FRS Retirement Planning, walked through at your pace.

What FRS planning actually involves.

FRS is a benefit, but it's also a series of decisions: which plan you're in, when you retire, what payout option you elect, whether DROP is right for you, and how the pension fits alongside the savings you've built on your own. None of these are obvious in isolation — and they all influence each other.

"The pension is a foundation. The rest is what you build on it."

Most of our clients come to their first meeting with a range of questions they've been holding for years — sometimes the better part of a decade — because there was never a clear place to get them answered. That's exactly what the first conversation is for.

It also helps to know which class you fall under, because eligibility and benefit math differ. Regular Class covers most teachers and general state and county staff, while the Special Risk Class — law enforcement, firefighters, EMS, and corrections — generally reaches normal retirement eligibility earlier and earns a higher benefit multiplier per year of service. If you serve in one of those roles, our pages for first responders and law enforcement go deeper on what that means for your timeline.

Pension Plan vs. Investment Plan.

The Pension Plan is a defined benefit: a monthly payment for life, calculated on your years of service and salary, with no market risk to you. The Investment Plan is a defined contribution: your own account balance, your own allocation, your own risk — with more flexibility and portability if you change employers or leave FRS service.

These are two genuinely different shapes of retirement, and the right one depends on your specific situation. We walk through:

• Lifetime income vs. portfolio balance — the real trade-off
• Survivor and spousal protection
• What happens if you leave FRS employment early
• The second election and its actuarial cost
• Whether the Investment Plan makes more sense for your household

We don't have a preferred answer. We model both and let the numbers make the case. A common mistake is to assume the pension is always the safer choice — it often is for someone who plans to stay in FRS service through normal retirement, but a member who expects to change careers, relocate, or leave public employment may value the portability of the Investment Plan more. The point of the exercise is to match the plan to your actual life, not to a rule of thumb.

It's also worth knowing the Health Insurance Subsidy (HIS), a modest monthly supplement based on your years of service, generally applies to retirees under either plan. We factor it in so your projected income reflects the whole benefit, not just the headline pension or account number.

DROP timing.

The Deferred Retirement Option Program allows eligible FRS members to lock in their pension benefit at the point of DROP entry while continuing to work — accumulating that pension amount in a separate DROP account for up to eight years. Entry timing affects the final benefit calculation, the accumulation period, and everything that comes after it.

We model a few scenarios side-by-side: different entry dates, different accumulation strategies, different rollover decisions at the end. Most clients have a window of two to three years where DROP entry is genuinely optimal — and a few dates on either side that cost more than they realize.

Second election.

If you're currently in the Investment Plan, the second election is your one opportunity to switch to the Pension Plan. It involves an actuarial cost — a buy-in payment that reflects the value of the defined benefit you'd be acquiring — and the math looks very different for a 38-year-old with 12 years of service versus a 54-year-old with 25.

We walk through the actuarial value calculation honestly. That includes cases where switching doesn't make financial sense — we'd rather give you an honest assessment now than have you regret a decision later.

Because the second election is generally a one-time decision, the order of operations matters: it interacts with whether you intend to use DROP later, how close you are to vesting, and what your other savings look like. Members should confirm their own eligibility window and any current buy-in figures with FRS or MyFRS.gov before acting, since the precise numbers can change — our role is to help you understand the trade-offs so the decision is an informed one.

Coordination with other savings.

Your 403(b), 457(b), IRA, and Roth accounts don't live outside the retirement plan — they live alongside it. We help you coordinate them with the pension: how to allocate them, when to draw from them, and how they interact with Social Security timing and required minimum distribution rules. Many FRS members also build savings through a deferred compensation plan, and those balances factor into the same picture.

This is where much of the long-term income planning actually happens. The pension is a foundation; a thoughtful order of withdrawals across all your accounts is how you can shape what the whole picture looks like across a 25- or 30-year retirement. Sequence matters because each account is taxed differently — drawing from a Roth, a pre-tax 457(b), and a taxable account in the wrong order can mean paying more tax than necessary, and the right sequence often shifts as you move through your sixties and into required minimum distributions.

One change worth flagging: the Social Security Fairness Act, signed in January 2025, repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset that had historically reduced Social Security for some public pensioners. For affected members, that can change the value of claiming decisions, which is one more reason to look at the pieces together rather than one at a time. Our page on retirement income planning walks through how these decisions fit into a single, durable income strategy.

What a conversation looks like.

It starts with your FRS benefit statement, your current accounts, and the questions you've been carrying. Most first conversations are spent listening and laying out the choices — not presenting a product menu or a pitch.

By the end of the first meeting, most clients leave with a clear sense of where they stand, what decisions are in front of them, and what a careful path forward looks like. That clarity is the point. As a fee-only fiduciary Registered Investment Adviser, we work for you and not a product line — and everything on this page is general education, not individualized advice. Benowitz Wealth Management is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Florida Retirement System or the State of Florida; for official figures and your personal account details, always confirm with FRS or MyFRS.gov.