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Teacher Upset She Can't Retire at 47
Terri List says she would tell her students not to become a teacher in Michigan.
Why?
One of the reasons is because the Saginaw Township Community School District English teacher won?t be able to retire at age 47 as she has hoped.
List was highlighted by the Michigan Education Association as one of the critics of Senate Bill 1040, which would require public school employees to contribute at least 5 percent of their compensation to their retirement plan.
The MEA reported on its website: "Saginaw Township teacher Terry (sic) List had hoped to retire in the next three years when she was 47 years old. That wouldn?t be possible under SB 1040. List would have to work another 16 years to be eligible for health benefits."
?By the time I?m 60, I would have put in 43 years of service, earning a salary at the top of the pay scale. How does that save the district money? You could hire two people for the cost of one and encourage young people to join the profession. Right now, I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.?
List didn?t respond to an email seeking comment.
According to the school?s most recent teacher?s contract, List earns between $70,000 and $80,000 a year depending upon her level of education. Factor in expected pay raises over the next 15 years and it?s likely List would make more than $90,000 by the time she retires, said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Van Beek estimated List?s pension would be $60,000 a year in retirement and it would increase 3 percent a year and she would get health benefits when she retired at age 60. Van Beek also said that it is likely that List bought ?years of service? because she said she would have 43 years of service by age 60. Van Beek said that practice is basically extinct in the private sector.
Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, called List?s comments ?amazing.?
?Wow. They have reached the politicians? level of entitlement,? Drolet said. ?She thinks she is entitled to retire at 47? Holy smokes. I don?t know what more to say to that. A government employee thinking that 47 is a reasonable expectation to retire shows just how deep inside their own bubble they live, insulated from the real world.?
Charles Owens, president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, said tongue-in-cheek that List was ?spot on? in her complaint.
?If you want to retire if you are 47, apparently teaching is not the place to go,? Owens said. ?The least Terri could do is provide a list of places other people could go so they can retire when they are 47.?
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/article.aspx?ID=16789&print=yes
How is 47 even possible? Even in NY, who has one of the best teacher retirement, I dont think you can until at leat 55, though I think it is 57.
Re: Teacher Upset She Can't Retire at 47
Ok a few things. She says at 60 she will have 43 years of service. That means she joined the union at 17. I don't know how but she did. If I stay with the state I plan to retire at 56 which is 30 years after I joined. The only way this is financially feasible is if the state honors their promise of letting me pay my current monthly rate for my health insurance.
SO bottom line, it doesn't matter how old she is. She put in her 30 years she should be able to retire./gavel
ETA. Ok I reread. They are speculating that she bought service. You can buy service you haven't earned? That's weird.
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I think the only place you could retire at 47 would be the military. Even then, the pension isn't enough to make a living unless you are way higher up on the COC food chain. You'd still have to get a second job.
Does anyone expect to retire at 47 anyway?
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I feel like I'm missing half the story here, but if Terri put in her years of service (or was legally allowed to "buy" service, which I'm unclear on) then it's patently unfair to suddenly change the rules on her.
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
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There, I fixed it for her.
How is she deluded? She put in her time, and apparently bought some years earlier on. Why shouldn't she be able to retire?
Yup. HAB, my fellow Law & Order freak, how could you not remember this???
I think people are focusing on the age a bit too much. Unless the article went on further and quoted Terri as saying her diamond shoes are too tight also, I'd be miffed too if she was promised one thing and then it was pulled out from under her rug. While it only mentions the 5% contribution, I'd like to know how this changes the health benefits policy. I'm assuming she would have been entitled to health benefits upon retirement, no matter how old she'd be, and now that would no longer be the case unless she stays on for an extra 13 years. I'd be pissed too. But yeah, just what every school needs - a 59-year-old teacher who could only ever dwell on how she should have retired 12 years ago.
I just can't fathom that she had an expectation to retire at 47 moreso than she had an expectation to retire after 30 years or service - which just happened to be at the young age of 47. To me, there's a difference between the two.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DI'm sorry. I wasn't speaking to the particulars of this article. I should have clarified.
And also completely aside but are they retiring completely or just retiring from teaching/federal/state service?
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To be fair, she has NOT purchased the time as of yet, per http://www.mea.org/senators-get-earful-sb-1040... says she is in the process of doing so. If they don't allow her (a practice that may no longer be in place...I cant find if it is still allowed or not) it is not a broken promise. I am no fan of changing this for already retired, but those not yet...it happens, unfortunately, with rising costs (I know NY now contributes towards retirement whereas older teachers do not and are on different tiers).
I don't know that I agree. Assume she's paid at the highest end of the estimate they gave for her current compensation: $80,000.
Scenario A: She keeps working. The District pays $80,000 and has a teacher.
Scenario B: She retires. The District pays half her salary (based on her estimate) to a young teacher. $40,000. The District also starts paying her pension. $60,000. The District's now paying $100,000 (between its pension outlay and its payroll) and has a teacher (one with substantially less experience, but perhaps a much better attitude). Any incremental savings on something like a 403b match on the new $40K salary versus the old $80K salary is totally eclipsed by the extra $20K being paid each year. It's admittedly two buckets, but they're often pretty intertwined.
The fundamental problem with these pensions is that people are living much longer in retirement than anyone ever expected them to and the school districts are far more broke than anticipated. She could retire at 47 and live to be 97. If she bought 5 years of service, they'd pay her for twice as many years in retirement as she ever worked!
I was thinking the same thing Tef.
Technically I COULD take "early retirement" at age 47. (Federal employee) I'd have to use health benefits from my husband's job though. This would be entirely doable if we didn't have a kid we want to put through college.
Exactly. I was about to write this, so thanks for saving me the trouble!
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Same. I'm eligible to retire with full pension at 51. I'd be angry if I couldn't.
That's what NY does. We have a large unionized population, and if the state ever tried to change the pension/benefits system for current workers instead of just for new hires, it would be like the apocalypse happened.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DThe district doesn't pay her retirement. The fund that she paid into does. So it would, in fact, be beneficial to the district. It's common practice for districts to "buy out" teachers who are close to retirement so they can hire cheaper, younger teachers.
I am going to have to teach for at least 35 years (probably 37) to get to full retirement because I started so young, moved states and didn't "buy" any years. Teaching isn't really like other jobs in that most teachers start at 22 or 23 years old. If you teach until traditional retirement, that's 40-45 years of the job. I don't care who you are, that is a loooooong time.
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I don't think teaching is as physically or psychologically grueling as police or fire work though (depending on where you work). I think it's reasonable to expect retirement after 20 years of doing that kind of job. But I think it's pretty tone deaf to complain about not getting to retire in your 40s when the majority f Americans, many of whom have equally or more demanding jobs, can only dream about retiring before 60.
Van Beek estimated List?s pension would be $60,000 a year in retirement and it would increase 3 percent a year and she would get health benefits when she retired at age 60.
Is the pension contingent on her retiring at 60, rather than 47? That's what it looks like to me.
So much this.
A local cop I went out with was going to be retiring at 45...???
How is it complaining when she expects her employer to hold to their end of the bargain?
I don't get this. Who cares if she's 47 or 27? She made a deal with the government that she would give 30 years of her life to her job with the promise that, at the end, she would be able to retire.
How is she complaining? Please explain your train of thought on this one.
From what I understand, it's not that she can't retire at 47. She could. It's that she wouldn't be able to receive free HC bennies until 60, and of course she wouldn't say, take another job or pay for HC herself, thus she's "screwed". And to that I say, cry me a flucking river. We have so many problems in MI funding actual education for students, as well as the pension obligations which are underfunded, from what I understand. So the money has to come from somewhere. It's not unreasonable to expect able bodied, middle aged people to buy insurance or work for it. I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who get paid as much as she would receive not working, probably for more years than she actually spent working. So there.