State Employee Pay Raise

I am planning to retire 01/07/2019. My question is... IF we were to receive the much talked about raise in January of 2020 would that action have any impact on my retirement/backdrop?

No, if you retired before a pay raise was given to active employees, any such increase would have no impact on you as a retiree. 

If you continued working beyond January 2020, got a pay raise, and did not take BackDROP, the impact of a pay increase on your monthly retirement benefit payment would be dependent upon how long you continue working. 

Remember, in calculating your monthly benefit, one factor is your Final Average Pay, which is your highest 36 consecutive months of pay. So, if you got a raise and worked a few months past 2020, the impact may be very small. If you got a raise and worked an additional 36 months, the impact would be bigger. 

Any pay earned during your BackDROP period has no impact on either your monthly benefit amount or your BackDROP lump-sum amount. 

But keep in mind that, by law, MOSERS retirees receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) between 0-5%. You can find more information about the retiree COLAs on our website. 

You can run benefit estimates under a variety of scenarios by logging in to your MOSERS Member Homepage, or ask a MOSERS benefit counselor to run them for you. You may find our Creating a Benefit Estimate video and our Comparison Calculator helpful in weighing your options.