be of interest for you: https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirem...anner/wep.html

Bottom line, from everything I could gather, the person you spoke to was probably mistaken.

Agreed; whoever he talked to gave him bad info.…

From https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/prog...provision.html :

The WEP PIA replicates the regular PIA but scales down the first percentage from 90 percent to 40 percent in increments of five percentage points for workers with less than 30 years of coverage (YOCs). Thus, workers with 30 or more YOCs have a first PIA factor of 90 percent, workers with 21–29 YOCs have a first PIA factor between 45–85 percent, and workers with 20 YOCs have a first PIA factor of 40 percent.
However, the difference between the regular PIA and the WEP PIA cannot exceed one-half of the monthly non-covered pension. This provision is known as the WEP guarantee and results in a smaller WEP reduction to the Social Security benefit than otherwise would have applied.