The Police Tax

We can retire at 20 years of service at 50% regardless of age, which means you could retire at age 41 if you came on at age 21 like I did. It used to be 20 years of service with a minimum of age 46, but we got that changed in Frankfort about 5 years ago. After year 20 it goes up 2.5% per additional year of service to 40 years of service at 100%. Most people retire in the 25- 30 year range.

As for health insurance, each of us receives a $520 monthly benefit that goes towards our plan. We have three Humana plans to pick from, plus any additional things we want like dental, additional life insurance, etc. The monthly benfit is enough to completely cover a single person. For family coverage the difference is about $160 a month out of my pocket. However, if you had a spouse that worked with a health insurance benefit, you could get on her plan and then dump all of your LFUCG monthly benefit money into a 457 or 401K. A lot of guys do this.

It's kind of a hard choice: Do you want a higher salary or do you want a better health insurance benefit? We have better salary. You have better health insurance. I don't think there's any way that each of us could have both.

-Lexcop01