Retirement
All faculty employed at SMC are members of some kind of retirement plan.
Full-time faculty must be enrolled in the CalSTRS Defined Benefit Program (unless they were already a member of the CalPERS retirement system)
Part-time faculty have a choice of three different plans:
The same CalSTRS Defined Benefit Program as FT faculty (~10% member contribution)
The CalSTRS Cash Balance Benefit Program (4% member contribution)
Social Security (6.2% member contribution)
Often, for part-time faculty, the pros and cons of the different possible retirement programs are not considered when we're first employed. It seems a long way away and there are many other things to worry about. But choices made in that hiring moment can have long-term consequences for your retirement security - so the sooner you re-visit that choice, the better.
Even newly hired full-time faculty maynot be aware of issues relating to transferring past retirement credit in different plans to the CalSTRS Defined Beneift Program, or the desirability of transferring sick leave to SMC from any prior community college work.
We will be runing a number of workshops for you throughout the year and building materials on this website to help you better understand your retirement future. Remember, as educators, retirement is an earned benefit, contributed to by you and SMC, and it is a form of deferred compensation that is protected by the California constitution. You've earned it and it must be there for you when you retire.
The first thing you should do is look up your own personal retirement reports on one of the following sites:
myCalSTRS: https://www.calstrs.com/mycalstrs
myCalPERS: https://my.calpers.ca.gov/web/ept/public/systemaccess/eptLogin.html
(Look on your pay stub under the right hand "DEDUCTIONS/TAXES/MISC" column to see if there is a "STRS" item, a "PERS" item, or a Social Security item ("OASDI DED") listed. If you are in PERS, there should also be a social security deduction item.)