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Who We Are
A Florida firm built to do fewer things, more carefully, and the founder who built it.
You shouldn’t have to translate your own pension just to get good advice.
Independent, fee-only, and built for Florida’s public employees.
Meet DerrickFRS Planning
Understand the decisions that shape your Florida Retirement System benefit.
Understanding DROP
Pension vs. Investment Plan · Guide. The FRS Income Gap Calculator · Tool.
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The pieces that sit alongside your FRS benefit, and the timing decisions that come with them.
Leaving DROP: the decisions with a deadline.
Your DROP exit is a one-time decision. Make it with a plan, not a guess.
Read the DROP guideWho We Serve
Built for the people who built Florida: teachers, first responders, officers, state and county staff, and the retirees who already served.
FRS membership has more nuance than most people realize.
A short conversation usually clarifies what applies to you.
Start a ConversationGuides, webinars, checklists, and tools in plain English. Education first, no sales pitch.
Estimate your FRS retirement income in three short steps.
Pension, DROP, the Health Insurance Subsidy, and Social Security. No Social Security number, no FRS login.
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Defined contribution rather than a formula. Portable, vests fast, and carries market risk you hold yourself.
Contributions go into an individual account, you choose among the options offered, and what you have at retirement is what the account is worth. No formula, no guaranteed monthly amount.
Vesting is one year. That is the sharpest practical difference from the Pension Plan's six or eight. Someone unsure whether they will spend a career in Florida public employment is in a materially different position under each.
The account is portable. It follows you out of FRS-covered employment.
DROP. A Pension Plan feature. No Investment Plan equivalent.
A guaranteed lifetime benefit. A pension pays until you die, however long that is. An account pays until it is empty. Not an argument for either, just the actual difference, and the one that gets glossed.
A COLA. There is no cost-of-living adjustment on a balance.
Every FRS member gets one chance to switch between the plans. Once. Used, it is gone.
Entering DROP ends it permanently. DROP is a Pension Plan feature, and electing it closes the second election for good. A member entering DROP spends two things at once and is usually told about one.
Direction changes what you give up. Pension to Investment Plan converts a lifetime formula benefit into a balance. The other direction means buying into the Pension Plan. The mechanics, cost, and reversibility are not symmetrical.
We do not rank the two plans. We lay out what each does in your circumstances and are clear about which parts cannot be undone.
The real questions are allocation, how the account coordinates with a 457(b) or 403(b), and what happens at retirement, because unlike a pension, this account does not produce a monthly income by itself. See retirement income planning.
The Health Insurance Subsidy is available, on a different qualifying path. See Health Insurance Subsidy.
One item that catches Investment Plan members at retirement: you are not considered "retired" for state retiree insurance purposes until you take a distribution. If you are in the State Group Insurance Program, that sequencing matters. See Already Retired.
This page is educational and is not individualized advice. Benowitz Wealth Management is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Florida Retirement System, the Florida Division of Retirement, or the State Board of Administration of Florida. Confirm the figures that apply to your own record at MyFRS.com or with the Division of Retirement.
You get one second election. Worth understanding before you spend it.
Independent, fee-only retirement planning for Florida’s public employees, built around your FRS benefit and everything you’ve built on the side.
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