“Back to School” season is in full swing. Across our state, tens of thousands of ATRS members are returning to classrooms, buses, cafeterias, and offices to begin another year of serving our state’s families. For those of you working in our state’s public schools, thank you for again dedicating your professional lives to educating future generations. For those of you who have retired, thank you for the years of service you have provided, and I hope that you are enjoying your well-earned retirement.
If this is your first year working in an Arkansas public school, welcome! We are so grateful that you have chosen this career. You may not realize it yet, but by working in public education in Arkansas, you are now a member of ATRS. This gives you the potential to earn your way to a secure retirement.
I want you to understand the financial value of staying in public education and remaining a member of ATRS. I’m going to outline some of the benefits that are now yours, but don’t take my word for it. Talk to a retired teacher or retired school employee, and I am confident they will tell you the same thing: Arkansas has a great retirement waiting for you.
After completing five years of service in Arkansas schools, you will have earned the right to a lifetime retirement benefit that you cannot lose. Once you hit that five-year service mark, you are considered “vested” – that just means you have earned the right to a monthly pension benefit from ATRS when you retire. The more years of service credit you earn in ATRS, the greater your benefit will be.
Being a vested member of ATRS brings four key advantages:
Guaranteed for Life: ATRS members never have to worry about outliving their pension benefit. Even if you reach the age of 100 or older, you will continue to receive a monthly benefit from ATRS, along with annual cost-of-living adjustments.
Biggest Piece of the Retirement Puzzle: If you complete 28 years of contributory service credit, you will be eligible for a monthly pension that is about 60% of your final average salary. When you combine that with Social Security benefits, most members can expect a monthly income close to what they made when they were working, if not more. For every additional year that you continue to work after 28 years, your monthly benefit will be even larger.
A Safe, Worry-Free Investment: When your retirement depends on how your personal investments perform, market downturns can be terrifying. That’s not a worry for ATRS members. Because our system is designed to serve members over many decades now and in the future, the effects of market downturns are spread across those generations. Your monthly benefit will be protected and will continue to grow year after year, even if the stock market goes down.
Not Just Retirement: As a vested member of ATRS, you are entitled to more than just a monthly benefit in retirement. When an active vested member becomes unable to work due to a disability, they may be eligible to apply for disability retirement benefits. If an active vested member passes away, their family may be able to receive survivor benefits, as well as a lump-sum death benefit for those with at least 10 years of actual credited service. And if a member with 28 years of credited service decides to keep working, T-DROP allows them to build up a cash nest egg that can be substantial.
If you already are a vested member or an ATRS retiree, and you know someone who is a new teacher or a new school employee, I encourage you to talk to them about ATRS. You can even forward this email to them or point them to our Member Handbook which answers many of the questions they might have. If you are a new employee yourself, please check out our website to learn more about what ATRS offers.
BEWARE OF MISLEADING MARKETING EMAILS
The start of school also means that some members may get personalized emails that sound like they are from ATRS. They may have a subject that reads something like, “Annual Pension Review,” and they offer to schedule a meeting or phone call. You can see an example of one of these emails, and a list of some of the Internet domain names that are connected to them, at this link. These emails are commonly targeted at active employees in public schools, but just recently I’ve heard from retirees who are getting similar misleading emails and calls.
It can be easy to mistake one of these emails as a message from ATRS, but they have nothing to do with ATRS. Rather, they are sent by marketers trying to sell expensive investment or insurance products that earn them a commission, or worse, by scammers trying to steal your identity or money.
Please understand that these marketers do not have your ATRS retirement or salary records. They cannot give you an official projection of your retirement benefits. The only way they can tell you anything about your retirement benefits is if you give them that information.
ATRS will never contact you unsolicited to schedule a retirement consultation. We schedule those only when you reach out to us and ask for one. So, if you get an email about retirement, and you’re not sure if it is from ATRS, check the sending email address. Any email from ATRS will always come from an email address that ends in “@artrs.gov”. If an email address ends in “.com” or anything else, it is not from ATRS.
Another scam seen in other states is for con artists to send fake signature requests from DocuSign, Adobe, Dropbox, or another legitimate electronic signature platform. These requests can even be sent in the name of a retirement system or include the system’s logo.
ATRS does not send emails to members from any other platform. Again, if you get an email that comes from any address that does not end in “@artrs.gov”, it is not really from ATRS.
If any email or phone call doesn’t seem right, or if you are ready to talk with us about your retirement questions, you can reach our staff by emailing info@artrs.gov or calling (501) 682-1517. If you have a question or concern about the System, please reach out to me at the contact information below. I am always happy to talk to ATRS members and answer their questions.