When planning to retire with the ASRS, you may begin thinking about how early you can begin receiving your benefit. First, it’s important to understand how the ASRS defines “normal” and “early” retirement, and how the criteria for each may change depending upon when you started making contributions to the ASRS.
The ASRS establishes Normal Retirement criteria through multiple factors. For instance, the ASRS uses your Membership Date to establish Early or Normal Retirement. The following chart, also available on our Retirement Eligibility page, shows a breakdown of the factors used to meet Early and Normal Retirement within the ASRS, and how they vary based on your membership date:
An example based on the chart above:
If your membership began on May 15, 2005, you will use the section labeled “1/1/1984 through 6/30/2011” to review your normal or early retirement criteria options. This means that when you have at least 10 years of service, you can retire with a normal, unreduced pension if:
- Your years of service plus age at retirement equal 80
- You have 10 or more years of service when you’re 62, or
- You’re 65 with any amount of service
As mentioned above, to determine how many “points” you have, we add your age and years of service with the ASRS to see if they meet the threshold for normal retirement:
Scenario 1: if you have 30 years of service and are 50, you will have 80 points!
Scenario 2: if you have 20 years of service and are 60, you will have 80 points!
You will notice the chart has a couple of consistencies when establishing Normal Retirement. The first is that as long as you have 10 years of service, you can retire under Normal Retirement criteria at 62, regardless of your membership date. Also, at 65, you may retire under Normal Retirement criteria, regardless of your years of service. In addition, as long as you have 5 years of service, you can retire as early as 50, but your benefit would be permanently reduced.
Please keep in mind that should you delay taking your retirement past the age of 65, and you are not contributing to the ASRS, then your pension will not see an increase and will remain the same amount, whether you retire at 65, 70, or beyond.
For more information on retirement with the ASRS, please visit our Retirement Central page.
