I’ve been a State of CA employee for the last 16 years. CALPERS was 72% as of first quarter 2023, which admittedly has probably gone down a bit since then as their investments are market based. What that means, essentially, is if no one continues to pay into the retirement system, they can afford to pay 72% of their members their pension benefits. Not too bad in my opinion considering I don’t see teachers, public safety workers, CalTrans, Corrections Officers, etc stopping their future contributions.
if you have owned your own business for the last 23 years, you’re likely on the downhill slide towards retirement as it is. So starting to pay into a pension plan this late in the game may not give you a ton of benefit when you consider you will probably be accruing 2% per year. That means if you’re making $100k per year when you retire after 5 years, your pension check will only be $10k per year before taxes. And that’s assuming you retire at or beyond the required retirement age.
The other benefits such as medical, dental, and vision are pretty outstanding. Those benefits along with paid time off hours, are set in a memorandum of understanding contract between your agency and the collective bargaining unit for that job classification. More than likely one represented by SEIU who don’t always put forth equal efforts for each unit and classifications.
effer!!! 