Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
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Updated August 19, 2026. Quick answer: Teachers Retirement System of Georgia (TRS Georgia) — the COLA is conditional, and whether it compounds is not stated, service credit can be purchased, and no DROP was found. Vesting takes 10 years of creditable service. The four decisions below are the ones that are hard to reverse.
Provisional. This page is published at medium confidence. The specific points that could not be confirmed are listed under What could not be verified below, and are named rather than smoothed over.
The verdicts
| Is the COLA granted? | Conditional |
|---|---|
| Is the COLA compounded? | Unstated |
| Vesting | 10 years of creditable service. ‘A member with at least 10 years of creditable service has a vested right to a benefit at age 60.’ |
| Buy service credit? | Yes |
| DROP? | None found |
| State | Georgia |
Those first two rows are separate questions and are routinely confused. Whether you get an increase at all is one thing; whether it compounds is another. A system can grant an increase automatically every year and still compute it against your original pension forever, which is a materially worse deal than it sounds.
The COLA
TRS Georgia’s own language: ‘Cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) are based on increases or decreases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and are not automatically granted.’ COLAs are tested twice a year (Jan 1 and July 1). ‘If the current average CPI is equal to or greater than the average CPI at the time you retired, you will receive a 1.5% COLA. If the current average CPI is less than the average CPI at the time you retired, you will not receive a COLA.’ This is a formula-driven mechanism requiring no separate legislative action each cycle, but the actual grant is conditional on the CPI test passing — treat as conditional/formulaic, not guaranteed every cycle, despite the enum classification. Flat 1.5% per successful semi-annual test (up to a theoretical 3%/year if both tests pass), with no adjustment in a cycle where the CPI test fails. No annual/cumulative cap was stated. Presented as the current rate as of the Member’s Guide in effect at read date; no historical year-by-year rate change was verified.
Buying service credit
Air Time; Maternity Leave; Military Service; Out of State Service; Private School Service; Public School Employees Retirement (PSERS) Credit; State of Georgia Employment; Study Leave; Visiting Scholar Credit; Withdrawn Accounts (redeposit); Workers’ Compensation Disability. (Sick leave credit is a separate, non-purchased award based on unused sick leave.)
What it costs. Not itemized per category on the pages reviewed. For withdrawn-account redeposit specifically: total amount originally withdrawn plus interest, with the interest rate increased by an additional 2% for each withdrawal beyond the third. General pricing basis for other categories was not stated in the pages retrieved.
Run your own numbers before deciding — some purchases never recover their cost, and the calculator shows which.
Taking a refund
A member who terminates TRS-covered employment may apply for a lump-sum refund of their own contributions plus interest. Not eligible for a refund after accepting other TRS-covered employment. Withdrawing contributions forfeits ALL service credit associated with the withdrawn years, and forfeits any accrued unused sick leave credit not yet established. Because the vested right to a future benefit depends on retaining 10+ years of un-withdrawn creditable service, a refund also forfeits the future monthly benefit for that service (member receives only own contributions + interest; employer contributions are not paid out). Retiree health insurance: TRS Georgia’s Member’s Guide does not explicitly address retiree health eligibility (administered separately by Georgia DCH/State Health Benefit Plan, not TRS) — whether/how a refund affects that is UNCONFIRMED from TRS’s own material. Yes. A member may repay (‘redeposit’) a withdrawn account to reinstate the forfeited service credit. Cost = amount originally withdrawn plus interest, with the interest rate increased by an additional 2% for each withdrawal beyond the third. Redeposit is available after the member completes a required period of renewed active TRS membership (a table of exact required years by number of prior withdrawals was referenced but not independently re-verified in this pass).
This is the irreversible one. Refund versus leaving it in sets out the decision in the order it should be made.
Ten years to vest, and an increase that is conditional.
TRS Georgia grants its COLA only where the conditions are met, and vesting takes ten years of creditable service, so leaving early forfeits more here than in most systems. Both belong in the decision rather than after it. The matching service below introduces you to advisers who pay to meet you.
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DROP
No DROP provision found. The TRS Georgia Member's Guide contains no reference to 'DROP' or 'Deferred Retirement Option' anywhere in its text. The TRS plans overview page describes only Plan A (maximum benefit, no survivor), Plan B (Options 1-4, reduced benefit with survivor payment), and a Partial Lump-Sum Option Plan (PLOP — a lump-sum-for-reduced-annuity option, not a DROP). No DROP-related forms exist in the site's Forms directory. N/A — no DROP program identified N/A — no DROP program identified
This is an absence-of-evidence finding: it means a DROP does not appear in the materials reviewed, not that the system has published a denial. DROP is rarer than it appears — of the twelve systems checked for this guide, only one has an active programme.
Survivor options
Plan A: maximum monthly benefit to the member only, no ongoing survivor annuity (remaining member contributions refunded to a beneficiary if the member dies before the account is depleted). Plan B (reduced benefit, survivor payment) offers four options: Option 1 — reduced benefit, no monthly survivor benefit (possible lump-sum refund of remaining contributions only); Option 2 — reduced benefit, survivor receives 100% of the member's benefit for life; Option 3 — reduced benefit, survivor receives 50% for life; Option 4 — reduced benefit, member designates a custom dollar amount or percentage. A Partial Lump-Sum Option Plan (PLOP) also exists, combinable with Plan A or B. Generally irrevocable once retirement is effective: TRS's own language is that a member 'cannot change your plan of retirement except under limited conditions' — specifically the beneficiary/spouse's death, divorce from the named spouse-beneficiary, the beneficiary predeceasing the member, or the member re-retiring. Outside those exceptions, the election is locked in.
What could not be verified
All facts sourced exclusively from trsga.com, primarily the current online Member's Guide. O.C.G.A. statute text (Title 47, Ch. 3) was NOT independently accessed. Two areas explicitly UNCONFIRMED: (1) refund's effect on retiree health insurance eligibility (administered by a separate agency); (2) exact numeric survivor-benefit reduction factors and reemployment/earnings-limit rules. DROP confirmed absent with reasonably high confidence (zero mentions in the comprehensive Member's Guide and full forms directory) but no single explicit TRS denial statement was found. COLA classification: TRS's own guide says COLAs 'are not automatically granted' (conditional on a CPI test) — a reader-facing article should describe it as conditional/formula-driven, not guaranteed.
These gaps are stated because a plan-rule page that hides its own limits is worse than no page. Your member handbook is the authority, and where it and this page disagree, the handbook wins.
Sources
- https://www.trsga.com/
- https://www.trsga.com/active-member/service-credit-accrual-purchase/
- https://www.trsga.com/about-us/trs-plans/
- https://www.trsga.com/publications/members-guide/
- https://www.trsga.com/forms/refunds/
- https://www.trsga.com/forms/working-after-retirement/
- https://www.trsga.com/forms/
Read 2026-08-04.
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Related: buyback calculator · is buying service credit worth it · refund or leave it in · DROP explained.
General information drawn from IRS, Medicare, HUD and state statute and regulation, not legal, tax or financial advice. Continuing-care law is state law and differs materially between states; every figure here is year-labelled and every source named. Powers of attorney, guardianship and trusts are governed by STATE law and differ change, and interest rates published by the IRS change every month - never rely on a rate quoted on any page, including this one. We are not a law firm or a tax adviser, and this is not legal or tax advice.