So today on Seed or Harvest Law Enforcement Edition, you’re going to hear Officer Ty and I talk about the challenges and successes of what it’s like to deal with the pension plan and specifically in this case, tier one pension guys. So listen up and hope this is helpful to you as you are trying to figure out your path to retirement.

This is Seed or Harvest.

Welcome to another edition of Seed or Harvest. Law Enforcement Edition. We have our co-host here, officer Ty. Officer over. 1718, 1818 years. Looks staring at retirement in the face. Pretty exciting. Close. Getting close. So, you know, again, folks, we’re here to help educate a lot of our government employees who seem to have great benefit, access to great benefits, but just seem to be a little lack of information in one centralized location.

So we’re just trying to kind of blend a little bit of what you get from the, government influence and then also the private sector. And, and so throughout, our podcast, we’re going to be bringing on a lot of other, officers like yourself and other financial professionals and just legal professionals and just a lot of different things to address solely and systematically.

Your concerns as a police officer. Yeah. You know, someone who’s close to retirement and kind of, you know, and hopefully the young dogs out there who are getting on or listen to some of, your wise words and lessons that you’ve learned now that you’re closer to retirement. And I’ve heard you say some things like, hey, I wish I would have done this a little bit differently.

Yeah. So, you know, so welcome. Episode three. Here we go. All right. Let’s see here. So today, I believe, we decided we’re going to talk about, the tier one retirement programs. That what happened? Am I saying that correctly? Tier one. Yeah. Tier one, which is a tier one. That’s the old school. Old school, the 20 year track.

20 years. And and I believe just the drop is available to the tier one guys as well. Like, the drop program’s not available to the new hires for the I shouldn’t say new hires, just the tier two people. So you’ve you’re on 20 years, so you just want you do your 20. You technically able to retire at that point in time doesn’t mean you have to, but you can you can.

Yep. And and and and your retirement pension is based off your three highest earning years. Is that what it is? It’s based on your they take your three highest years and it’s consecutive three highest years. You know the typical add them together and then average through the three whatever that number is that that’ll be your number that they base your pension off of.

And then depending on when you leave it, that’s the like if you leave at 20, it’s 55% of whatever that number is. So just say I think right now I actually I don’t even know what mine is. And I had looked at it recently, but I think mine was going to be around, I want to say like maybe 6000 a month with the 55% of my number that I’m at right now.

As far as and it’s a change in number two. So if I do, you know, I got two years left. If I, you know Jack those my like yearly pay up for those last two years, it’s going to raise my high three which will in turn raise my the percentage that I’m getting. Not necessarily the it won’t raise the percentage to raise the amount.

Yeah. The dollar amount. So so every year you’re there beyond 20 I assume that 55 goes to 60 or whatever. 57 whatever. Yeah. You can incrementally goes up. Yeah. And at what point does it tap out. Taps out at 32. It’s like 32.5 years. So just 32.5 if you’re in there, you just you just, love working. There’s just no point in being there or you got to work.

You can’t leave. Like, I know a lot of guys like that who who don’t have they don’t have other options outside of being a police officer. So they double dip. I mean, you can, but you have to find a job to like, you have to find, you know, it. That seems like be so easy. Is it a fart?

Hard to find off duty work or. You know. No. It’s so it’s not necessarily the off duty. It’s the one thing you got to look at if you’re going to do the double dipping thing, if they’re that, you know, what you’re referring to is you’d have to like leave your department and go work for another department. But you’re starting over.

So you hit your 20 and then you say you leave the department you’re at, and then you’re going to go work for another department and then say you’re young enough, like, say you got hired when you know you’re 21. So 20 years, you can retire when you’re 40, 41, you know. And then you really could have a whole other career and you go work for another police department, but you’re starting over at the beginning.

So back out on the street. Yeah. You’re going to be working weekends, working holidays. Oh I didn’t consider the seniority for hours and jockeying for that. So really like if you look at it from that standpoint, it would be smarter just to stay where you’re at instead of leaving at 20 and go into another department. Just stay where you’re at and keep building for the amount of money you’re going to get at the end.

You know, as far as like your, you know, getting your pension up, you know, the percentage is going to go up the longer you stay. And if you work, you know, a lot of overtime or whatever and get that, that base level up, then you’re going to have more money. When you hit retirement. You can also put, you know, it’s gives you more time for your deferred comp to where you can be, you know, put more money in that deferred comp and then other investments that you have because deferred comp has nothing to do with that, just your overtime.

Yeah. And, you know, deferred comp is just something. And you don’t even have to do it like it’s stupid if you don’t do it. But that’s just another tool that we have that we can put money into. So it’s optional. Yeah. Deferred comes optional. And that’s one of the things like you mentioned like having like an a senior officer, which I’m sure somebody did, I’m sure we had some financial thing that they came and talked to us about and told us.

But surely I didn’t either take it seriously at the time because you’re a stupid 20 year old that doesn’t know anything from anything, but that’s one thing I wish I would have maybe taken more seriously when I was younger because of the compound interest. Stuff like pumping more money into that deferred comp, right? Because I, I for probably the first, man, I mean, I wouldn’t say ten years is probably stretching it, but I bet at least the first five years or so I wasn’t putting very much in it, like at all.

I was hardly putting anything in it. So you guys have a if I’m not mistaken. And so automatically you have a certain percentage taken out of your check. Yeah, right. No, that’s not an option. You have to do that. It’s like, oh man I think it’s like 11% or something like that, 11.25% or something like that. And then on top of that, if you choose to do deferred comp, you can.

Yeah. Seems like I’ve heard some of my family members in the past talk about where they’re there was a point where they were forced, if they worked over O.T., that it went into deferred comp and I could be completely off base with that, but it seems like there was something where they were kind of they were getting paid either an extra vacation time or deferred comp.

I don’t remember, but it seems like they weren’t able to just add it to their check and I could be totally off base with that, but it seems like it does. Is that kind of I mean, it’s hard to say because all the departments have different, not necessarily different rules. They just have different, you know, as far as like what you can do with your code.

So for example, I have a buddy that works for another Valley agency and they they’re over time like the department I work for. You can do like city overtime which is through the city which is pensionable. And then there’s other overtime where you can work at like a Walmart, which is not pensionable. It’s just basically paid through Walmart doesn’t go to it has nothing to do with other than it’s just extra money for you.

It doesn’t go to anything, any of your retirement stuff. It doesn’t count on any of that stuff. But the department that he works for doesn’t do that. Like basically everything they do is city overtime pays a little bit less, but at least it’s pensionable. They can use it for that, but they don’t have opportunities to go do so.

I’m sorry, but no, I’m just saying they don’t have opportunities like that to go work at like a Walmart. So because that’s a straight off duty. Yeah. And there’s and one of the off duty jobs that I do doesn’t have a restriction because in Arizona, if you’re, certified police officer, you can work anywhere in the state.

There’s not a restriction like, oh, you can only work here, or you can only work in this county. If you’re licensed in Arizona, you can work anywhere. So there’s guys that will come and work that that live in or work in other smaller agencies that don’t really have the opportunities for overtime like we do in the Valley. And they’ll come to the Valley and do jobs because they can make a ton of money, you know, doing our some of the overtime here, but it doesn’t go to their pension either.

It’s just if they want to put it in something, some other kind of investment or whatever they can individually. Yeah, but it doesn’t go to anything related to their work. It’s just, hey, I can come here and make, you know, I can work a shift doing traffic control and make double what I make in a week, you know, whatever.

Just because they’re in some, some rural community that does smaller pay scale doesn’t mean Phoenix. Exactly. They just pay better. And they they’re shorthanded. So they’ll hire because they’re you’ll see it all the time. You’ll see a lot of time and see, certain like traffic control jobs where they can’t find people to do it. They just throw it out there.

And if anybody takes it, then doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that they work in Gilbert and come and work in Phoenix or, you know, or they work some department up north and come down. And what’s one thing I think that you need is just a John Q citizen. We none of us understand how the pension plans work, how you know, how is it that, what’s the how are they enticing police officers to become police officers?

I assume monetarily, that there’s got to be some sort of incentive, like how are they recruiting people or not recruiting people, for that matter? It’s kind of a it’s like, not really a loaded question, but it’s hard because recruitment is down everywhere, not just Arizona. So what departments are doing is they’re offering like hiring incentives. And some departments in the Valley have have the incentives and other departments don’t have the incentives.

Some departments like Glendale, I believe Glendale and I think there’s another department. But Glendale offers like they’ll pay your health insurance when you retire, which is a big deal to a lot of officers, like big deal, the health insurance. Well, back to the other thing you were talking about. A lot of guys who work longer because they need the health insurance.

They didn’t they don’t have a spouse that maybe has it. And so they need to keep health insurance so they keep working longer. When people need to realize out there that they can get insurance. Yeah, yeah. It’s just more expensive than going through. Sure. You know, like our department I work for, it’s pretty good. Like the insurance that we have is pretty darn good.

But if you don’t have something lined up for when you leave, it’s a pretty big expense that you got to pay. If you don’t have other things lined up and you’re, you know, it seems like a crazy reason to state a job mean, you know, it’s one thing if you love the job, and that’s just a perk that makes sense.

But to kind of be held captive to a job, I mean, if you absolutely hate it, it just doesn’t seem a lot, though. There’s a lot of guys that do that, and there’s a lot of guys who didn’t take advantage of. And like I said, I’m I’ve been better the last few years, but there’s a lot of guys who are leaving the department that didn’t really try to get like a high three.

They just pretty much. And I know a guy right now who’s kind of in that boat, like he never did a lot of overtime. So his senior high three includes a OT if it’s city. Yes. Oh, so you can work. And that’s why right now like well that’s an incentive to bust out some overtime. I mean there’s a lot of guys I like, guys I work with that are doing that.

They’re trying to get their high three up by working city overtime. So if they’re doing something like a traffic job that’s Non-City or working at a Walmart or a target or bro, you guys should get paid triple time for doing traffic in the summertime in Arizona. Yeah, I don’t I stop right there. Horrible. I mean, there’s every time I drive by anybody out there, I’m like, this is just got to be hell.

I mean, the job’s easy, but you’re standing and it’s this guys just standing there changing the light. Yeah. It’s horrible. Oh my God. Yeah. There’s some I’ve done. When I started. Those are really the only jobs that newer officers can get where the, those jobs. And they usually pay really well I’ll give it that. Like they’re usually pretty, you know as far as like making money you can make a lot of money doing those.

But they are horrible. Changing the traffic light. Yeah. You can make really good like there’s somewhere they’ll have you. That’s bizarre. I can’t think what it’s called where they like, grind up when they’re trying to put down new pavement and they grind up the old stuff. And I think it’s got camera, what it’s called. But that job, you have to kind of walk with the machine.

So if you’re doing that in the middle of summer, when they’re doing that and you’re having to walk with the machine to make sure that people aren’t getting in the way or, yeah, it’s bro. With all the gear you guys have, it seems like they have some clip on umbrella for you or something. You can latch on here.

I mean, some guy, some some guys will do things. They’ll, you know, I’ll wear things that technically aren’t in policy, but whatever it’s you’re if you’re going to if you’re willing to stand out there in that kind of heat, do what you got to do. Dude, shade is shade. Shade is real. And there’s. Yeah, that’s what some guys will set up little tents like when they’re doing that.

Like you were talking about the whole doing the traffic stuff they’ll set up, you know, those tent you could buy for like a kids sporting event? Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never seen a cop out there with a tent. Yeah, it makes total sense. Yeah, I would, that’d be me. I have a portable cooler. Portable cooler. Probably get like a little.

Get one of those chairs that has a little Camelbak on the top of it. Yeah. Some guys I’ve seen guys with the camel on. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, getting back to kind of this, your retirement in the tier one. So you know, you personally, you know, I’m it sounds like, you know, you kind of touched on some concerns that some guys have, health insurance being one, you know, are there what other kind of concerns run through your head?

I mean, how many other concerns really are just getting your high three up? And that’s just kind of the main focus. I mean, a lot of guys, but I think the part to go along with that is that they wait. They wait too far into the career to do that. Like they could be really in granted. I mean, I don’t know what it is now.

I think it takes seven years to get tapped out, and now they just kind of reset with our department. They reset. So we’re kind of starting over again. But I think before it was like seven years where you can get topped out pay. What’s that mean. So so you start off so like when I started working I made like 23 bucks an hour.

It was something that, you know, good. But it’s whatever. But then like every, every year you get McDonald’s workers make that now. Yeah. Exactly. So Starbucks and you work at Starbucks and make 20 you know, whatever. Wow. But yeah you can. But then every year you get a step okay. You hit another step. So then you go up a little bit in pay, and then you go up a little bit and pay until you get to seven.

You know, it’s the way it was about seven years I think when you’re tapped out there and that’s when really you should be like once you get tapped out, that’s when you if you’re going to try to build your high three, that’s when you should do it. You should start getting as much overtime and stuff then, because now you’re at the highest pay level.

So when you’re getting your time and a half, you know, jacking it up that way, a lot of guys don’t do that. They wait till like like I said, I know several guys that I work with now that are in my the year range where they got a couple years left and they’re, they’re doing that now. They’re, you know, they’ve been tapped out for a while.

So because we all have and they’re doing it now where they’re, you know Jack in their high three up. So they can get a wait a second. So when you get to your top seven you’re just stuck there. That’s your pay. Unless you promote unless you promote. Yeah. So once you get to that seventh year that’s your pay.

And it was it was before like I said they reset it recently were they increased our pay. And you know, some other things, some other incentives to try it. Oh I had no idea. Yeah a couple well I mean with, with the whole like you know, trying to get try to motivate officers to come on and try and to keep officers that you had they reset it a couple years ago, which a lot of departments did in the Valley and actually just nationwide.

They they’ve had to raise their pay like if you want to keep. Yeah, you want to keep guys working and you want to incentivize guys to come and take this job where you’re at least in the media. I always tell people like, I don’t I have never really seen the hate that you see, like in the media. I’ve never really experienced a lot of that.

Oh, that’s good. But when if you look at the media like, and then people like, you know, everybody’s on social media now, like if you’re trying to motivate guys like younger, the younger generation, they want to do this job and they watch know how you’re portrayed, how police are portrayed in social media and things like that. Like, why the hell would anybody want to do this job?

No, they had to raise the pay and, you know, things like that. It sounded like the like I said, the signing bonus they do signing bonuses for people. So would you say most guys, have the same sentiment that you do that? Like it’s really not that as bad as the media’s portraying it, I don’t know. I mean, I see it’s not like a grumble amongst your colleagues.

That’s not what people grumble about that I hear. Okay. At least on our department. And like I said, I don’t people don’t come up to me with negative stuff like that. They come up with the opposite, like thanking you for a service, you know, hey, you guys get a pad or, you know, stuff like that. Like, I get I get that shit infuriates me, man.

When I see. Yeah, see those videos of people just being disrespectful. I mean, you get you get some of the guys out there that you know, they’ll try to get, they’ll try to get under your skin and get a reaction out of you to record it. Things like that. And you have those guys, the First Amendment audit guys will come out and just throw in.

Their whole point is to come out there and mess with you and try to get you to respond to them in a negative way, but it is what it is. You know, just I just ignore the world we live in. Yeah. So long as you’re not now, as long as you’re interfering directly with what I’m trying to do, I don’t care less.

Stand there and videotape me all damn day. I don’t care for that. Oscar. We have to get out there. And, you know the First Amendment, this guy, so we can get on it just fine. Follow me around. So, you know, I mean, other than, you know, let me see here what other questions we have to talk about.

Wait a minute. That’s two here outside pay. So. Okay, here’s a good question. So, you know what? Why do you think it makes sense to you to, to hear an outside opinion? Outside of what, resources you’re given at the government level? I mean, what’s inspired you to look outside? Well, I mean, for me, it started because I was thinking about my daughter and, like, thinking about stuff.

Oh, I was kind of forecasting for future stuff. And, like, paying for her school, things like that, and trying to find ways to make it, you know, because by the time she’s going to be going to college, like college is already expensive, now has to, as we found out. Yeah. It’s already really expensive. Now, by the time she’s going, it’s going to be probably more expensive.

Like, who knows? It could double by the time she’s ready for it. So I’ve been I was trying to think of ways to like, start. So, you know, I don’t want to take all this money that I’ve been making, like, say, the deferred comp and things like that and have to throw it. I mean, I will if I have to, but I would prefer to find other ways to help her save for it so she can, you know, but that’s kind of what motivated me to look outside, because they don’t talk about, I mean, the stuff that they usually come and talk to us about is the stuff for us, like pertaining to you.

Yeah. Your pension stuff for your deferred comp, they don’t really talk to you about, hey, saving for your kid’s college fund. And if they do, they don’t do it very often because I could maybe think of one time or the that was never brought up with, you know, and I think I told you before like they they don’t come around often.

It’s usually like maybe once every couple of years they’ll, they’ll come and do briefings about stuff with like nationwide or whoever. But it’s not like, I mean, it might be more beneficial for them to come out more often. Like maybe once a quarter come to the briefings and start. But I would assume they have a lot of it’s not just our department, it’s probably everybody.

So they got a lot of that’s a lot. It’s a lot to ask of like one rep. Well yeah. And that would be in and kind of does it make sense to from from their standpoint also because have so many officers, employees that I have to deal with. Yeah. But it seems like it would make sense for you to have a family discussion, right?

To marry up. What benefits do you have? And you’re growing, you have access to along with, you know, your spouse and then, okay, like, you know, the whole comprehensive map. Yeah. Is what you really need that you’re probably lacking right now. Right. How how do you how does that marry up with what what your spouse has going on, what you need to try to project for your children.

That makes total sense, that that’s kind of what’s lacking and where you do need that outside opinion. I really kind of never really considered it from that perspective. Yeah. There’s a lot of things you don’t think about, like somebody, I was talking one of the guys, one of my friends at work, and he brought something up that I thought about a few times, but I haven’t.

And I probably should think more about it. But will stuff like, like thinking about wills, like, oh, you know, that’s, you know, we’re in a profession where, you know, you don’t you really don’t know what could happen every day. And if you haven’t prepared for things like that and you haven’t, you know, you don’t, you don’t want you really don’t want things that go to probate.

And if you haven’t done anything on the back end or, you know, the front end, I guess it would be to. Yeah, back end is probate. Yeah. So and they don’t talk about that stuff enough because I know he, he wasn’t the only one I’ve heard that from. And I’ve thought of it myself like yeah, I probably need to be at least looking into a will or a trust or whatever it is.

But they don’t really talk to us about that kind of stuff. You know, they’ll have fliers up once in a while. They say, hey, we’re doing a Wills for heroes event. You know, if you come out and do it, which. But I don’t know how many, I don’t know how many people they get to come do it when they put those up.

Well, we’ll definitely have to make that one of our top priority episodes and get a, we’ll trust attorney in here. So hopefully somebody that’s, works with law enforcement who understands the pensions and understands all the benefits that you have. That sounds like that’s a, a really hot topic for you. Yeah, right. I mean, that’s just, so we can put bump that up big time.

You know, it’s it’s there’s so many different ways to skin the cat getting through life and everything. It’s, you know, as I mentioned, my family’s best of all been, you know, with worked within the government. And so they’ve always had the pensions, which is really been a godsend for them. No, no. You know, they kind of muddled through getting to that retirement phase, but they all seem to have a pretty big smile on their face when they when they push that pension button.

Yeah, it’s a big deal. Like I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine who is not law enforcement, but he has a where he works, does a pension system too. And he, you know, he always talks about how big that is. You know, get into that. You know, whatever. Do you have concerns about? The pensions running out of money is that much of a is there much talk about that?

Because I know I’ve seen different, different areas of the I guess what, I never really thought about it before, but I’ve thought about it more recently just because of how because they need new officers to help pay for this pension. And if you’re not getting people hired and people aren’t coming in to do the job, then who the hell is going to pay for these?

And you know, I never however long I hadn’t really considered that that’s, you know, the the new hires that are going to fund the old dogs. You need the old you need the new guys. And if you know you guys aren’t coming in, then what are you doing? You know, and I the thing that, you know, makes me think about now, it’s kind of, I shouldn’t say scary, but it’s, you know, I’ve talked to a lot of the younger guys.

Actually had a conversation yesterday with one who’s got like five years on and he’s already looking to get out to go work either somewhere else or he was actually looking at federal level. So, you know, some of these guys who were which happens a lot, some of the younger guys who are still below that threshold for federal work are looking to go do that instead.

You know, they did their time defense typically pay more. I think he told I think they can he told me initially he’d take a pretty little significant pay decrease. But in the long run he would make a lot more pensions matter. I mean, I don’t know, upward mobility better. I mean, probably I mean, I think the only thing which I think probably any one of the reasons that I kind of initially thought about it, but then kind of backed off of it, is that there’s more potential for you to be told, like, hey, guess what?

You’re moving to Kansas City or whatever. You know, you’re somewhere like, it’s hard to I shouldn’t say it’s impossible, but it’s difficult to stay in one place because if they committed before, you know, that was one of the reasons. When I looked at stuff before, I was like, yeah, I would love to do the federal stuff, but go Border patrol man Luke Fields is waiting for you.

Yeah, it’s sit out there, park out outside of Ohio and yeah, live the dream. And I don’t know, would be pretty cool though, out there cruising around on a on a four Wheeler all day. Jason I had a, I had a friend that did Border Patrol and he would tell me some pretty wild stories. So I actually probably the job itself would probably be a blast getting to that point.

But yeah, I’m sure you’ve got to do your time standing at the checkpoints, right? I don’t know, honestly. He was pretty new, but he would he’d tell me he’s like, you were pretty much nightly getting into some kind of pursuit. But he worked at San Ysidro. So that’s right there chasing people. Tijuana and yeah. So yeah, but he said I was fun.

I just don’t know. The thing with them too, is they don’t make, border patrols. One thing, and this may have changed, I don’t know, but at the time, they didn’t make a ton of money, but they got a ton of overtime. So they made good money based on their overtime, but they had to work a lot. So at least that’s that friend of mine that I knew that I heard they get paid for their drive time too don’t they.

Yeah. But it’s so remote. Yeah. Well I mean that’s kind of nice speaking. I would pay for your commute. Yeah. But that’s not, that’s surely not typical. Probably not now. But I mean there’s not a lot if you’re, if you’re talking about Louisville, there’s not a lot of places for you to live. So you got to drive it.

You got to live somewhere. Hellbender I think a lot of guys live in Healy Bend. So living the dream. Yeah, yeah, living the dream. Got a dollar store. Just a cookie to two Mexican restaurants. And that pizza place. That’s about it. I no pizza in Harlem. Yeah, there’s that pizza place that the. Oh, you know what I was thinking?

I was thinking, I was thinking about how Prince Harry went to that. He’s got his little picture up there. I don’t know. I know the one you’re talking about that I stopped up in that space age motel restaurant. Yeah. Terrible. Don’t do it. All right. Well, hey, you know, this is, you know, another one that kind of put in the books here, and, you know, we can’t stress enough.

We’re going to try to surface up the topics. Of what are really important and, try to bring in the right professionals. I know you’ve been talking to a variety of people. Yeah, some of them employ some of you guys professional service providers, for law enforcement specifically. Yeah. Some of them are retired cops who got into a second professions, my understanding.

So I definitely look forward to you, teeing up that meeting and and taking those conversations down that rabbit hole. So, we thanks for listening. If you’re out there listening on this stuff and, we look forward to doing some more episodes here soon. Yep. So, got anything else? Let’s call it. Yeah. All right, officer Ty.

All right. Good to see you, buddy. Yeah, because you.