I was recently introduced to the Texas County and District Retirement System. This is a retirement savings plan offered to Texas government employees at all levels across the state.
As far as I can tell, it seems to be essentially a fixed annuity. But I’m not clear beyond that. A few of my questions are:
- Am I correct in characterizing this as an annuity?
- Assuming it is a fixed annuity, is it offered through insurance companies (like a typical annuity), or backed by the Texas government itself?
- When is employer matching applied? At vesting, or at retirement?
- When electing to “begin retirement”, if I chose not to take the regular payments and instead rolled a lump-sum disbursement of the account into an IRA, would that sum include the employer match?
Right now, I am imagining the following: if I am fully vested, my employer match is 225%, I currently have $100,000 in my account, and I elect to begin my retirement benefits, then at that time my (now previous) employer adds an additional $225,000 to my account. That brings my total balance to $325,000, which either (a) becomes the basis for calculating the fixed payment lifetime benefit, or (b) becomes available to me as a lump sum (if I so choose) that I can roll over into an IRA and continue to invest myself.
Does this sound accurate? Can anyone weigh in more on how this works and/or personal experience with it?
Submitted January 02, 2023 at 02:19AM by FearlessTomato8992 https://ift.tt/zGKPyJj
