Sounds like a lot better than retirement options available to almost all private sector employees.
It might have seemed like a lot at the time but if you live long enough it will pay well.
I agree about SS probably not being there but your pension and other investment will be.
You should be celebrating not complaining. If you even work 20 years and have a 3 year average 60K that is 20K a year for life. Just out of the gate. If you maxed (as anyone should) the 401K then you should be set to retire pretty young.
I’m not complaining at all. I’m correcting gross misrepresentations about the retirement plans from people who are repeating rumours they heard from god knows where.
If you retire early your health benefits are deducted from your pension. They aren’t “free”. At 65 you are on Medicare like everyone else. Health benifits are not for life. You also pay state and federal income tax on your annuity and on your social security benefits and on any money withdrawn from your 401k.
Because of early retirement and Obamacare my annuity is 600 dollars a month until I’m 65 years old and my health care is at least twice that and my deductible doubled.
Also there are very restrictive rules on collecting a pension. For example, your years of service must be consecutive and you loose 5 percent per year from your pension for every year you retire before the age of 65. The penalty age goes up for people born after 1960.
The earliest age you can retire is 56 for those born before 1960. There is no pension if you leave before your minimum age and minimum years. You can also lose 1% of your annuity contributions over your career under certain circumstances,
So if you retire at the earliest age possible after twenty years of service you will lose for life 45 percent of your pension.
I’m not complaining. It a good benefits package! Fortune 500 company’s use to have benefit plans like this but after almost 50 years of the great society those programs have died and they eventually, out of necessity, will die in the government to.