Choice of Retirement Plan 2009-2010

New faculty must quickly make a choice between the Massachusetts State Employee Retirement System (SERS) and the Optional Retirement Program (ORP).

This is a very important decision with long-term consequences.

The first thing to know is:

If you sign up for ORP, you can never switch to SERS.

If you sign up for SERS, you have 90 days to switch to ORP.

SERS is a defined benefit plan, which means that upon retirement you will receive a pension determined by a combination of age, years of creditable service, and salary.  It requires 10 years of creditable service to be vested.

ORP (which has several plans to choose from) is a defined contribution plan, which means you invest your and your employer’s contributions but don’t earn a pension per se.

To help you make the decision, MSP and the University administration will hold 2 workshops at which representatives of the Union, Human Resources, and the ORP providers will make presentations and answer questions.  We urge you to come to one of these: