She did after-school work during her last 3 years to artificially raise her salary. Not only is the pension free of state tax, it is also free of payroll tax.

She did after-school work during her last 3 years to artificially raise her salary. Not only is the pension free of state tax, it is also free of payroll tax. So, at 55 she retired with an after tax pension that was quite literally equal to her after tax salary. When you factor in commuting costs, she was paid to retire early. The whole point here for me is the guaranteed nature of this employment. It's incredibly hard to be fired. If teaching children is such a valuable societal tool, we shouldn't be restricting the number of teachers to x and their salary to y. We should encourage 1000x people to be teachers and pay them 0.03y