Copyright
NOT AN OFFICIAL FRS PUBLICATION
This book is not an official FRS publication or FRS material. It is not published, reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the Florida Retirement System, the Florida Division of Retirement, the State Board of Administration of Florida, MyFRS, the State of Florida, any municipal firefighter or police officer pension plan or board of trustees, or any government agency. It is an independent educational book written by Derrick Johnson and published by Benowitz Wealth Management.
The Special Risk Retirement Foundation
What Florida's Law Enforcement, Corrections, Fire, and EMS Need to Know Before They Retire
The Special Risk Retirement Blueprint Series, Book One
Copyright © 2026 Joy Financial Group LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Published by Benowitz Wealth Management, a brand of Joy Financial Group LLC, 605 Northlake Blvd #10, Altamonte Springs, FL 32701. benowitzwealth.com
First Edition. Information in this book is current as of September 2026.
This book is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in it is individualized financial, investment, tax, legal, Social Security, Medicare, pension, benefits, insurance, or estate advice. Readers should consult qualified professionals, and should confirm current benefit information directly with MyFRS, the Florida Division of Retirement, their employer or human resources office, their plan providers, and the Social Security Administration or Medicare, before acting on their personal circumstances.
FRS rules, tax laws, Social Security and Medicare rules, contribution limits, and employer policies change. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. No strategy can guarantee profit, protect against loss, eliminate taxes, or ensure retirement success. Examples in this book are hypothetical, clearly labeled, and for educational purposes only. The people in its stories are fictional. They do not describe actual clients or actual results.
Benowitz Wealth Management is not affiliated with, endorsed by, approved by, or sponsored by the Florida Retirement System, the Florida Division of Retirement, the State Board of Administration of Florida, MyFRS, the State of Florida, or any county, city, municipality, school district, sheriff's office, police department, fire department, public employer, municipal pension board, local retirement plan, board of trustees, the Social Security Administration, Medicare, or any government agency. FRS members may obtain free guidance from the MyFRS Financial Guidance Line at 1-866-446-9377.
Benowitz Wealth Management is the public-facing brand of Joy Financial Group LLC, a Florida-registered investment adviser providing fee-only investment advisory services. Advisory services are offered only in jurisdictions where the firm is properly registered, notice filed, excluded, or exempt from registration requirements. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill, training, approval, or endorsement by any regulatory authority. Additional information, including services, fees, conflicts of interest, and disciplinary history, is available in the firm's Form ADV Part 2A at adviserinfo.sec.gov, CRD #331545. Benowitz Wealth Management does not provide tax or legal advice, does not sell insurance, and does not enroll anyone in Medicare or Social Security.
A Note from the Author
Think of the officer who works nights, weekends and holidays, the firefighter who runs toward what everyone else runs from, and the corrections officer who spends every shift in a place most people never see. These are real people, with spouses and kids and grandkids, mortgages and health worries, and real questions about what life looks like when the uniform comes off. When can I actually go? What does my spouse get if something happens to me on the job? How do we pay for health insurance until Medicare? What do we do with the DROP money?
Most retirement advice is written for someone else. A plan built around retiring at sixty-two doesn’t fit a deputy hired at twenty-two, who can reach normal retirement at forty-seven.1
You may recognize how that happens. A benefits packet showed up in your first weeks, somewhere between the equipment issue and the academy schedule. You picked a plan, or the default picked one for you. Then you went to work. For twenty years or more you ran the calls, worked the pods, cleared the scenes and covered the shifts nobody else wanted.
Along the way the Legislature changed your rules more than once. In 2023 alone it restored the twenty-five-year retirement date for Special Risk members enrolled on or after July 1, 2011, and rebuilt DROP.2 Nobody was assigned to translate each change into what it meant for your family.
So if you can’t quite explain how your own pension works, hear this clearly: that isn’t a failure on your part. The system is complicated, and confusion is a reasonable response to it.
The most important thing my mother taught me had nothing to do with money. She didn’t have a lot. What she had was a rule: when you’re in a position to help somebody, you help them. You don’t have to be wealthy to care about someone. And you show up even when it isn’t convenient.
That rule describes your whole career. You help people. You show up. Sometimes the person you helped never learns your name, and sometimes your family gives things up so you can be there.
It also shaped what I believe about my own work. Good financial information shouldn’t be reserved for people with enormous wealth. The careful thinking usually applied to serious money should be available to the people who spend their careers serving Florida. That belief is why I started Benowitz Wealth Management.
So I went to the source. I read the statutes, the plan documents, the handbooks and the forms until I understood the system well enough to bring it back in plain language. I wanted to do that without talking over you, and without pretending there’s only one right way to retire.
What I found is that a retirement in your class really is built differently. About 85 of every 100 active FRS members are in the Regular Class. Most of what gets written about the FRS is written, reasonably enough, with them in mind.3 Your years are worth nearly twice as much in the benefit formula. Each year of Special Risk service adds 3.00% of your average pay, against 1.60% for a Regular Class year.4 Your normal retirement can come years sooner, too, which means your decisions arrive sooner and have to last longer.
That’s why this book is written for your class alone. The rules in it trace to statutes, administrative rules and official publications, and the sources are listed in the Notes at the back.
You’ll also notice that the book keeps sending you to your own paperwork: your service history, your statements, your forms. That’s deliberate. A book can explain a rule. Only your record can show how the rule applies to you.
Some of the help you’ll need is free, and this book points you to it. The MyFRS Financial Guidance Line, 1-866-446-9377, connects FRS members with planners and with Division of Retirement counselors.5 Your HR office and the Division can answer questions about your own record. Use them.
If you have a spouse or partner, read this book together. Many of the decisions in it are made by one person, once, and lived with by two. Near the end of every chapter there’s a short card written for the two of you.
This book will not tell you what to choose. A retirement gets built around your career, your family, your income needs, your health and your timeline, and no book can see those. What it can do is make sure that when the choosing comes, you understand the choices, you know what questions to ask, and nothing permanent gets signed on guesswork.
You’ve spent your whole career putting someone else first, often on the worst day of their life. This book turns that around.
Derrick Johnson
Chief Executive Officer, Benowitz Wealth Management
How to Use This Book
This book is for members of the Florida Retirement System’s Special Risk Class. That means deputies and police officers, correctional and correctional probation officers, firefighters, and EMTs and paramedics. The class also takes in a few smaller groups, such as certain health care workers in correctional and forensic facilities, and the same rules apply to them.1 The book is written for members roughly three to twenty-five years from retirement, and for the spouses and partners who will live with the decisions.
If you’re not sure you’re in the FRS
Some Florida police officers and firefighters aren’t in the FRS at all. The state, counties and school boards must participate, so deputies and county fire rescue crews are generally FRS members. Cities and special districts get to choose. Many city police and fire departments have their own pension plans under Chapter 175 or Chapter 185 of Florida law. A single department can even have members in both systems.2
If your pension comes from a local plan like that, most of the rules in this book don’t apply to you. Start with Appendix A. It shows how to tell which system you’re in and what from this book still carries over.
If your service is mixed
Some careers include years outside the Special Risk Class. Maybe you worked a civilian FRS job before you went sworn, or spent time in a position that was never certified as Special Risk. Those years carry the Regular Class value. They count toward vesting, but not toward the twenty-five years of Special Risk service that can set your normal retirement date.3 Chapter 2 shows how the Division builds one benefit out of both kinds of years.
If you’re in the Investment Plan
This book is still yours. Chapters 4 and 5 are written with you in mind. Chapters 6 and 7 show what DROP offers on the Pension Plan side of the 2nd Election.
The series
This is Book One of The Special Risk Retirement Blueprint Series. It covers the years before retirement, while the permanent decisions are still ahead.
Book Two, The Special Risk Transition Playbook (forthcoming), will cover the transition window: benefit options, the DROP exit, rollovers, Social Security, health coverage, taxes, paperwork and the first ninety days.
Book Three, After the Last Shift (forthcoming), will cover staying retired: sustainable income, markets, taxes, long-term care, the survivor’s side of the plan, estate basics, purpose and the annual review.
Three ways to read it
- You’re more than five years out. Read front to back. Time is the asset you have the most of, and Chapters 2 through 8 show how to use it.
- Your date is close. Read Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 11 and 13 first, then the rest of Part Three. Book Two picks up from there when it is published. If you’re weighing the 2nd Election in either direction, read Chapter 5 before anything else, because it has to be finished while you’re still working.4 Don’t skip Chapter 3. The COLA rules changed in 2026, and the new floor waits five years.
- You’re the spouse or partner. Start with Chapter 1, then read Chapters 9, 10 and 11. Near the end of every chapter there’s a short card written for the two of you.
What the boxes mean
A few kinds of boxes repeat throughout the book.
- Fictional examples. Every story about a person is fiction, and it’s labeled that way. None describes a real person or an actual client.
- Hypotheticals. Worked numbers carry the label “Hypothetical,” with their assumptions stated. They show how a rule works. They aren’t projections or promises.
- Ask your team. The desk that can answer a question about your own situation: HR, the Division of Retirement, MyFRS, Social Security, a tax professional, a Florida attorney or an adviser.
- What can go wrong, what to check, and questions to ask. The ways a decision tends to break, the facts to confirm first, and the questions to bring with you.
- Chapter checklists and Reflect. Tasks you can tick off, and a few questions to think over.
- For you and your spouse. A short conversation to have at home.
- Benowitz Wealth Principles. A handful of short ideas, placed only where a chapter earns one.
- Worksheets. Chapters 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 13 each carry a worksheet for your own numbers.
How the figures are dated
The rules and figures in this book are current as of the date on the copyright page. Amounts that change every year carry the year they apply to, such as “for 2026.” Florida’s retirement law changes often, and many of those changes take effect on a July 1.5 Before you act on anything, confirm it with the Division of Retirement, MyFRS or your employer. The rules, figures and dates in the book are sourced in the Notes at the back, listed by page.
Hypothetical · Here's what this means in real life
Keep one number in mind as you read. Twenty-five years of Special Risk service is normal retirement at any age.6 A firefighter hired at twenty-three reaches it at forty-eight. Medicare generally begins at sixty-five, which leaves seventeen years between her normal retirement date and Medicare.7 If she lives to eighty-eight, her retirement lasts forty years. Where this book’s math looks different from what you’ve read elsewhere, that’s usually why.
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Special Risk Class membership criteria: s. 121.0515(3), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Compulsory FRS participation for the state, counties and school boards, and optional participation for cities and special districts: s. 121.051(1)(a) and (2)(b), Florida Statutes (2026); firefighters and police officers covered by Chapters 175 and 185, and the exclusion of governments whose members are eligible for the FRS: ss. 175.032(11), 175.041(3), 185.02(16) and 185.03(2)(a), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Service in more than one class, computed separately and added together: s. 121.091(2), Florida Statutes (2026); 25 years of Special Risk service for normal retirement: s. 121.021(29)(b)2.; vesting: s. 121.021(45).
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2nd Election must be received while the member is employed and earning salary and service credit: Rule 19-11.007(2), Florida Administrative Code; FRS Investment Plan Summary Plan Description (July 1, 2026), p. 37.
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July 1 effective dates: ch. 2011-68, ch. 2024-92, ch. 2025-205 and ch. 2026-235, Laws of Florida, and several provisions of ch. 2023-193.
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Special Risk normal retirement at 25 years of Special Risk service regardless of age: s. 121.021(29)(b)2., Florida Statutes (2026).
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Medicare Initial Enrollment Period around age 65: Medicare.gov, “When does Medicare coverage start?”
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Introduction: Nobody Explained This to You
Fictional example. Not a real person or an actual client.
The retirement party for Lieutenant Curtis Mabry filled the training building at the state prison where he had worked for thirty-one years. Somebody had pushed the folding tables into rows and covered them in plastic cloths. There was a sheet cake with his badge number piped on in blue icing. A shadow box held his patches and his first ID card. A slideshow kept freezing on a photo of Mabry at twenty-two, with more hair than anyone remembered.
He was fifty-three. His wife, Loretta, held the plaque in her lap as if it might get away.
The captain gave the speech. It was short, and most of it was true.
Afterward a young officer found Mabry at the coffee urn. She had been hired that spring and still stood like someone waiting to be corrected. She had clearly rehearsed the question.
“Can I ask you something, Lieutenant? When did you figure out the retirement stuff?”
Mabry took longer to answer than she expected.
“About a year ago,” he said. “A stack of forms, a couple of appointments and a deadline. Some of those choices you only get to make once, and I learned every one of them in a hurry.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s backwards.” He stirred his coffee. “I had thirty years to learn it slow. I didn’t know there was anything to learn.” He nodded at the ID clipped to her shirt. “You pick your plan yet?”
“The pension, I think. There’s a form. I have until December.”
Loretta had come up behind them. “Tell her about the option form,” she said. “Tell her how long we sat at the kitchen table over that one.”
“Two weekends,” Mabry said. “For one box.”
Across the room, near the back, people were doing arithmetic on napkins.
If you’ve been to one of these parties, you know the other moment too. You’re standing near the back with a paper plate, doing math you didn’t mean to start. How many years do I have left? What will it pay? Could I explain my own numbers if somebody asked?
If you couldn’t, the reason is the way the system is built, not anything wrong with you.
Your first retirement decision came in your first months on the job, while you were still learning where everything was. You had a deadline to choose between the Pension Plan and the Investment Plan. For anyone hired since January 1, 2018, it’s the last business day of the eighth month after the month of hire. A Special Risk member who makes no choice is placed in the Pension Plan.1 At that point your retirement was twenty-five years away. Then you went to work.
After that, the people around you had other jobs to do. Your employer’s HR office reports your pay and processes your forms. The Division of Retirement administers the Pension Plan: it keeps the service records, calculates benefits and pays them.2 The free MyFRS Financial Guidance Line, 1-866-446-9377, connects members with EY planners, who help with personal planning questions, and with Division counselors.3 It helps most when you know what to ask. Your HR office and the Division are not assigned to sit at your kitchen table and work out what the rules mean for your family. That isn’t a failure. It’s a job description.
The information does arrive. If you’re vested and in the Pension Plan, the Division sends you a Member Annual Statement with benefit estimates in your birth month.4 You can create your own estimates in FRS Online at any time, and the Division encourages requesting an official one within about five years of retirement.5 What doesn’t come with any of it is an explanation of what those numbers mean for your household, or which of them you can still change.
Meanwhile the rules for your class kept moving. In 2023 the Legislature restored the twenty-five-year retirement date for Special Risk members enrolled on or after July 1, 2011, and rebuilt DROP. In 2024 it changed what happens when a retiree goes back to work for an FRS employer. In 2026 it created a minimum cost-of-living adjustment for eligible Special Risk retirees.6
You’re a large group inside a much larger one. At June 30, 2025, the FRS had 664,159 active members working for about a thousand public employers. About one in eight of them was in the Special Risk Class.7 General material about the FRS speaks mostly to the other seven. Your multiplier, your dates and your decisions are different.
The decisions coming toward you
The decisions ahead aren’t small, and several of them arrive earlier for you than for most members of the system.
Which plan. Whether to stay in the plan you’re in or use the 2nd Election. It’s your one chance to switch between the Pension Plan and the Investment Plan, and it only works while you’re still on the payroll.8
DROP. Whether and when to enter it. DROP opens once you reach normal retirement, and in a Special Risk career that can come at twenty-five years of service, at any age.9
The money beside the pension. What to do with the 457(b) you signed up for and forgot, or the annuity somebody pitched over sandwiches.
The bridge. How to pay for health coverage between your last shift and Medicare, which generally starts at sixty-five.10 In a class that can retire in its forties or fifties, that gap can run a decade or more.
The line of duty. What your family would receive if you were hurt or killed on the job. If a Special Risk member who isn’t in DROP dies in the line of duty, a surviving spouse can receive a lifetime monthly benefit. It equals the member’s full monthly salary, twice the share other classes provide.11 Entering DROP takes that benefit, and disability retirement, off the table.12
The permanent choices. These belong to Book Two. Your benefit option becomes final once the first payment is cashed, deposited or credited to DROP.13 When DROP ends, you get sixty days to choose how the balance is paid. Make no choice, and the Division pays it as a lump sum with 20% withheld for federal income tax.14
This book’s argument is simple: the years before retirement are when understanding is cheap. Right now every item on that list is information. You can learn it at your own pace, ask questions with no deadline on you, run estimates and change your mind twice. Wait for the exit appointment, and the same subjects arrive as a stack of forms and a signature line. Same decisions. Very different conditions for making them.
What this book won’t do
It won’t tell you which plan to pick, when to enter DROP, or which option protects your family best. Those answers exist, but not in general. They live in your service record, your enrollment date, your health, your marriage and your bank statements. That’s why every chapter sends you to the people and agencies who can see those facts. The book’s job is to get you ready for those conversations.
There is no product in these pages.
How the book is built
Part One, How Your Retirement Is Built (Chapters 1 to 5), explains your class and the parts of the benefit formula. Then it takes on the Pension Plan, the Investment Plan and the choice between them.
Part Two, DROP and the Money Beside the Pension (Chapters 6 to 8), covers what DROP is and why its timing matters. It ends with the 457(b), 403(b) and IRA accounts you may have built on the side.
Part Three, Getting Ready (Chapters 9 to 13), turns all of it into an income estimate and a household that’s ready. It closes with line-of-duty protections, a field catalog of common mistakes and a countdown to your last day.
Two appendices follow the chapters. Appendix A is for members of local police and fire pension plans. Appendix B covers health coverage before Medicare.
The first chapter goes back to Lieutenant Mabry’s party, to a folding table near the back of the room.
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Initial plan election deadline for employees hired on or after January 1, 2018, and the Pension Plan default for Special Risk Class members: s. 121.4501(4)(b)1. and 4., Florida Statutes (2026).
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Administration of the Pension Plan by the Department of Management Services through its Division of Retirement: s. 20.22(2)(g) and s. 121.025, Florida Statutes (2026); FRS Online FAQ, “The Division of Retirement administers the FRS Pension Plan.”
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MyFRS Financial Guidance Line, 1-866-446-9377, with EY planners and Division of Retirement Pension Plan counselors: MyFRS.com, Contact Us.
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Member Annual Statement with estimates for vested active Pension Plan members, delivered in the birth month: Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, p. 9.
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Estimates in FRS Online and the Division’s five-year suggestion for requesting an estimate: Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, pp. 8 and 45.
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2023: ch. 2023-193, Laws of Florida (CS/SB 7024); 2024: ch. 2024-92 (CS/HB 151); 2026: ch. 2026-235 (HB 5205-E).
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Active members (664,159), Special Risk active members (80,908) and participating employers (999) at June 30, 2025: FRS Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, fiscal year 2024-25, p. 8 and Note 1, p. 40.
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2nd Election, one time, while actively employed: s. 121.4501(4)(f), Florida Statutes (2026); Rule 19-11.007(2), Florida Administrative Code.
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DROP eligibility on reaching normal retirement: s. 121.091(13)(a), Florida Statutes (2026); Special Risk normal retirement at 25 years of Special Risk service regardless of age: s. 121.021(29)(b)2.
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Medicare Initial Enrollment Period around age 65: Medicare.gov, “When does Medicare coverage start?”
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Line-of-duty survivor benefit, one-half of monthly salary for all classes plus an additional one-half for Special Risk Class members killed on or after July 1, 2002: s. 121.091(7)(d) and (i), Florida Statutes (2026).
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DROP participants are not eligible for disability retirement: s. 121.091(13)(c)8.; survivors of DROP participants are not eligible for line-of-duty death benefits: s. 121.091(13)(d)4., Florida Statutes (2026).
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Benefit option final once a payment is cashed, deposited or credited to DROP: s. 121.091(6)(h), Florida Statutes (2026).
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DROP payout election within 60 days after DROP ends, or a lump sum is paid: s. 121.091(13)(c)5.b., Florida Statutes (2026); 20% federal withholding on the default lump sum: DROP Guide, 2026 Edition, p. 10.
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How Your Retirement Is Built
Chapter One
The Retirement You Earned
FRS rules described in this book are current as of the date on the copyright page and can change. Confirm your specific benefits with MyFRS and the Division of Retirement.
Fictional example. Not a real person or an actual client.
Sergeant Renata Ruiz had worked twenty-four years for the Florida Department of Corrections. She could read a dayroom in about four seconds: who was posturing, who was actually a problem, and who was about to have a very bad afternoon.
What she could not read was her own retirement.
The party was for Lieutenant Curtis Mabry, fifty-three years old and thirty-one years in. The folding tables in the training building had been pushed into rows, and the sheet cake had his badge number piped on in blue. Renata was on her second cup of coffee when somebody’s brother-in-law leaned across the table. He was there as a plus-one, and he asked the friendly question people ask at these things.
“So when do you go?”
“Fifty-five,” she said. “I hit twenty-five years next year, but you need both. Fifty-five and twenty-five.”
The captain who had given the speech was sitting two seats down. He looked up from his plate.
“It’s fifty-five or twenty-five,” he said. “Once you’ve got twenty-five years, your age doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure.” He went back to his cake. “Check it, though.”
Two seats down, a younger officer from Renata’s shift, Tomas Bell, was listening. He had been hired a dozen years after her, on the other side of some line nobody at the table could name. “Whatever it is, it’s worse for me,” he said, and went back to his plate.
Renata did the arithmetic before she could stop herself. Twenty-five years would arrive next year, when she was forty-seven. Fifty-five was eight years after that.
For nine years she had planned around fifty-five. An index card was taped inside a kitchen cabinet at home. It had 2035 written across the top, a savings number under that, and her husband Marco’s handwriting under the number. They had timed a new roof and a car around that card. They had put off a dozen smaller things “until after.”
Now a captain with a mouthful of sheet cake had suggested, without much confidence, that the whole card might be eight years off.
She folded her napkin in half, then in half again, and wrote 25 = ? on it.
What your class changes
Most private-sector retirement runs on an account. A worker fills a 401(k), the balance rides the market, and the retirement is whatever the account holds on the way out the door.
If you’re in the Pension Plan, which is where a Special Risk member lands when no choice is made, your retirement runs on a formula instead.1 Your yearly benefit is your years of service, times a percentage value for each year, times your average final compensation. That last figure, your AFC, is the average of your highest-paid years.2 That formula is the same for every Pension Plan member. The inputs aren’t. Your class sets two of the biggest ones: how much each year is worth, and when the formula starts paying without a reduction.
Being in the Special Risk Class shows up in your life in three ways.
Your benefit builds faster. Each year of Special Risk service is worth 3.00% of AFC. A Regular Class year is worth 1.60%.3 The Investment Plan follows the same logic through bigger deposits. As of 2026, a Special Risk member’s account receives 19.00% of pay, against 11.30% for the Regular Class.4
Your finish line comes sooner. Twenty-five years of Special Risk service is normal retirement at any age. A Regular Class member needs thirty or thirty-three years of service, or has to reach sixty-two or sixty-five.5
Your retirement lasts longer, and that has a cost. If you retire in your late forties or early fifties, inflation has more years to work on your check. You have more years between your last shift and Medicare, which generally starts at sixty-five.6 And a decision you make at fifty is still paying out, or costing you, at eighty.
That’s why material written for the whole FRS needs translating for your class. It isn’t wrong. Most of it is written for a member whose years are worth about half as much. That member’s normal retirement comes at thirty years of service or somewhere in the sixties.
Who is in the Special Risk Class
The Special Risk Class is a membership class inside the FRS, not a separate plan. It exists in both the Pension Plan and the Investment Plan.7
Florida law says why the class exists. It recognizes that these jobs demand work that is “physically demanding or arduous,” or that calls for extraordinary agility and mental acuity. It recognizes that people doing that work may reach a point where they can’t keep doing it without risk to themselves, the public or their coworkers. And it recognizes that leaving earlier, usually with less service, would otherwise cost them. The Legislature’s answer was more retirement credit for each year of service.8
Membership turns on the duties of the job and the certification behind it, not on a title or a uniform.9 In plain terms, the class covers:
- Law enforcement officers certified under Florida law whose duties include pursuing, apprehending and arresting lawbreakers, plus bomb disposal unit members and the supervisors and command officers over them.
- Firefighters certified under Florida law who work solely for a local fire department or a state firefighting agency, on scene or in fire prevention or training, and their supervisors.
- Correctional officers certified under Florida law whose main duties are the custody and physical restraint of inmates, including supervisors, wardens and assistant wardens.
- Correctional probation officers certified under Florida law who supervise probationers, parolees and others in the community.
- EMTs and paramedics certified under Florida law, working for a licensed life support provider, whose main duties include emergency medical care on scene, and their supervisors.
- Certain health care professionals in Department of Corrections and Department of Children and Families facilities who spend at least 75% of their time with inmates or patients.
- Certain forensic laboratory and evidence employees.
Administrative support jobs, such as accounting, purchasing, legal and personnel work, don’t qualify, even inside a sheriff’s office or a fire department.
State jobs are designated Special Risk by job class. At a local agency, positions are approved through the Division of Retirement.10 If you move into a job that doesn’t meet the test, you leave the class. A narrow exception covers a Special Risk member reassigned to administrative support in the same kind of agency who stays certified and subject to reassignment. That member joins the Special Risk Administrative Support Class. The service earns the Regular Class value. It can still count toward the Special Risk retirement date once the member has six or eight years of Special Risk service.11 Chapter 2 covers it.
At June 30, 2025, 80,908 Special Risk members were actively working in FRS jobs. That’s about one in eight of the system’s 664,159 active members. Another 3,555 Special Risk members were in DROP.12
Special Risk and Regular, side by side
Here are the core differences as the law stands in 2026.13 Chapters 2 and 3 take each row apart.
| Rule | Special Risk Class | Regular Class |
|---|---|---|
| Each year of service is worth | 3.00% of AFC | 1.60% of AFC, rising to 1.68% for later retirement |
| Normal retirement, enrolled before July 1, 2011 | 25 Special Risk years at any age, or age 55 with 6 Special Risk years | 30 years at any age, or age 62 once vested |
| Normal retirement, enrolled on or after July 1, 2011 | 25 Special Risk years at any age, or age 55 with 8 Special Risk years | 33 years at any age, or age 65 once vested |
| Pension Plan vesting | 6 years if enrolled before July 1, 2011; 8 years if on or after | Same |
| AFC averages your | Highest 5 fiscal years if enrolled before July 1, 2011; highest 8 if on or after | Same |
| Yearly COLA | 3% times your share of service earned before July 1, 2011, and at least 1.5% after five years retired for eligible retirees | 3% times your share of service earned before July 1, 2011 |
Vesting and AFC work the same way in both classes. The value of a year, the retirement date and the COLA floor are where your class pulls away.
Hypothetical · Here's what this means in real life
Assume an average final compensation of $62,000 and a benefit paid under Option 1, the maximum lifetime benefit, with no early-retirement reduction.14
One year of Special Risk service adds 3.00% of $62,000 to the yearly benefit: $1,860. One year of Regular Class service adds 1.60%: $992. The difference is $868 a year, about $72 a month, for as long as the benefit is paid, before any COLA.
A Regular Class year also doesn’t count toward the twenty-five Special Risk years, so it can move a retirement date as well as shrink a check. Chapter 2 shows how the Division calculates a benefit built from both kinds of service.
The 2011 line
Two members can do the same job on the same shift and have different retirements, because the FRS draws a line at July 1, 2011. What counts is the date you were first enrolled in the FRS, not the date your current agency hired you. A member first enrolled on July 1, 2011 falls on the later side.15
For your class, that line still sets four things:
- Vesting: six years if you were first enrolled before July 1, 2011, eight years if on or after.
- AFC: your highest five fiscal years, or your highest eight.
- The age-55 route: age fifty-five with six years of Special Risk service, or with eight.
- The new COLA floor’s service test: at least 72 months of Special Risk service, or at least 96.16
The COLA itself runs on the dates your service was earned rather than on your tier. It’s 3% times the share of your service earned before July 1, 2011. A career that began after that date carries a formula COLA of zero.
What the line no longer sets is the twenty-five-year date. For twelve years, a Special Risk member first enrolled on or after July 1, 2011 needed age sixty or thirty years of Special Risk service. SB 7024 ended that on July 1, 2023. Now every Special Risk member, on either side of the line, reaches normal retirement at twenty-five years of Special Risk service, whatever their age. The other route is age fifty-five with the six or eight Special Risk years.17 The statute also allows age fifty-two with twenty-five years that include up to four years of military service credit. Which military credit qualifies is a question to put to the Division, and Chapter 2 covers it.18
If the number in your head is sixty or thirty, it has been wrong for your class since July 1, 2023. You may still see it in print. Some older official documents haven’t caught up, including a Division rule that took effect in 2013 and a member FAQ dated 2021.19 When a publication and the statute disagree, the statute controls.
The other wrong number is the one Renata carried. Normal retirement isn’t fifty-five and twenty-five. It’s twenty-five years or fifty-five with the required Special Risk years, whichever comes first. For a member hired at twenty-two, that one word is the difference between forty-seven and fifty-five.
One more trap sits inside the age-55 route. The six or eight years have to be Special Risk years. Being vested through Regular Class service doesn’t open that route at fifty-five.20
Hypothetical · Here's what this means in real life
Three corrections officers, all working in 2026. Renata Ruiz and Tomas Bell work at the same state prison. Priya Raman works at a county jail. Each example assumes the officer stays in her or his current plan.
Renata was hired in 2002 at twenty-two, so she sits on the earlier side of the line. She vested after six years, and her benefit will average her five highest-paid fiscal years. She reaches twenty-five years of Special Risk service in 2027, at forty-seven, and that is normal retirement at any age. If she retires then with an AFC of about $62,000, the formula gives 25 × 3.00% = 75%, or $46,500 a year: $3,875 a month under Option 1. About nine of her twenty-five years were earned before July 1, 2011, so her formula COLA would be 3% × 9/25, about 1.08% a year. After her fifth retirement anniversary, the 2026 floor lifts that to 1.5%. (Chapter 3 covers how DROP interacts with that five-year clock.)
Tomas was hired in 2014 at twenty-eight, on the later side. He vested after eight years, and his benefit will average his eight highest-paid fiscal years. Until July 1, 2023, his earliest normal retirement was thirty years of service, at fifty-eight. Now it’s twenty-five years, at fifty-three, in 2039. All of his service falls after July 1, 2011, so his formula COLA is zero. He’ll have far more than 96 months of Special Risk service, so the 2026 floor gives him 1.5% a year. It starts the first July after his fifth retirement anniversary, when he’s about fifty-eight.
Priya was hired in 2018 at twenty-seven. In her first months she chose the Investment Plan. She’s thirty-five now and eight years in. She owns her account, and she was vested in her employer’s contributions after one year. Her side of the choice has no formula benefit, no COLA and no DROP.21 It does give her an account she can take with her if she leaves. She still has her 2nd Election, as long as she uses it while she’s on the payroll.22
Now seat all three at one folding table. Renata tells Tomas, “You’re on the newer rules. You’re stuck with sixty or thirty.” That stopped being true in 2023. Tomas tells Priya, “Just make sure you time your DROP right.” DROP doesn’t exist in her plan. Nobody is lying. Each of them is reading from a rulebook that fits one set of dates, and in this class the rulebooks changed under all three.
The coworker at the next post is not a reliable manual for your retirement.
The system in six dates
Florida’s retirement system moves, usually slowly and occasionally all at once. Six dates carry most of the history that still shapes your benefit. Tape this list inside your planning folder.
- December 1, 1970. The FRS begins covering public employees. Anyone hired from this date by a county, a school board or the state is a compulsory member. Cities and special districts can choose to join.23
- July 1, 2002. The Investment Plan takes its first members. For the first time, most FRS members can choose between a formula and an account.24
- July 1, 2011. Members begin paying 3% of their pay. Members first enrolled from this date need eight years to vest, and their AFC averages eight years. Special Risk members among them face a normal retirement of age sixty or thirty years. Service earned from this date adds nothing to the COLA.25
- June 5 and July 1, 2023. SB 7024. On June 5, DROP opens to eligible members any time after normal retirement, for up to 96 months. On July 1, DROP interest rises to 4%. The twenty-five-year and age-fifty-five dates return for Special Risk members enrolled on or after July 1, 2011. The Health Insurance Subsidy rises to $7.50 a month for each year of service, with a $45 minimum and a $225 maximum.26
- July 1, 2024. HB 151. A retiree who goes back to work for an FRS employer after the six-calendar-month separation no longer gives up benefits during months seven through twelve.27
- July 1, 2026. HB 5205-E. Eligible Special Risk retirees get a 1.5% floor under the yearly COLA, beginning with the first July after the fifth anniversary of retirement. Chapter 3 covers who qualifies and the open question about DROP.28
One federal date belongs beside them. On January 5, 2025, the Social Security Fairness Act repealed the WEP and the GPO for benefits payable from January 2024 on. FRS jobs pay into Social Security, so an FRS pension never triggered either rule. The repeal matters to your household only if someone also has a pension from work that didn’t pay into Social Security. Chapter 9 covers it.29
Each of those changes arrived as a statute. Reading a statute against your own dates is work somebody in your household has to do. The useful habit is to date-stamp what you know and check it once a year. In a class whose rules moved in 2023 and again in 2026, that habit beats memory. The coworker at the next post is not a reliable manual for your retirement.
What can go wrong
- Planning around sixty or thirty. For Special Risk, that date has been wrong since July 1, 2023, and older documents still print it.
- Reading “fifty-five and twenty-five” as two requirements. Either one gets you there.
- Assuming vesting opens the age-55 route. The six or eight years have to be Special Risk years.
- Assuming a title or a uniform makes your position Special Risk. The duty and certification tests do, and a reassignment can change your class.
- Assuming the 2026 COLA floor starts at retirement, or adds 1.5% on top of your COLA. It waits five years, and it’s a floor. Chapter 3.
- Treating “I have a pension” as a plan. A pension is one part of it. The plan is Chapters 2 through 13.
- Letting embarrassment stop the questions. Not knowing is where everyone starts.
What to check before deciding
Nothing in this chapter asks you to decide anything. It asks for a diagnosis. This week, confirm four facts about yourself:
- your initial FRS enrollment date, which puts you on one side of the 2011 line;
- your membership class, today and in every past position;
- how many of your years are Special Risk service, and how many are anything else;
- your plan: Pension Plan or Investment Plan.
If you’re in the Pension Plan, your creditable service is on the Service History page in FRS Online, at frs.fl.gov. Chapter 2 explains FRS Online and MyFRS.com in full.30 If you’re in the Investment Plan, your account lives on MyFRS.com, and the free MyFRS Financial Guidance Line at 1-866-446-9377 can route your questions.31 If you’ve never logged in, getting that login working is this chapter’s homework.
Give the third fact the most attention. Years in a civilian FRS job before you went sworn can sit on your record at the Regular Class value. So can time in a position that was never certified as Special Risk, or a stretch on an administrative assignment. None of those years counts toward your twenty-five.
Ask your team
Your HR or benefits office can tell you whether your current position is reported as Special Risk, and since when. Ask in writing and keep the answer. Then check it against your record with the Division of Retirement (toll-free 1-844-377-1888), because the Division isn’t responsible for incorrect information from an employer representative.32
Questions to ask before deciding
- What is my initial FRS enrollment date, and which side of July 1, 2011 does it put me on?
- How many of my years are Special Risk service, and how many are Regular Class or another class?
- Has my class ever changed with a transfer, a promotion, a light-duty stretch or an administrative assignment?
- On what date do I reach twenty-five years of Special Risk service, and on what date do I turn fifty-five?
- Which plan am I in, confirmed on my record rather than from memory?
- What retirement date have I been telling my family, and where did that number come from?
- Which of the rules I’m counting on did I learn before July 1, 2023?
Benowitz Wealth Principle
The system is complicated. You are not the problem.
Chapter checklist
- Get your login working: FRS Online for the Pension Plan, or MyFRS.com for the Investment Plan.
- Write down your initial enrollment date and your side of the 2011 line.
- Confirm your class and your plan.
- Count your Special Risk years and any other years separately.
- Ask HR in writing whether your current position is reported as Special Risk, and file the answer.
- Start a one-page “my rulebook” listing the rules that apply to your dates, each marked with the date you checked it.
- Put a yearly reminder on the calendar to re-check that page. July works, since most of the changes in this chapter took effect on a July 1.
Reflect
- What retirement date have you been planning around, and when did you last verify it?
- What do you believe about your benefit that you’ve never checked?
- Whose rulebook have you been borrowing, and does that person’s enrollment date match yours?
For you and your spouse
Each of you answers out loud: “What year do I think your retirement starts, and what do I think it pays each month?” Write both answers down before you compare them. The gap between your answers is this book’s reading list.
Renata drove home from the party with the captain’s “pretty sure” riding along in the passenger seat and the napkin in her pocket. The answer she needed had been in her service record the whole time. It only had to be read against the right rule. Chapter 9 picks up what she and Marco did with it. First, Chapter 2 takes the formula apart, one piece at a time, so you can read your own record the same way.
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Special Risk Class members who make no plan election default to the Pension Plan: s. 121.4501(4)(b)4., Florida Statutes (2026); members hired before January 1, 2018 defaulted to the Pension Plan in every class, s. 121.4501(4)(a)1.
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Benefit formula: s. 121.091(1), Florida Statutes (2026); average final compensation: s. 121.021(24).
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Percentage values: Special Risk 3.00% for service on or after October 1, 1974, s. 121.091(1)(a)2.; Regular Class 1.60% rising to 1.68% for later retirement, s. 121.091(1)(a)1., Florida Statutes (2026).
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Investment Plan account deposits by class, effective July 1, 2023 and unchanged for FY 2026-27: s. 121.72(7), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Normal retirement: Special Risk Class, s. 121.021(29)(b); Regular Class, s. 121.021(29)(a), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Medicare Initial Enrollment Period around age 65: Medicare.gov, “When does Medicare coverage start?”
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Membership classes, available in either plan: s. 121.021(12), Florida Statutes (2026); FRS Pension Plan Summary Plan Description (July 1, 2026), p. 2.
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Purpose of the Special Risk Class: s. 121.0515(1), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Special Risk Class membership criteria: s. 121.0515(3), Florida Statutes (2026); Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, pp. 10-14.
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Designation of state positions and approval of local positions: s. 121.0515(4), Florida Statutes (2026); removal when criteria are not met: s. 121.0515(5).
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Special Risk Administrative Support Class: s. 121.0515(8), Florida Statutes (2026); Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, p. 15.
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Special Risk active members (80,908) and DROP participants (3,555), and total active members (664,159), at June 30, 2025: FRS Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, fiscal year 2024-25, Note 1, p. 40.
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Rules in the table: s. 121.021(24), (29) and (45); s. 121.091(1); s. 121.101(4)-(5), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Option 1, the maximum lifetime benefit: s. 121.091(6)(a)1., Florida Statutes (2026).
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The enrollment-date line of July 1, 2011: ch. 2011-68, Laws of Florida (SB 2100); s. 121.021(24), (29) and (45), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Service test for the Special Risk COLA floor, 72 or 96 calendar months: s. 121.101(5)(b), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Special Risk normal retirement for members enrolled on or after July 1, 2011, changed from age 60 or 30 years to age 55 or 25 years: s. 2, ch. 2023-193, Laws of Florida (CS/SB 7024), effective July 1, 2023; s. 121.021(29)(b), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Age-52 route with up to 4 years of military service credit: s. 121.021(29)(b)3., Florida Statutes (2026); Division descriptions of the credit as wartime military service: Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, p. 30.
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Publications still showing the pre-2023 rule as of September 15, 2026: Rule 60S-4.003, Florida Administrative Code (effective March 25, 2013); FRS Member FAQ (October 2021), frs.fl.gov.
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The age-55 route requires the vesting number of years in the Special Risk Class: s. 121.021(29)(b)1., Florida Statutes (2026).
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Investment Plan vesting after 1 work year: s. 121.4501(6)(b), Florida Statutes (2026); no COLA for Investment Plan retirees: FRS Employer Handbook, ch. 12 (August 2026), p. 12-13; DROP open only to Pension Plan members: s. 121.091(13)(a), Florida Statutes (2026).
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2nd Election, one time, while actively employed and earning salary and service credit: s. 121.4501(4)(f), Florida Statutes (2026); Rule 19-11.007(2), Florida Administrative Code.
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FRS membership compulsory for employees hired on or after December 1, 1970, and optional participation for cities and special districts: s. 121.051(1)(a) and (2)(b), Florida Statutes (2026).
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First Investment Plan members effective July 1, 2002, under a plan created by ch. 2000-169, Laws of Florida: FRS Investment Plan Summary Plan Description (July 1, 2026), p. 9.
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Changes effective July 1, 2011: ch. 2011-68, Laws of Florida (SB 2100); 3% member contribution, s. 121.71(3); vesting, s. 121.021(45); AFC, s. 121.021(24); COLA, s. 121.101(4), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Ch. 2023-193, Laws of Florida (CS/SB 7024), approved June 5, 2023: DROP entry any time after normal retirement and 96-month maximum, s. 121.091(13)(a)-(b); 4% DROP interest from July 1, 2023, s. 121.091(13)(c)1.; Special Risk normal retirement, s. 121.021(29)(b); Health Insurance Subsidy of $7.50 per year of service, $45 minimum and $225 maximum, s. 112.363(3)(f), Florida Statutes (2026).
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End of the months 7 to 12 reemployment limitation: s. 121.091(9)(d), Florida Statutes (2026), added by ch. 2024-92, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 151), effective July 1, 2024.
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Special Risk minimum COLA: s. 121.101(5), Florida Statutes (2026), created by ch. 2026-235, Laws of Florida (HB 5205-E), approved June 29, 2026, effective July 1, 2026; Division of Retirement Information Release 2026-241.
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Social Security Fairness Act, Pub. L. 118-273, approved January 5, 2025, applying to benefits payable for months after December 2023; Social Security coverage for FRS members: s. 121.051(3), Florida Statutes (2026).
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Service history and estimates in FRS Online: Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, p. 8; FRS Online FAQ; MyFRS.com, “Calculate My Pension Plan Benefit.”
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MyFRS Financial Guidance Line, 1-866-446-9377: MyFRS.com, Contact Us.
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Division of Retirement toll-free number: Department of Management Services, Division of Retirement, Contact Us; employer representatives are not agents of the Division: Pension Plan Member Handbook, 2026 Edition, disclaimer page.
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Disclosures
This book is not an official FRS publication or FRS material. It is not published, reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the Florida Retirement System, the Florida Division of Retirement, the State Board of Administration of Florida, MyFRS, the State of Florida, any municipal firefighter or police officer pension plan or board of trustees, or any government agency. It is an independent educational book written by Derrick Johnson and published by Benowitz Wealth Management.
This book is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in it is individualized financial, investment, tax, legal, Social Security, Medicare, pension, benefits, insurance, or estate advice. Readers should consult qualified professionals, and should confirm current benefit information directly with MyFRS, the Florida Division of Retirement, their employer or human resources office, their plan providers, and the Social Security Administration or Medicare, before acting on their personal circumstances.
FRS rules, tax laws, Social Security and Medicare rules, contribution limits, and employer policies change. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. No strategy can guarantee profit, protect against loss, eliminate taxes, or ensure retirement success. Examples in this book are hypothetical, clearly labeled, and for educational purposes only. The people in its stories are fictional. They do not describe actual clients or actual results.
Benowitz Wealth Management is not affiliated with, endorsed by, approved by, or sponsored by the Florida Retirement System, the Florida Division of Retirement, the State Board of Administration of Florida, MyFRS, the State of Florida, or any county, city, municipality, school district, sheriff’s office, police department, fire department, public employer, municipal pension board, local retirement plan, board of trustees, the Social Security Administration, Medicare, or any government agency. FRS members may obtain free guidance from the MyFRS Financial Guidance Line at 1-866-446-9377.
Benowitz Wealth Management is the public-facing brand of Joy Financial Group LLC, a Florida-registered investment adviser providing fee-only investment advisory services. Advisory services are offered only in jurisdictions where the firm is properly registered, notice filed, excluded, or exempt from registration requirements. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill, training, approval, or endorsement by any regulatory authority. Additional information, including services, fees, conflicts of interest, and disciplinary history, is available in the firm’s Form ADV Part 2A at adviserinfo.sec.gov, CRD #331545. Benowitz Wealth Management does not provide tax or legal advice, does not sell insurance, and does not enroll anyone in Medicare or Social Security.