Transcript for:
Comprehensive Retirement Planning for Teachers

I agree. All right, perfect. All right, well, so first of all, welcome everyone.

Thank you so much for taking the time to join us tonight. And before we begin, I just want to take a moment and say, and just acknowledge the incredible work that you do. You know, you play a huge role in shaping future generations.

And there's definitely something that we appreciate and recognize here at Teacher. So thank you. All right, well, a little bit about me. My name is Miriam, and I'm here to talk to you guys about a very exciting event. getting ready to retire.

So this presentation, well, actually, you know what, before I get to that, I've been here at Teachers for about eight and a half years. I'm a senior pension and benefit specialist. So you're definitely in good hands. And this presentation will be about 90 minutes long.

And it's best suited for OCT qualified teachers who are thinking of retiring either within the next three to five years or sooner. So if these don't apply to you this may not be the best presentation for you. All right so just a few housekeeping things first before we begin. You'll notice that this presentation is being recorded but it's just for training purposes only.

It will not be shared later on our website. However everything that we'll be covering today is available on our website and more so we highly highly encourage you to visit our website if you haven't already. I will I do encourage you to submit your questions in the chat throughout the presentation because we'll stop at the end of each section for a brief Q&A session, except for the first one just because it is fairly short. But again, we'll stop at the end of each section. And don't worry if you don't hear your question called.

We'll probably be saving it for either a later section of the presentation or my colleague and I will actually stick around at the end for a longer Q&A session. So don't worry. However, we do ask that you keep your questions to the topic at hand. Try not to jump from topic to topic just because it can create confusion.

And it's likely that we'll cover it later in the presentation. So thank you for that. Also, you'll notice that at the well, actually, at the end of the presentation, we will send you a survey. So we do ask that you take a couple of minutes to just give us your feedback, just because we're constantly looking for ways to improve our presentations. and make sure that we're giving you the information that you need.

So your feedback is very valuable to us. So if you can just take a couple of minutes at the end of the presentation, we would greatly appreciate it. You'll also notice that your sound and camera were turned off when you came in.

That's just to ensure that there's no distractions to the presentation. You can hear me okay. And last but not least, I'm sure you've noticed that I'm not here alone today.

I am joined by my lovely colleague, Sonia. So I'll pass it to her to introduce herself and then we'll begin. Thank you, Miriam, for that lovely introduction. Hello and good evening.

Thank you for joining. My name is Sonia. I'm a pension benefit specialist here at Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, and I've been here for about two years and I'm loving it so far.

Just to echo some of Miriam's sentiments, we are so privileged to be serving teachers in this capacity as your pension. You really are the glue. to society.

You help mold our children and make sure that they're learning and they become good people. So definitely understand that the work you do day in, day out does not go unnoticed. That being said, my job today is to be the moderator.

So I'll be looking at the chat, answering your questions, and making sure that everything is answered. Now, you might notice I'm not going to answer your question right away. What I'm doing is I'm actually grouping them so that we can have a good Q&A session. So I'm not ignoring you when you're asking those questions in the chat.

I am saving them for later. If we don't get to all of your questions today or within each section, there will be, as Miriam said, a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. And the good news is also any question that you have will be answered through the online account should we not get to it today.

I do want to reiterate the point about recording. This presentation is being recorded, but only for training and quality purposes. So the recording will not be made public, nor will the slide deck. Again, good news story about that is that all the information we present today is available at your fingertips online.

So that being said, Miriam. Perfect. Thank you so much, Sonia.

All right. So here's our agenda for today and the four key areas that we'll cover. So we're going to talk about some pension plan basics to see how your pension works.

But first, some members ask us if their pension will always be there for them. So let's have a look at some key factors that support a secure pension for you in your future. All right, so here at Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, we are the plan administrators. We are not the decision makers.

It is the plan sponsors who are the Ontario Teachers Federation and the Ministry of Education. who are the decision makers. So they're the ones who are tasked with decisions to ensure that the plan has enough money to meet its long-term obligations to its members.

Now, just to give you some examples of the decisions that our plan sponsors make around contribution and benefit levels. If you think back to in the early 2000s, you guys previously actually used to have a 90 factor. However, that was a decision made by the plan sponsors to reduce your factor from 90 down to 85, which is great news because it means that you can retire earlier.

And if we even think back to. You know, more recently, back to 2018, the plan sponsors made a decision to reduce your contribution rates. So previously it was 13.1%.

However, in 2018, the plan sponsors made the decision to use some of the fund surplus to reduce your contribution rate down to 12%. So again, another win because it means that you get a little bit more money in your pocket when you get your paycheck every couple of weeks. All right, so let's now have a look at our plan's financial status, especially since some of you may be wondering how it's doing during these times. But rest assured, as of our latest annual statement or annual report of December 31st, 2023, we had $247.5 billion in net assets.

And last year alone, we paid $7.7 billion in pension and benefits to our members. And we're proud to announce that for the 11th year in a row, we are fully funded, which basically means that shouldn't anything happen, you know, the plan has more than enough money to fulfill its future obligations to its members. All right, now let's have a look at our membership. So today we have about 340,000 members, 184,000 of which are actively teaching, and 156,000 of which are enjoying their retirement. And last year alone, we had more than 5,000 members retire.

And hopefully soon you'll be among them too. All right. So that brings us to the end of the first section. As you can see, it was fairly brief. So we're not going to stop for a Q&A session.

But I do just want to check in with you guys. How's the pace and the sound so far? If you can let me know in the chat. Good. All right.

I see a thumbs up and a few messages in the chat. Perfect. Awesome. Excuse me. All right.

So just before we dive in, I'd love to hear from you guys. What are the top factors that are on your mind when you're considering retiring? What decision or what factors are affecting your decision?

If you can let me know in the chat. What are you making your decision based on? Health.

I want to stop working, fair enough. Having enough money to live the way I want to once I retire. Health, mental health, stress.

I see health as definitely a common theme. My age, finances, money, financial security, your monthly pension amount. What factor is optimal for me? I see timing, money, health, family. Absolutely.

Thank you so much for sharing. That's definitely in line with what we typically hear from our members. As we can see, as I'm sure you're experiencing, income is definitely top of mind. You know, you want to make sure that you have enough money to maintain your lifestyle or to pay for your mortgage, or maybe you have kids that you're putting through university. Of course, making the decision to retire isn't just a financial one.

It's also a personal one. You may want to try to coordinate so you retire at the same time as your spouse or maybe colleagues that you've started working with or been working closely with for a long time. And of course, last but not least, definitely both your mental and your physical health. You want to make sure that you're in good enough health to enjoy this next chapter of your life.

All right. Now, this brings me to my favorite part of the presentation. I really enjoy picking you guys'brains on this. What's top of mind for you once you are retired or what's on your bucket list? What are you looking forward to doing the most once you are retired?

I know that some of you may be a swanky concert, as we've discussed. Travel, travel and relax. Getting back into shape. Spending the pension on travel, traveling off-season, move to a quiet location, learning a new skill. Rest, relaxation, I raised my two young children, apply, teach, eva, snowboard, volunteering, starting a new career.

Wow, amazing. Absolutely. See, the world is your oyster.

Life doesn't end at retirement. If anything, it's the beginning of a new chapter. So lots of exciting things ahead.

Well, thank you for sharing. I'm definitely taking notes. As we've seen, travel is definitely popular, especially since, you know, some of you may not have been able to travel as much as you'd like in the last few years.

Maybe you want to volunteer, pick up a new part-time job that I did see somebody mentioned they weren't able to do while they were teaching. Maybe explore some new skills and hobbies. I did have someone in one of my previous presentations say that they're looking forward to having a musical performance. So, hey, I really look forward to hearing more about what you guys are planning to do. Awesome.

So thank you for sharing. So now that we've looked at what factors are top of mind when you're making your decision to retire, as well as what you're looking forward to doing the most once you are retired, let's have a look at when can you actually retire. All right.

So when it comes to the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, you do have some options in terms of when you can retire. So let's have a look at what it means to retire with your 85 factor, which I'm sure you've heard very much about. So what is your earliest unreduced retirement date? Basically, here at Ontario Teachers, the earliest date that you can start an unreduced pension is either when you reach age 65 or your 85 factor. Now the beauty about the 85 factor is that it allows you to start collecting an unreduced pension before age 65. But how do we determine your 85 factor?

Well, to understand that, it brings us to two different types of credit. So the first one is qualifying credit. Now, while the rules have changed over the years, these days it means that if you work at least 11 days per school year, then you receive a full qualifying year of credit. And then what we do is we take your cumulative qualifying years plus your age, and once that adds up to 85, you're eligible for an unreduced pension. So essentially that's what your 85 factor date is.

It's when qualifying years plus your age equals 85. All right, now your qualifying credit measures the length of your teaching career. So it tells us how long you've been working, but it doesn't tell us how much you've been working throughout each of the school year, each school year. So that takes us to the other type of credit, which is your credit years. All right, now your credit years is what's used to determine how much money you'll receive on pension. So if we just do a quick recap.

Your qualifying years count towards determining when your earliest unreduced retirement date is, so it counts towards your 85 factor. And your credit years tell us how much you've been working throughout each school year. And then we take your total credit years and we put it in our basic pension formula to determine how much your pension will be. So what's included in credit years?

So from the time that you have your OCT qualification, any work that you do whatsoever, whether it's supply work, LTO. You know, working half-time, full-time, anything at all is included in that. So we take all of the work that you've done throughout your entire career.

It would also include if you've completed any buybacks. So let's say that you've taken an unpaid employer-approved leave of absence from your position, perhaps due to maternity leave or any other reason, as long as it's an unpaid approved leave by your board, then you are able to buy that back. So that would be included as well in your credit years.

Of course, only if you've bought it back. If you've completed any transfers from another Canadian registered pension plan. So let's say, for example, you were teaching in another province. Let's say you were contributing to the Alberta teacher's pension plan.

And then you move back to Ontario and decided to port your pension over. That would also be included in your credit years. If you are on any kind of paid sick leave, you don't have to worry. Your pension is not impacted. As long as it's a paid sick leave, we still receive your pension contributions.

So, you know, your pension continues to grow. And that's also included in your credit years. Now, we then put your credit years in the basic pension formula, which is 2% times credit years times the average of your best five-year salary.

Now... I know there may be a little bit of confusion around the best five years average salary. So it doesn't necessarily have to be your last five years, but typically it tends to be. But that's not to say that if you had higher salary, you know, more than five years ago that we're not going to use it.

We're absolutely going to look back as far back as we need to in your service record and pick the highest five years. So you don't have to worry. We always want to make sure that we give you the best benefit possible.

Now, something that you may not be aware of is that, you know, if you're not a 100% full-time employee and you're working whether half-time or doing supply work, we don't use your take-home salary. We actually do something that's called we annualize your salary. So we take the salary that you would have earned had you worked the entire school year.

And then we use that in the calculation of your best five years average salary. And the way it will balance out is when we put it in this pension formula. So let me give you an example to put it into context.

So if we look at two twin sisters who both graduated Teachers College at the same time, and just to make it easy, I'm going to use some easy numbers. Let's say they've been working for 30 years each. However, let's say Sister A has been working full-time throughout the entire 30 years.

However, Sister B has only been working half-time during the entire 30 years. And they both have the same best five years average salary. We'll just say $100,000 to make it easy.

So if we put it in this formula, we'll be able to illustrate how your credit years affect how much money you'll receive on pension. So if we look at Sister A, who's been working full time throughout the 30 years, her pension formula would be 2% times. Now, sorry, let me take a pause. The maximum credit that you can earn during any given school year is a 1. So 1 represents 100%.

If you were to work half-time, it would be 0.5, and a third would be 0.33. Now, in this case, it'll be 2% times 30 credit years, because Sister A has worked full-time during her entire career, and we know that the average best five-year salary is $100,000, so 2% times 30 gives us 60% times $100,000. Sister A ends up with a gross annual pension of $60,000.

Now, let's see what the difference would be. for her sister who's been working half-time throughout her entire career. Now, we know that if you're only working half-time during any given school year, you would earn 0.5 credit years.

So half of 30 is 15. So we know that Sister B has earned 15 credit years. So let's put in the pension formula now. We do 2% times 15 credit years, which gives us 30, times the average of her best five-year salary, which is $100,000. So $30,000.

That ends up being a $30,000 pension. So that's where you'll see that although both have the same number of qualifying years, because they've both been working throughout 30 years, they have different credit years and they have the same average salary and their pension is significantly different. And that's because the key to determining how much your pension would be is your credit years.

Well, it's not the only thing. Of course, your average salary is also important, but that's... Yeah. that's where we can observe that credit years really have a significant impact on your pension amount. All right, now let's put this into more of a context with a more common example.

So here we have Alice, who is a 54-year-old teacher, and she's been working throughout 31 years. Now, if we add up her age plus her qualifying years, that brings her to her 85 factor. Excuse me.

That's why she's smiling, because she can definitely retire if she wanted to. Now, how much would her pension be? Let's do the math.

So we take the same basic pension formula, 2% times her credit years. Now, I do want to give you guys a little bit of a pop quiz. You may have noticed in the previous slide, she had 31 qualifying years. Can anyone tell me in the chat why her qualifying, sorry, why her qualifying years and her credit years would not be equal? So why she only has 29 credit years when she's been working for 31 years?

Perfect. I see it. Maternity leave. Good thing I bought back my maternity leave. Maybe she took two years off.

Absolutely. Maybe a couple of years part time. That was smart. Not quite medical leave, because remember, if it's a paid medical leave, then you're still making your pension contributions unless it's unpaid. Or maybe she worked private or maybe she didn't contribute to the pension plan.

Perfect. Amazing. You're all right. All right.

So then we take her credit years and we multiply by her growth or sorry, by the average of her best five year salary. And that gives her a gross annual pension of about $52,200. All right, now your 85 factor date only tells us your earliest unreduced retirement date before age 65. It doesn't mean that you have to retire at that date.

A lot of people will ask us, you know, can I continue to work beyond my 85 factor? And the answer is yes, you absolutely can. Let's have a look at what it means to work beyond your 85 factor. So your pension continues to grow because you're continuing to make pension contributions. There's no credit limit, which is great news because it means that there's no cap.

as to how much credit you can accumulate in the plan. Of course, The younger you can start, the better, because there is an age limit. So although there's no credit limit, due to the Income Tax Act, we are required to start paying your pension no later than the year in which you have your 71st birthday.

So although there's no credit limit, as long as you, there is an age limit, and as long as you continue to work and contribute, whether your average salary goes up or you're contributing more, your pension continues to grow. Okay, so I'm sure some of you are thinking there's no way that I want to continue to work until I'm 71. In fact, you're probably wondering, can I retire sooner? And the good news is that yes, you can. So here at Ontario Teachers, the earliest that you can start collecting your pension is as early as the age of 50. However, it would be very unlikely that you would have reached your 85 factor. So we would take the same basic pension formula, but we have to take an additional step.

to take out a reduction, which would take into account the fact that you would be starting your pension earlier and you would be collecting it for a longer period of time. So let's have a look at an example. Here we have Richard, who is 52.75 years of age, and he's been working throughout 30 years. So when we take his age plus his qualifying years, that brings him just shy of his 85 factor. But to give you a sense, because Richard is older than 50, he's definitely able to retire.

So let's have a look at what his pension would be. Now, Richard has the same number of credit years and average salary as Alice. So they both start off with the same annual base pension of about $52,000. So now we're going to look at some tests that we run to determine what the early retirement reduction would be.

So we run two types of tests, one to see how far away you are from your 85 factor, and one based on how far away you are from age 65. And again, we're always going to use the lower of the two to make sure that you have the best benefit possible. We know that he's closer to his 85 factor than age 65. So we're using the factor-based reduction. And after doing the math, we determined that it comes to a reduction of about $3,000. And he ends up with a gross annual pension of about $49,264, which is not bad considering that he's going to collect his pension earlier and for a longer period of time.

All right. Now, do you know when your earliest unreduced retirement date is? If you're unsure, don't worry.

This is where we highly, highly urge you to log into your online account. Because once you do, you'll have access to a bunch of amazing tools. But most importantly, this...

I can't say enough good things about it. Members love it. This amazing tool called the pension calculator, which truly is amazing because it's completely customized to your individual case.

So what it does is it pulls all of the latest information and data that we have on file for you to project when your earliest unreduced retirement date would be. And the neat thing is that as soon as you log in and you get onto the pension calculator, The projection will already be there for you. So it will let you know when you can retire without any kind of reduction.

It'll either be your 85 factor or when you turn 65, whichever is closest for you. Now, I want to bring your attention to the retirement date in this scenario, because retirement dates can happen at any time during a calendar year or school year. In this one, you'll notice that this member's projection date is in the fall.

It's in October. So when that happens, I want to encourage you to consider looking at a scenario where you would be starting your pension a few months earlier, namely at the end of the previous school year. So you would retire June 30th and then start your pension the following month in July. So just so you know, the earliest you can start collecting your pension is the month after you retire, not the month that you retire. So the reason that I want to encourage you to view a scenario where you would collect your pension a few months earlier is because although you may have, you will have a small early retirement reduction, in most cases it's...

Probably worth it if you consider the fact that not only would you receive your pension for a few extra months, for example, you would receive July, August and September. But on top of that, when you retire at the end of a school year, in most cases, your school board will still pay you your summer salary if you're a 10 month employee. Plus, you'll receive your pension. So you get both. So, you know, again, even though there may be a small early retirement reduction, given that you will receive these additional months of pension payment.

and your salary from your board, it more than makes up for it. So this is mainly the case for those of you who are 10-month employees. Unfortunately, it's not the same if you are a 12-month employee because the expectation is that you work every month.

All right, so it's not often that we give teachers homework, but if you're not, I highly recommend you register for your online account. I'll leave this page up for a little bit while I speak to it. There's a QR code where you can just point the camera of your phone and it will take you right to the registration page.

So it's pretty quick to get signed up and you'll definitely want to because most of what you need is available online. And although we'll talk about that in a little bit, when you do eventually get ready to retire, almost 100% of our applications are online. So... We highly, highly recommend that you sign up for your online account. All right.

Now, one common theme that we're receiving a lot of questions about right now, and just in general, when you are retiring, and we want to make sure that you're aware of, is when you start collecting your pension or when you do retire, we want to start paying your pension as soon as possible without causing any delays. So although we may not have the most up-to-date information from your school board yet, especially for the most recent school year, we don't want to delay paying your pension. So what we'll do is we'll pay it with the information that we have on file.

And then what happens is within the first two years that you start collecting your pension, we recalculate all of our pensioners'pensions to ensure that we review the data that we receive from your employer. And all of that is included in the calculation of your pension. And if there is any change, you know, we would make a retroactive payment for the difference to the pension amount you should have been receiving from the start of your pension, as well as make the change moving forward.

So this is done automatically. There's no action that needs to be taken on your end. So this has always been the case.

I know that now it's a bit more top of mind for teachers with Bill 124 and the collective agreement. So fear not if we do not have all of the information. This is not going to cause any delays to your pension.

We'll just recalculate it once we receive everything that we need. All right. And again, just a little bit of homework for you guys.

I highly, highly, highly urge you to register for your online accounts. If you're not already registered, you want to make sure to play around with the pension calculator. Do your research. See when would be the ideal date for you.

And what's neat is it will also, you know. help you with your future planning for your finances. You'll be able to know when you'll achieve whether it's a dollar amount or your unreduced pension. So you definitely want to check it out. It has all of the same data that we have access to at your fingertips.

Okay, so that brings us to the end of this section. I feel like I've been talking a lot. Are there any questions in the chat? Sorry, I forgot to unmute myself there.

There is a lot. So those of you that have been asking questions in the chat, thank you. I have not been ignoring you.

I promise I've grouped them all here. Miriam, if that's okay with you, I'll take a couple of them and then I'll toss them off to you just to give you a little bit of a break. To start, let's define the difference between qualifying credit and actual credit or credit years.

So a couple of questions about what the 11 days really means. When we're talking about our qualifying factor. Your qualifying factor is taken by calculating your age at retirement plus your qualifying years of credit.

Now, in order to get one qualifying year of credit, you have to work more than 10 days. In short, you have to work 11 days to get one qualifying credit. That determines when you can retire. Then there's credit years, otherwise known as actual credit. And that's the proportionate amount of time that you have worked within the school year.

And that is directly inside your pension formula. And that dictates how much you will get. Okay, so I hope that clears that up. There were some questions about Bill 124. A whole lot of those, especially as they relate to the pension calculator.

Once we get the information from your employer, We're going to reconcile the data as fast as possible. We are asking for your patience for this matter. We do have deadlines. We're looking to get everything resolved by spring, summer of next year. Now, when you log into your online account, you will have this big blue banner that gives you the status of your Bill 124 information, in which case you'll see if it's not started, in progress, or completed.

So I'm going to push you to go online if possible. to see the status of your Bill 124 information. And in addition, we did have some questions about buybacks, what a buyback is, how it affects your credit years. So, Miriam, did you want me to take that or are you comfortable sort of giving the short, sweet answer about what those are? Sure, I'll take it.

No problem. So essentially, any time that you have an unpaid employer approved leave from a position that you held, you have the opportunity to do what's called a buyback. And essentially, a buyback means. It allows you to make the contributions you would have made had you not been on leave so that your pension is not impacted. It continues to grow.

So as far as we're concerned, if you complete a buyback, it's as if you were working. So your pension stays on track. That's it.

And someone did ask what the cost is. It depends on how long the leave is. Typically, it's about 12% of your pay for the time that you are gone.

Now, we did have a very important question. question and that's about long-term disability and short-term disability. So there were a couple questions about being paid and being on a short-term leave and how that affects the pension.

So Miriam, how does it affect the pension? Great question. Thank you.

So if you are on a paid sick leave, you do not have to worry about your pension. Let's say even if you're getting only two-thirds of your pay or 90% of your pay, we're receiving 100% of your contribution. So As far as the pension is concerned, you're covered. There's no gap in service. The salary is not being reported at a lower salary.

We're seeing your full salary. So there's no impact to your pension for both a short-term sick leave or a long-term disability leave. So there's nothing for you to worry about. It's only in the event that it is unpaid that it would not be covered. However, if you're receiving pay, then you're completely covered.

And just seeing a couple of questions just recently about going on LTD, going on long-term income protection, long-term disability. So long as you're paid, your pension contributions are waived, you continue accruing credit in the plan as per usual. There was a really good question that I think you should touch on about someone working and then doing supply work.

Okay. Right? So I was more so thinking... What do we want to tell members when they're working occasional, specifically maybe during their best five? Absolutely.

So that's a great question. So as you've seen, typically your best five years tend to fall during your last five years. It doesn't always have to be, but typically that's the case.

Now, we do want to caution you if you are especially a full-time employee or salaried employee, we want to caution you. I don't want to say against doing occasional work, but at least we want to make sure that you're aware of the ramifications. So if you are not a 100% contract employee, let's say you're part-time 50% salaried and you decide to pick up some extra shifts doing supply work.

I did mention earlier that when you are only doing a 50%, let's say a 50% contract or any contract that's not equivalent to 100%, we would typically annualize your salary. So we wouldn't take the salary that you're- take home your growth salary, we would take the salary that you would have earned had you worked 100% of the year. So just to give you an example, if you're working half time and your growth take home is $50,000, we wouldn't use $50,000 in the calculation of your best five years average salary if it ends up being one of your highest years. We would actually take, we would use $100,000 because $100,000 is what you would have earned had you worked 100% of the time.

Now, the problem is if you take up some supply days, now we're not able to annualize it fully from $50,000 to $100,000. We have to do kind of a combined average between, you know, we take the total number of days that you work. Let's say if you worked 30 days occasional at $200 daily rate of pay.

Now, your rate of pay tends to be significantly lower when you're doing supply work. than when you are salaried. So instead, now we're not able to go from 50,000 to 100,000.

So we have to consider the 30 days that you worked at $200 daily rate of pay, plus, you know, what you did work. So that brings down your that could potentially bring down your best five years average salary, because instead of ending with a salary of $100,000 for that given year, it would be less. And it could be significant depending on the number of days that you work at that daily rate of pay.

I hope that makes sense. It does. And just the very last question, because then we need to move on. There were a lot of questions about summer school and how this could potentially affect your pension. The answer I sort of gave in short was it might affect your pension depending on how often you work, but maybe you can give a more robust answer about summer school.

Perfect. Thank you. Yeah.

So basically, if you are 100 percent, if you're if you're working 100 percent contract. You've already earned the maximum during the school year. You've already earned the maximum one year of credit for that particular school year. So if you work full time during the regular school year and work summer school, your summer school is not going to be pensionable.

It is not going to count towards your pension because you've already accumulated the maximum 100 percent credit for that school year. And it does not increase your salary either. It's not being considered.

However, that being said, if you're not working 100% and, you know, let's say you're working part time or you're a supply teacher during the regular school year and you end up picking up summer school, then absolutely that will get added on to whatever credit you've already accumulated to a maximum of a one or 100% equivalent. Awesome. Okay. For the sake of time, let's move on.

If I didn't get to all of your questions, remember there is a Q&A section at the end. Okay. Perfect.

Thank you, Sonia. Thanks. All right.

So we've looked at what factors affect your retirement date and the amount. Now, in this next section, we're going to look at how your pension fits into your larger financial picture. Now, once you're retired, we just want to let you know that your Ontario teacher's pension is likely going to be one among several sources of income.

You know, not only will you be collecting your Ontario teacher's pension. But you'll also eventually be eligible to start a pension with CPP. You may or may not qualify for old age security. Perhaps you're going to start pulling from your personal savings and investments or maybe take on other work, whether outside of education.

Or maybe you decide that you miss teaching and you want to help out your old school board and pick up some supply days. So we do refer to that as reemployment. More on that to come. But I did just want to highlight that your Ontario teacher's pension will be among one of several sources of income and we'll discuss more the implications.

But first, I just want to introduce you to our lovely Farah, who is a typical teacher who started teaching in her 20s and after about 31 years of teaching, she decided to retire. She's now 89 years old and has been collecting her pension for equally as long as she's been contributing into the plan. So one question that we receive often is, what happens to my pension after a certain amount of time? Is there a cap? Does it end?

You know, how long am I guaranteed my pension? And the answer to that is, it's a lifetime pension. So for as long as you're alive, you will continue to receive your pension, even if you end up collecting it for a lot longer than what you've actually contributed into it.

That's okay. You know, you've worked hard and you get to enjoy for as long as you live once you're retired. Now, I want to play a little game with you guys.

Can you take a guess at how old do you think our current oldest retired member is? If you can let me know in the chat. Ooh, right away with 104. Not quite. 97, 102, 90. That's not very optimistic.

103, 101, 108. Ooh, close, but not quite. 85, 99, 96. We're going lower here, guys. You want to go higher. 95, 107, 104, 110. A little smidge too high. 109. Perfect.

Drum roll for Peter, please. Yes, our oldest retired member is 109 years old. And what's even more incredible is that to date, we have about 148 members who are over 100 years old and enjoying their pension. So it just goes to show you that even if you get into your triple digits, you know, you don't have to worry. You have that financial security for as long as you live.

All right. So now this brings us to another very important topic that we get a lot of questions about, which is how does my teacher's pension fit in with CPP or how does that integration work? So if you don't mind for this next little. for this slide at least I'm going to ask that you take a pause from putting any questions in the chat just to make sure that you absorb all the information that I'll go over and then once I'm done you know I'll let you know to add your questions in the chat. So we just want to let you know that in most cases when you start collecting your pension assuming you start collecting it before the age of 65 not only will you be receiving your Ontario teacher's lifetime pension.

but you will also be receiving what's called an Ontario Teachers Bridge Benefit. Now, this bridge benefit is paid up until age 65. And at age 65, the bridge benefit ends. And the reason for that is because at age 65, you become eligible to receive an unreduced pension from the Canada Pension Plan. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to wait until age 65 to start collecting your CPP pension.

In fact, you do have the option to start collecting it as early as age 60. Now, another question that we receive is, what happens to my Ontario Teachers Bridge benefit if I do start collecting my CPP early? Let's say at age 60, 61, 62. Or what if I decide to defer it until after age 65 and collect it at age 67? Well, the answer to that is nothing.

Regardless, in most cases, I should say, in most cases, if you do end up starting your CPP pension before age 60, or sorry, before age 65, You'll still continue to receive your Ontario Teacher's Bridge Benefit. It will still end at the time, at the regular time, which is when you turn 65. However, there is one exception to that, which is if you were to be, if you were to collect a disability pension from CPP. In that case, it is highly important that you notify us if you will be in receipt or if you are receiving a disability pension from CPP, because the Bridge Benefit would end right away. So it is important that you notify us.

However, in the majority of cases, most of you will be collecting a regular CPP pension, so you don't have to worry about that. You'd still collect both CPP and your bridge benefit if you start collecting your CPP early. And as I mentioned, same applies if you end up deferring your CPP pension, because technically you're eligible for an unreduced pension with CPP at age 65, but the bridge benefit would end at age 65. And this is...

Pretty much the same for most major pension plans across Canada. But what we typically hear from our members, you know, typically the amount of the reduction with us tends to be less than what you receive from CPP. So you may not feel much of a hit.

And coincidentally, at age 65, you may, I should say, now you do, but you may qualify for another benefit, which is old age security. Now, because we are separate organizations, we don't have access to that information in terms of how much would you be receiving from either CPP or Old Age Security. So we do highly recommend that you contact them at either the number listed below on the slide, the 1-800 number, or to visit their website at servicecanada.gc.ca.

And if you don't mind, I'm just going to ask Sonia to put that link in the chat for you guys. But yeah, so just like we're able to give you estimates, so are they. And that could help you with your future planning. Now, this is another great reason that I want to point you to your online accounts, namely your pension calculator, because whenever you're looking at a scenario, if you're looking at a scenario where you're starting your pension before age 65, whatever total amount you see for your pension includes the bridge benefit. So it is not a separate amount.

It's already included in it. It's not additional. It's already.

there. And if you want to know how much the reduction will be when you turn 65 for that particular scenario, you just have to scroll down to the bottom of the page where after the pension summary box, there will be a couple of sentences. Typically, the first one will say an X percent CPP reduction will take effect the month after you turn 65. So typically it'll be about 13%, let's say.

So that's how much of a reduction you can anticipate when you do turn 65. Now, if you're looking at a scenario where you would be collecting your pension after age 65, then you don't have to scroll down to the bottom. If you look at your scenario, first you'll see the pension formula, and right below you will see reductions, and it will already include it. It will say CPP reduction. And then it would show you the dollar amounts and it would be taken off and then you'd be shown your pension amount. So, again, all the more reason to check out your pension calculator.

It's really incredible in helping you plan ahead for the future. All right. Now, I know that that was a lot of information.

So I'm just going to take a moment, leave this up here for you guys. So feel free to add in your questions in the chat if you have any. And I'm just going to take a sip while I just wait. Okay, so as we've seen, in addition to your teacher's pension, you're likely going to receive multiple sources of income. And the reason that we want to highlight that, especially if you're considering working after retirement or starting a new career, is tax implications.

And the reason for that is when we take off tax from your pension, we deduct it based on the assumption that we are your only source of income because we don't have visibility on your full financial picture. We only see your pension, so we only take out what we're required to. Now, if you have investments that you're pulling from, RSPs, other employment, CPP, you know, you likely want to consider consulting either a tax specialist or a financial advisor with whom you can share all of your finances or your full financial picture, and they can help determine the total tax percentage that should be deducted from all of your sources of income.

And what we want to let you know is that although... Because we're already taking off what we need to based on your pension only, we're not able to determine the amounts above that. But if you give us a dollar figure amount or a percentage, we are able to deduct extra income tax from your pension and pay it to CRA every month. That way, you know, come income tax or come time to file your taxes and you get your tax return, you're not going to be surprised with a big tax bill that you owe to CRA.

So it's always worth considering paying that amount up. front as opposed to being faced with having to pay a lump sum down the road. So that is an option that you have. If you wanted to have extra tax deducted from your pension, you absolutely can. Okay, so as we mentioned, once you're retired, you may decide that you miss teaching or you want to help out your previous school board.

Now, if you do decide to return to work in the field of education, there are some limits as to how much you can work in education without affecting your pension. And that is every school year, you'll be able to work up to 50 days of reemployment without affecting your pension for a designated participating employer. And the month in which you go over your 50th day. you can finish working for the rest of the month. So let's say if you time it and you count it really well, where you exceed your 50th day at the beginning of a month, you can finish working for the rest of that month without affecting your pension.

However, if you continue to work beyond that month, where you exceeded your reemployment limit, then you do need to call us to suspend your pension because essentially, you would not be entitled to those months of payments where you work beyond the month in which you've already exceeded your limit within the same school year. So be sure to call us and notify us and to keep track of your days because ultimately it is your responsibility. And if we end up overpaying your pension for months that you were not entitled to, we will have to request that you pay that back with interest.

Now, the good news is that you now have access on your online account to the number or the same data that's reported by your employer to us. Your employer will report to us the number of days that you've worked. However, it's not submitted to us in real time. So I wouldn't use the information on your online accounts as the most current or up-to-date because it is not.

So it's always advisable that you keep track of your days yourself. And if you want to confirm, make sure you call your employer. Because again, it's only reported to us per pay period.

And sometimes, again, because you're not making pension contributions, it's not on a regular basis. It could be a month later or even longer. But then it'll still come in, you know, and then if we see that there's a discrepancy at that time, we would have to request any overpayment back. So make sure that you diligently keep track of your days and always give yourself some buffer room.

You know, some members will ask us whether it's OK to start, you know, the new month at 50 days exactly. And I always tell them, although, yes, it's OK, as long as you're at 50.00 days, you want to make sure you're not. at 50.01 because the moment that you've gone even a little bit over your 50th day that counts as your 51st day and then you know if your 51st day fell let's say at the end of the month on the last day you're not able to work the following month without affecting your pension so i always like to advise members that call to give themselves a little bit of a buffer room so make sure you have i'd like to say at least a half day of buffer room because mistakes can happen and you know Different employers keep track of your reemployment days differently.

It's not something that we oversee. So you also want to be sure to ask them how they count. For example, if you're only working a half day, whether it would be considered as a half day or a full day, because really anything goes. Different employers keep track differently. And we don't see the breakdown.

We only see the total work per pay period. Okay. All right.

So that brings us to the end of this section. Do we have any questions in the chat? Hello. Yes, we do have a few.

Thank you for that. And I see a few coming in. So we're going to cover those in a bit.

All right. So I did see a couple of questions about does the bridge benefit change? as your salary increases and sort of like what the bridge benefit really is. So Miriam did cover that, but just to reiterate, the bridge benefit is basically bonus money.

Put in short, it's based off of contribution rates. So it's completely separate and apart from what you actually receive from CPP. It is calculated separately. It's only relevant to the amount of money that you contributed to the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, and it is contributed up until age. sorry, it is paid rather up until age 65. Okay.

I also saw a question here. I do not know. I'm sorry. Sorry.

Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't mind, I just want to add a little bit more to your last question just about CPP, whether it's affected by your salary. The one thing I want to mention is, especially if you're looking at early retirement and you're creating different scenarios, make sure you, and you're not yet.

65, make sure you scroll down to the bottom of each scenario because that percentage, so the CPP reduction amount could change. For example, the earlier you start your pension, you know, before your 85 factor, so you would be taking a reduced pension, the higher the CPP reduction tends to be. So the CPP reduction amount can be significantly different based on the scenario you're looking at. So make sure that you're checking that section with each scenario that you're creating. It's not equal to all scenarios.

Gotcha. Someone did ask about CPP, taking CPP earlier and what that means. It is right that if you take your CPP before the age of 65, it will be reduced. Now, just to reiterate what Miriam said about contacting Service Canada, in order to see what the reduction might be if you take your CPP earlier, you do want to contact them and that will help you financially plan.

Someone asked, wondering if... a pension earner is going to make more money if they start taking their CPP early. When you're thinking about your financial planning, you're thinking about all the different parts of your retirement income sources, consult a financial planner, call CPP, call Service Canada, rather make sure you're getting estimates about your CPP at every age as well as what your OAS might be. Okay.

I did want to go to a question here, and Miriam, I'll throw it over to you. I do not or did not receive a bridge payment. Why is my OTPP reduced if I did not receive any bridge payments?

I plan on drawing them after the age of 65. So this person is going to be 66 starting their pension, and they don't receive a bridge. So maybe you want to reiterate maybe why that is. Yeah, so I guess I just want to explain. explain why there's a bridge benefit or there's a reduction to your pension after age 65. And this is the same for most major pension plans across Canada.

And so it's not that you are, sorry, in your case where you're starting your pension age 66, I want to mention that it's not that you're at a disadvantage because you didn't receive the bridge benefit because you waiting until that age, you know, means that you have a lesser CPP reduction than had you started collecting your pension. earlier with a bridge benefit but then when you reached age 65 the reduction to your teacher's pension would have been more significant that it is now that you've waited until after age 65 to start collecting your pension um and you know i'm not going to go i was going to go somewhere else but i realized i don't need to go into that deep explanation but i hope that this answers the question um and just seeing cpp 60 is less than 65 Yes, if you take your CPP before the age of 65, it is going to be reduced. Call Service Canada to get those estimates. I see a lot of questions about who a participating employer is. In just a second, I'm going to post a link to the online website to both the information about re-employment, now moving on to re-employment just for time's sake, about who's a participating employer, and just some more information about the re-employment limits.

But I did want to clarify, there were some questions about if I teach in a certain position, is this going to count towards the re-employment limit? So, Mariam, maybe just a little bit more clarification about who and what counts towards the re-employment limit. Absolutely. Great question. So, just to preface it, I want to say re-employment limits only apply if you're working in education.

So, if you're working outside of education for any other employer in Ontario, let's say If you're working for Costco or Walmart or Home Depot. does not affect your pension at all. The only thing you'll want to consider in those cases, of course, is tax implications if you're receiving, you know, multiple sources of income. But otherwise, outside of education, there is, or even outside of the province, mostly, even if it's in education, as long as you are not working for a participating employer, it will not affect your pension.

Now, let me get to the question where, what is considered a participating employer? So, Sonia did add in a link to our website, which has three different lists as to who is considered a designated participating employer. So I highly recommend that you visit it and check it out.

But basically, if you do any kind of direct or indirect employment for a participating employer, such as a school board, the Ministry of Education, or a designated private organization, that's on the list on our website. then that would be considered re-employment. Gotcha. I just see a couple of questions that are coming up about deferred leaves. Rest assured, I'm keeping that until the end of the Q&A, only because I'm trying to keep the questions relative to the section.

So they're going to be answered. It is actually already answered in the chat somewhere, but we're going to be revisiting that. I'm doing one last scan. I think for the sake of time, we should move on. If I didn't get to your question, I have them written down.

We are going to cover them. Are you okay with that, Miriam? Sounds great. Thanks, Sonia. Awesome.

All right. So now let's get to the meat of it. How do I actually retire? So before retirement, this is really your last chance to, or when you're getting closer to making that final decision, this is your last chance to really look at that. other factors that can help improve your pension.

So you want to consider and review your account to see if you have any outstanding buybacks or the opportunity to do any kind of transfers. So I did mention for buyback, you know, if you've had any kind of unpaid employer-improved leaves, I should mention within the last five years, because a buyback does expire. You only have five years from the end of your leave to complete your payment. So if you have taken an unpaid employer-approved leave within the last five years that you haven't bought back, you want to consider buying it back if you are in a position to, just because it could both either move up your retirement, it may not always move up your retirement date, but it will certainly increase the amount of money that you will receive on pension. So it's definitely worthwhile.

You also want to look at transfers. So that's if you were contributing to another Canadian registered pension plan, let's say... Maybe teaching is your second career.

Maybe you were, you know, contributing to HOOP or another pension plan. Or actually, maybe you were teaching in another province and you contributed to another province's pension plan. We tend to have reciprocal transfer agreements with most of the teaching pension plans in the other provinces.

So. You want to consider transporting your service from that pension plan over to us and ultimately consolidate the two because again, just like a buyback, it could move up your retirement date and definitely improve your pension amount. For transfers though, I will caution that it is a quite lengthy process.

It can take up to two years. So it's definitely not something that you want to leave till the last minute. You definitely want to get that started as soon as possible. Because sometimes it could even take longer than two years. So if it is something that you are interested in doing, make sure to start that process right away.

You'll also want to look at different medical coverage that's being offered to pensioners that we don't offer medical coverage, but we can definitely give you the name of a couple of insurance companies that are used by retired members or retired teachers, namely OTIP, which is Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan, and Johnson Insurance. So I'm just going to turn off my heater. It's getting a little warm.

All right. And we'll also look at some important choices for your survivor benefits in the coming slides. Now, I also want to let you know of a recent, well, fairly recent plan amendment.

It's been a couple of years now, but you do now have the option to complete what's called a reduced workload buyback. If you. One, on a reduced workload for reasons due to either child care or disability.

So whether because you were taking care of your kids, you went from being 100% teacher down to 50%. Or if for reasons of, you know, taking care of your own personal health, then we want to let you know that you may have the option to do that. If you don't mind, Sonia, I'm going to ask that you put in the member FAQ link in the chat. That's where you'll be able to find more information regarding the eligibility criteria. As well as the application to apply for the reduced workload buyback.

It is all done online. Again, there is a deadline. You only have five years from the end of your leave to complete the reduced workload buyback. So you want to make sure that if you have that, you apply right away. All right.

Now, another thing that you definitely want to consider is how do survivor benefits tie into your pension? you know who's eligible i'm sure you've heard a lot about the 10-year pension guarantee but you may not know what it is so don't worry we'll discuss that we'll also review uh electing a survivor percentage for your eligible spouse and i also want to go over some additional benefits that the plan offers just to make sure that you're aware of them so first and foremost because this is a retirement presentation i just want to preface it by saying i'm only going to cover post-retirement death benefits. However, if you are curious to learn about pre-retirement death benefits, again, I strongly recommend that you visit our website and check out the section called Planning for Loved Ones.

You'll be able to view, you know, death benefits both for pre-retirement and post-retirement. So, Sonia, maybe if you can plug that in. Perfect. I think, oh, no, that's the FAQ.

So, I trust you to put that in there. Perfect. So, what is the survivor hierarchy? How does it work? So after retirement, in the event of your death, the first person who is automatically eligible for a survivor benefit would be your eligible spouse.

Next in line would be any eligible children. And, you know, actually, let me just go back and say for an eligible spouse would be anyone that or sorry, I shouldn't say anyone, but the person to whom you were either married to or in a common law relationship at the time that you received your first pension installment. Now, for married, it's pretty clear, but for common law spouse, I just want to make the specification that in the eyes of the Ontario Teachers'Pension Plan, we consider you to be in a common law relationship if you've cohabitated for at least three years, not one year like CRA, but for us, it is three years or less if you are the parents of a child.

So, It's whoever your eligible spouse would be the person that fits either one of these descriptions when you receive your first pension installment. Eligible children would be either under 18 or between 18 to 25, but enrolled in full-time school or disabled children. Now for disabled children, there is no age limit, but it's assuming that your child has a lifelong disability that keeps them from having gainful employment long-term.

And then if you do not have an eligible spouse or eligible children at the time of your death, then next in line would be your estate. So if there would be any benefit payable, it would then go to your estate. Okay, so let's have a look at the 10-year pension guarantee.

What is it exactly? So the 10-year pension guarantee is a type of insurance which ensures that you would receive at least 10 years worth that either yourself or your survivors would receive at least 10 years worth of pension payments at 100%. And this is from the time that you start collecting your pension. In terms of a cost, if you do not have an eligible spouse, that is if you start pension with the marital status of either separated, single, widowed, divorced, then there's no cost. It's automatically added to your file.

However, if you do have an eligible spouse, there is a nominal fee. It's only about 0.1% of your lifetime retirement pension. So this doesn't take into account the bridge benefits.

So it's only based on the lifetime pension that you'll receive from us. And just to give you an example in terms of... cost. Let's say if your gross annual pension is about $42,000 a year, 0.1% of that is only $42 a year. So we do want to highly encourage you to consider opting in for the 10-year pension guarantee because the benefit definitely outweighs the cost.

And you would elect this when you apply. So although this is a common question that we receive from members when they log into their pension calculator, they'll see that there's a set percentage already when they go in and the 10-year pension guarantee is elected and they'll see the reduction. So they think that they're paying for it now, but none of that actually kicks in until you retire.

So you're not paying for it now. It's only to show you how much it would be when you do retire. Okay, so let's take a look at what happens if you start collecting your pension, but you do not elect the 10-year pension guarantee.

So in this case, we have a member who started collecting their pension and did not elect the tenure guarantee. However, they passed away after collecting pension for six years. Now, because they elected the 60% survivor pension for their spouse at year six, the survivor spouse would receive a 60% survivor pension. And I do want to note as well that a survivor pension is also payable for your survivor's lifetime. So that gives you that extra peace of mind.

Now let's have a look at a scenario where the member did elect the 10-year pension guarantee. So same scenario, the member starts collecting their pension, unfortunately passes away at year six. But because they elected the 10-year pension guarantee, between year six to year 10, their eligible spouse receives 100% of the member's pension or the lifetime pension. And then once the 10-year period passes, it will go down to the percentage that the member had elected, which is 60%. And then the 60% gets paid for the remainder of the spouse's life.

So really with a 10-year pension guarantee, it means that we'll always pay 10 years worth of pension payments to your survivor, whether that's your children or your spouse or your estate. Okay, now other than the 10-year pension guarantee, another important decision that you need to make is around your survivor percentage. What percentage of your pension do you want to leave for your spouse?

Now, when you log in, you may notice that the default is 60%. And this is because there's a section of the Pension Benefit Act that prescribes a 60% survivor pension. You do have the option to leave for your spouse.

60% down to 50%. And the reason you may want to consider that is because it's free, there's no cost. However, as I mentioned in the previous slide, because there's a section of the Pension Benefit Act that prescribes a standard 60% survivor pension, if you do want to elect the 50%, which many people do, that's okay.

Just know that you and your spouse would need to sign a waiver form saying you understand that the standard survivor pension amount is 60%. But you choose to waive that section of the act only and it will bring it down to 50. So there's no way to entirely waive the survivor pension at this stage. So don't worry. It would just be waiving that section of the act and bringing it down to 50%.

Now, you also have the option of increasing it. So anything between 60 to 75% does have a cost. Of course, the higher the percentage, the higher the cost, just because it takes into account the higher pension that would be paid to your survivor. The great news is your trustee pension calculator will do all the math for you and will give you a great snapshot. So when you're looking at your scenario, whether it's in the projection or you created one, you'll notice that below reduction, for example, in this scenario, you'll see in the red box, it says 75% survivor pension.

It is hyperlinked. So if you click on it, it'll take you to this page, which... shows you a table of every single survivor percent option, the cost to you while you're alive, which is annual, and the corresponding survivor pension for your spouse. So it really puts it all for you in a snapshot, all in one place, which makes it easy for you to see. So again, I highly recommend that you go on to your pension calculator and create a scenario and make sure you check this to be able to help you in making your decision.

Now, One question that we'll receive often is, you know, can you advise me on what survivor percentage to pick for my spouse? Unfortunately, I mean, not unfortunately, but it's difficult for us to counsel you on that because it's a very personal decision, which is based on a lot of personal factors. But all we can really say to help you in making your decision is ask yourself these two questions.

One is, you know, is your spouse financially dependent on you? If the answer is yes, you may want to go with a higher percentage. If the answer is no, you may want to go with a lower percentage. Now, the other question, it's a little bit more somber to think about, but, you know, we have to think ahead. And that's who do you think is more likely or who is in better health and who is more likely to outlive the other?

If you think that there's a higher chance that your spouse will outlive you, maybe because they're younger than you or in better health than you, you know, you may want to consider a higher survivor percentage because there's a higher chance that they will be receiving it. Or... If you are in better health and you feel that you may, although of course we can never predict these things, if you feel that you may outlive your spouse, you may want to consider going with a lower survivor percentage. Because keep in mind, whatever percentage you select, if your spouse, because it is a form of insurance, if your spouse predeceases you, you continue to pay for it for as long as you're alive. It does not get reverted back to your pension.

So that's why it's an important decision. Okay. Now, as I mentioned, your spouse, when you receive your first pension installment is who is considered your eligible spouse. So even if let's say you were to separate or divorce after retirement, that does not automatically disentitle your eligible spouse. They're still entitled.

It's only if they choose to waive their rights to the survivor pension that they could be removed from your pension. However, it is a lengthy process. So just so you know, It's not automatic. It's not easy. So, you know, if you are in a situation where you're unsure about your marital status, you definitely want to solidify that before you start collecting your pension because they're big ramifications.

If they're, yeah, I think that explains that. Same goes if you started your pension without an eligible spouse, you know, either you were single, separated, and you enter into a new marriage after retirement. Just so you know, that new spouse is not automatically entitled to a survivor benefit. They're not considered your eligible spouse.

It's only if you chose to take a reduction to your pension to provide a survivor pension for that spouse that they would become your eligible survivor. But they would not trump your eligible children because in this case, if you enter into a marriage after retirement, we would first look at if you have any dependent or disabled children. If not, then the new spouse would come into play.

But if you did have eligible children, then they would come first. Okay. And I should also mention that after retirement, even the 50% survivor option has a cost.

It is not free. It's only before retirement. So if you're kind of in limbo or if you're in a common law relationship, but you haven't quite reached that three-year cohabitation requirement and you don't have children together.

but you do want them to be your eligible spouse, you may want to consider getting married before starting your pension or vice versa. You know, if you're considering going through a separation, you may want to make a decision before starting your pension if you feel that it's not going to work out so that they are not your eligible survivor, just because removing an eligible survivor from your pension after retirement is a bit of a process. Okay, now I want to discuss or go over with you guys some additional benefits that we do offer.

And for these, although, you know, everything else is available on our website, and we highly urge you and recommend you to visit the website to self-serve. If any of these scenarios that I will go over apply to you, this is where we definitely want to hear from you. Please give us a call so we can give you that extra support.

So first is in the case of a disability. So let's say if you are considering retiring due to disability, whether you think you may qualify for a full or partial disability pension, definitely give us a call and we can go over your options with you. So in order to qualify for a partial disability pension is if you became disabled while working in education and you are no longer able to work in education, however you are able to work outside of education.

you may qualify for a partial disability pension versus a full disability pension is if you became disabled while working in education and you're no longer able to work neither in education or any other field. So you may qualify for a full disability pension in that case. And the benefit would be that if you have not reached your 85 factor, there may not be any kind of early retirement reduction, mostly in the case of a full disability pension. So If this applies to you, please give us a call and we'll definitely be able to support you through that process. The next one that I want to make you guys aware of is in the event of a shortened life expectancy.

So this will be in the event that you are facing a critical illness and you've been advised by a physician that you have a shortened life expectancy of less than two years. Please give us a call and we'll walk. you through your options, you may have the option to cash out your pension. So again, we highly recommend that you give us a call in this situation. And last but not least, if you have any dependent children or children with disabilities, we want to let you know that we are able to do what's called a preliminary determination of your child's eligibility to a disabled child survivor pension.

So this is not so much for dependent children, because with dependent children, or only dependent children, I should say, As I mentioned earlier, dependent children are those who are under 18 or between 18 to 25, but enrolled in full time school. So for that, really, it all depends on their age at the time of your death. So there's really no preliminary determination to be done or no need to add your children. We would check at the time of your death.

This only applies in the event that you have. an adult disabled child or even a dependent or under 25 disabled child. We just want to let you know that we are able to do that preliminary determination and it could impact your decision of selecting a survivor percentage because whatever percentage you elect for an eligible spouse would be the same percentage that your child would be eligible to if you did have a disabled child.

Make sure you give us a call if any of these three scenarios apply to you. Okay, now again, most of the information that we've covered throughout this presentation is online, and I've definitely stressed the importance of why you want access to your account. As you've seen, you have access to the pension calculator, and you'll also need your online account to apply for your pension.

So this brings us to... the actual retirement process. So it's the home stretch, guys. We're almost there.

So let's have a look at how to apply for your pension. So there's two important steps that you'll need to take once you are ready to retire, but it doesn't matter in what order, just as long as they both get done. So one is you want to make sure to apply for your pension online.

So 100% of our applications are done online. You do have the option to submit your pension application as early as four months in advance. You don't have to do it that early, but it is recommended just to make sure that there's no delays with your first pension payments.

And of course, if you want to start, you know, if you want to apply as early as you can, like four months in advance, but you're not ready to alert your board yet, don't worry. You can start the process with us and we will not notify your board. We only check with them. closer to the retirement date. So if you wanted to go ahead and get the process started on our end, you absolutely can and have that peace of mind.

And again, make sure that you apply because we've had situations in the past where a member has retired from the board and they didn't realize that they had to apply for their pension and they were expecting to receive pension payments and then they call us because they didn't and we noticed that they didn't apply. So in some cases, they've lost a few months of pension payment. So you would definitely want to avoid that from happening. And then the second step is you want to make sure to submit a resignation letter to your board before your retirement date. So again, we don't really oversee that part of it.

So we don't tell you how much notice to give your board. That's between you and your board. But typically, they will make their expectations known.

As long as you do it before the retirement date, that's all that matters to us. And in the event that you are on the arm. long-term income protection, you'll also want to notify your insurance company as well. Okay, so there's several places online where you're able to submit your pension application, but one of the easiest places to locate it is under the heading Preparing to Retire.

You'll see the box pension application. You just click on apply now and get started with the process. Now, one thing I want to point out to you guys is you definitely want to make sure that you check out your pension calculator before submitting your pension application. Because once you submit your pension application, your pension calculator becomes deactivated.

So you lose access to it. You no longer have it. So if you are wanting to refer back to it, make sure that you check your pension calculator first.

print out scenarios if you want because once you apply you will no longer have access to it but of course don't worry because once you apply we'll also send you confirmation of what your pension amount will be but if you just want that peace of mind for yourself make sure you print it in advance okay all right now in addition to your pension application and your resignation letter you do have to submit your personal documents to us So those would be proof of birth for both yourself and your spouse. So either a copy of your birth certificate or of your Canadian passport or of your Ontario driver's license. So we only need one of each for yourself and your spouse. And then we also need verification of your marital status. So if you're married, we would require a copy of your marriage certificate.

Or if you are in a common law relationship and you have met the cohabitation three-year requirement or you're a parent of a child, then we do have a form available on our website, which is called the Statutory Declaration of Common Law Relationship. And if you don't mind, Sonia, I'm going to ask that you put the link to the tools and resources page where they can access these forms. And then... If you are divorced, we would require a copy of your divorce certificate or separation agreement.

Now, keep in mind, if you'll be sending us a copy... copy of your separation agreement as proof of separation. We require the entire document, so every single page, not just the page that refers to your separation date, because we need to make sure or we need to double check if there's any mention of the pension in the separation document.

If you are just in the initial stages of a separation and you do not yet have any kind of legal document. Then we do have a form available on that same link that Sonia provided, which is called a statutory declaration of separation. And as we've discussed and we've seen earlier, you know, your marital status at the time that you collect your first pension installment is really important because it locks in your eligible survivor afterwards.

So we do need to ensure that we have the proper documentation on file. And what's great is, again, your personalized secure online account allows you to upload them through your document center. And not just that, but when you log into your document center, you have a personalized checklist, which tells you, it shows you either an X or a check mark beside the outstanding documents.

The only thing I want to point out is if you have not yet applied for your pension and you plan to opt for the 50% survivor pension, survivor option, and let's say you've already submitted your waiver form that's been signed by you and your spouse, it may still have an X next to it and show that it's still outstanding. And that's just because you're only able to submit the waiver form up to one year before you retire. And if you haven't applied for your pension yet, we're not able to predict when that one year window is. So it will still show as outstanding.

But once you apply for your pension, you'll notice that that X will change to a checkmark. So again, You know, all the more reason to access and get familiar with your online account now just because you'll be doing most of what you need online. And you'll also have access to your service record, which will help you view all of the historical credit you've accumulated throughout your career. And you'll be able to reference it and make sure that everything looks right.

All right. Now, once you're retired, just a few things for you to know is your pension is deposit monthly. It's always deposited on the last business day of the month. So it's not always going to be the same day, but it's the last business day.

And when you log into your online accounts and you go to the section called pension payments, not only will you see a breakdown of your monthly pension, just because we don't send a month. We don't send a monthly deposit advice. It's only sent.

or actually made available online if there's a change to your pension. However, if you're curious, you could always view it by logging into your account online. And it also shows the deposit dates in your online account. So again, what doesn't your online account show you? Now, every January, your pension will be adjusted for inflation.

Another thing I want you guys to be aware of, because this is something that can cause a bit of confusion among members, is the first January after retirement, you do not receive 100 percent inflation or it's very unlikely that you receive 100 percent inflation. And the reason for that is you you only receive inflation. Inflation is based on the number of months that you received your pension the previous year.

So if, for example, you retire in June and you start collecting your pension in July, the following January, the inflation will be prorated based on the number of months that you collected your pension the previous year. So because you would have only received half of your worth of pension payments, you will also only receive a half of the inflation increase. So that only applies to the first January after you retire.

But the following January, you'll receive the full inflation increase because the previous year, you would have been collecting pension 100% of the time, right? I hope that makes sense. Because I know that there were a couple of years where we had a higher inflation increase. And you know, it was announced in November. And in December, people were rushing to retire, thinking that they would collect all that inflation as of January, only to find out that it doesn't apply to them because they didn't actually receive any pension payments that year.

So So If that's something that's on your mind regarding when to make your pension decision, just know that you're likely not going to receive the full inflation increase the first January after you start your pension. All right. Perfect. All right.

So I think I skipped a slide here. All right, so, you know, life doesn't end at retirement. Neither does your membership in the plan. You've earned a lifetime of pension benefits and now is the time to enjoy them.

So if you have any questions about your Ontario teacher's pension income, I hope that this retirement presentation has done a good job in answering most, if not all of your questions. But again, I highly recommend if there is still any confusion. Make sure that you check out our website. We've really created some excellent tools and resources available for you to answer all of your questions, to go over a lot of possible scenarios, both for reemployment or, you know, when to collect my bridge benefit. We've really made sure to cater in a way where it's very easy to navigate for you.

So we highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the website. I promise you'll be able to find most, if not all of your answers on there. Of course, again, remember that if you're in one of those unique situations, that's when we definitely want to invite you to give us a call so that we can give you that extra support.

But otherwise, all of the information is available to you online and you can join our Facebook group. OK, well, that brings us to the end of our presentation. I just want to leave you with these last words, which is, you know, our mission continues to be to deliver outstanding service and retirement security for our members.

We're proud to receive a top ranking in a global comparison of pension plans by a company called CEM Benchmarking. But of course, we always strive to do better for our members to continue to show innovation and to meet your needs in the future. That being said, this is where I will ask if you could be so kind to just take a couple of minutes to put the camera of your phone up to the QR code, which will take you to a very short survey. where you could give some feedback regarding this presentation. Let us know what you think, if there's anything different that you would have liked to learn about, what we did well, anything at all.

Any feedback is truly welcome and appreciated. So thank you. And for those of you that have to leave us, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to join us tonight, and I hope that you found this session to be informative.

uh sonia and i will stick around for the longer q a session but for those of you that have to leave feel free to uh sign off and i just want to say a big congratulations to you guys and all the best in your retirement planning and i'll pass it to sonia yeah thank you for that section miriam that was lovely and we do see all the thank yous and so if you have to go thank you again for for joining we are going to hop into the q a just about the section and then just some stuff that we didn't get to in the other sections. So some really good stuff, some good conversation in the chat. I did get a couple questions about buyback, so I'm going to revisit it.

So someone who asked if I was on an unpaid sick leave, can I buy back my pension? So long as you are on an unpaid employer approved leave, you will have the opportunity to buy back that. pension. Okay. If you have a chance, look into your online buyback center, see what opportunities are there.

And the expiry date for a buyback is you have to pay for it five years from the end of the leave. Okay. Now, on to the actual topic of this section, we did get a question about if I'm separated at the time.

after inception. Let's say you're married when you start your pension and then you separate after you've already received your first pension payment. What happens and who is eligible?

Miriam, did you want to touch on that? Yeah, absolutely. So sorry, I'm having a little bit of a break. So married at the time that you start your pension and then separated afterwards, correct?

Perfect. Like we discussed, that person is still considered your eligible survivor. It's only, there is a process to have that person removed, but you would need their consent.

They would have to agree to waive their rights to the survivor pension to be removed as your eligible survivor. So I don't want to get too much into the details of how that happens. But you do have that option, but it's more complicated.

Exactly. Just as long as the point being the spouse at retirement remains the eligible spouse. If there's a workaround.

we do encourage you to go online there is a workaround there okay um a lot of questions about well what happens if i have no spouse no child um and that was coming around the time that we were discussing survivor benefits so when we were going through or when mariam was going through the different survivor percentages so anywhere from 50 to 75 percent that was only their um for people that have eligible spouses at the time of retirement because you're opting for a survivor percentage. If you start your pension with no spouse, meaning you're either single, you're separated, divorced or widowed, you do not have to opt in for this, which means you are automatically covered by the 10-year pension guarantee. If you have eligible children, they would have to be eligible at the time of your passing to receive any sort of survivor benefit.

So that's kids between the age of zero. to 18 children from 19 to 25 in full-time school and adult disabled dependent children any sort of residual in the case in which you have no survivors would be paid to your estate anything to add to that mariam sounds right okay um i also saw a bunch of questions about beneficiaries for the sake of this presentation i'm going to clarify there are no beneficiaries post retirement. If you do want to discuss beneficiaries, that's pre-retirement. I would suggest you either go on the website or we have some really good being a member webinars just about what that means. So I just wanted to sort of nip that in the bud because I did see a little bit about here and I didn't want any confusion.

I saw a really good question actually about inflation and I'm going to pass it over to you. And so we're talking about conditional inflation for the different school years, years of credit. And so there was a little bit of confusion in the chat.

So, Miriam, if you'd like to maybe elaborate on what that conditional inflation really means and then what we've paid out in the last decade. Absolutely. Sure.

That's a great question. So, yeah, you're the service that you've or sorry, the credit that you've accumulated in the plan is separated into three tiers. So there is pre the service that you've contributed pre 2009 and then credit that you've contributed between.

2010 to 2013 and then post 2013 onwards. In the past, the tiers were, inflation was applied differently to each tier. So the pre-2009 credit received 100% inflation and for the other two tiers, it was conditional inflation. Now, thankfully, because the funds, the plant, sorry, the plant's funding status is doing really well and we have had a surplus for several years.

A few years ago, I believe it was in 2018, the plant sponsors made a decision to apply a boost to inflation, which basically brought up the conditional inflation to 100% for all three tiers. And because we've been so successful since then, every single year we've been receiving 100% inflation on all three tiers. Now there is a chance that in the future, the two tiers, you know, 2010 and later, go back to conditional inflation. It's really hard to predict, but again, I wouldn't worry just because we've been doing so well.

Everything at this point is getting inflation at 100 percent, so I wouldn't worry about it. Thank you. OK, that being said, I'm going to answer one more question about this section and then we'll hop back into some of the questions.

I see, Tara, your question. We're going to touch it, I promise. A couple of people were talking about proof of marital status. Some people were saying, well, I divorced years ago. um what do i do then um the answer is we still do require proof so we need to know and we need to verify what your marital status was at the time of your first pension payment so even though you might have gotten separated or divorced years ago we still require proof of what your marital status is at the time of your first pension payment in which case you do still need to send in all the required documentation your proof of birth if eligible your spouse's proof of birth and proof of marital status whether that be married divorced or separated Okay, so let's revisit now the general Q&A things that we didn't talk about.

So let's revisit the supply teaching during your best five. So in this particular situation, I work 80% and I sometimes supply on my day off. I will be in my last five years, I'm assuming reaching your best five starting next year.

How does that change my earnings and the amount? So again, revisiting supply work. in your best five when you're already working on another contract?

Yeah, so basically, it's kind of two things to consider. The more you work, the more you're earning credit. So that's increasing your credit.

You know what, actually let me backtrack. Let's look at the pension formula. The pension formula is 2% times credit times the average of your best five-year salary.

So the two components that are being affected here if you're working in your last five years is A, you're increasing your credit amount if you're picking up those extra days of occasional work, but Although you're increasing the percent, sorry, the chunk of the pie of your best five years average salary, you don't want to risk lowering the pie, the value of the pie, right? The best five years average salary. So if potentially without the supply work, your best five years average salary is $100,000 with the supply work, if it ends up becoming $92,000, then although you have because you have more credit. You're able to have more of the pie, but the pie is smaller. Do you know, does that make sense?

I'm sorry, I'm just having the visual of the pie for some reason, but it's a bit of a trade-off. So that's where you can leverage the pension calculator and create the scenarios. You are able to add in the variables for whatever assumptions or whatever scenario you're looking at. So your full-time contract plus the occasional days, and it can help you in figuring out how that will affect your best five years average salary. But If you're only going to be doing a couple of days of supply work, obviously it's not going to have a significant impact.

It becomes more of a significant impact the more supply days that you work. Exactly. So I hope that's a little bit more clear.