Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you have had a long, and hopefully very rewarding teaching career. Thank you for your years of service and hopefully we can assist with some ideas on planning for retirement.
Planning for retirement, like planning for a teaching year is a process. It is a process that is different for each individual, it can vary from state to state. It should involve discussion with many different people.
The first step is educating yourself about your state retirement system. Seek out the most veteran teacher in your school. Ask this person about the process and seek their advice often. Most states have a retirement website (MTRS). Bookmark this page on your computer and visit it periodically.
At the most basic level in Massachusetts, the two factors that determine a retirement salary are age and years of service. Many systems have a minimum requirement for one or both of these categories.
At what point in your career, should you look at the retirement chart? We do not recommend looking at the retirement chart too closely until you are five years away from retirement. It’s fine to look every now and again at your possible date of retirement, but the reality is, unless it is within five years, it is not that critical. Focusing on retirement options too early, will take away from your daily life teaching responsibilities.
Retirement should be on the back burner. Some schools provide teachers with desks and perhaps you can tack the retirement percentage chart behind other important objects. Paragraph once you do start looking at the retirement chart. It is helpful to circle the earliest year you could retire in the year that you could retire with the highest percentage of your salary. This could be a range of over 10 years for some individuals. That would give you a starting point. Here is a link to the Massachusetts teacher retirement system percentage chart. We encourage all teachers to print it up and become familiar with it, including first year teachers, so you have an understanding of what retirement will look like if you choose to stay in the teaching profession. Teaches from other states, research the retirement system in your state and become familiar with the detail details of it.