If you were previously a CalPERS member, left CalPERS-covered employment, and took a refund of your pension contributions and interest, you may be eligible to redeposit these funds and restore those years of service credit.
Redepositing contributions and service credit to your account is easy through myCalPERS. Here’s what you need to know to make your service credit request go as smoothly as possible.
Your Redeposit Eligibility
There are four main groups who are eligible to redeposit withdrawn service credit:
- Active CalPERS members.
- Inactive CalPERS members who still have service credit on their accounts.
- Members whose former spouses or domestic partners took a portion of their account as part of a community property settlement.
- Members of reciprocal retirement systems, or retirement systems that coordinate with CalPERS to ensure you get the retirement benefits you need. (Learn more about reciprocity.)
However, there are some restrictions on eligibility. If you’ve already received credit or funds for your service credit with another retirement system, have retired, or your current employment isn’t covered by CalPERS or a reciprocal system, you cannot redeposit your service credit.
Planning Your Redeposit Elections
If you qualify for service credit redeposit, you should plan how and when to redeposit it. This depends on how you initially withdrew your service credit.
If you made one withdrawal, you’ll need to redeposit all your service credit in one redeposit election. If you made multiple withdrawals, you can choose to do one or multiple redeposit elections.
Should you choose to redeposit your service credit in multiple elections, you must redeposit your service credit beginning with the most recent withdrawal and ending with the oldest.
Cost of Redeposit
The amount of your service credit redeposit will be the cost of your withdrawal plus interest, compounded annually through the end of the current pay period. You can estimate the approximate cost by logging in to myCalPERS to get an estimate.
For more information on the different service credit options available to you, visit our Service Credit page or access our Service Credit Purchase webcast.