HI. my husband worked for the railroad he is retired now. I have 1 1/2 years till I can retire at 65 . At 62 the social security told me I could retire then with 900 ish maybe a little more I decide not to because I can get my husbands , I can get half of what he makes. which by the time I retire will be around 1300-1400 a month. I also have Texas teachers retirement thing. which I have around 14000 is all in the program.so is the money I made as a nurse or the money I have in Texas state teachers retirement is this thrown away.

Hi,

I'm not an expert with regard to either Railroad Retirement (RR) benefits nor the Texas Teacher's Retirement System (TRS), so I can't fully answer your question. Nor do I have enough details about your situation to be able to offer you much advice. What I can tell you is that if the wages on which your TRS pension is based were exempt from Social Security taxes, if and when you start receiving the TRS pension it would likely have an adverse impact on both your potential Social Security (SS) retirement benefit rate and your spousal pension from the RR.

If and when you file for SS benefits, you would only be able to receive the higher of a) your Tier 1 RR rate or b) your SS benefit rate, plus any Tier 2 RR benefits to which you may be entitled. And, if you also receive a pension from TRS based on wages that were exempt from SS taxes, your SS rate would likely be calculated using a less generous calculation formula as specified in the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). However, the WEP provision never results in a full offset of SS benefits, just a lower benefit rate (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf).

As for the potential effect that the receipt of a TRS pension would have on your RR spousal pension, I believe that they have a provision similar to the SS Government Pension Offset provision which could result in your RR pension being offset by 2/3rds of the amount of your TRS pension (https://www.rrb.gov/NewsRoom/NewsReleases/PublicServicePensionsandSpouse...). As I said, though, I'm not an expert on the RR retirement program so you'll need to check with the Railroad Board to be sure.

Best, Jerry