Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Retirement and Pension Guide
The largest fire department in Florida, and the one I retired out of. You are in FRS Special Risk, which is the straightforward part. The part that will cost you real money is what happens to your health insurance the day after your last shift.
Ready to go? Here is the step by step process, every form by number and the deadlines ›
Researched and verified October 2026 from Florida Statutes, the Division of Retirement, actuarial valuations, city ordinances and enrolled legislation. Where sources disagree, that is said plainly rather than smoothed over.
- Plan: Florida Retirement System, Special Risk Class
- Size: 2,417 sworn, 3,110 total, 72 stations, serving unincorporated Miami-Dade plus 29 municipalities
- Union: IAFF Local 1403
- Normal retirement: Age 55, or 25 years at any age, or 25 years and age 52
- Multiplier: 3.00% per year of Special Risk service
- You contribute: 3% of salary. The County contributes 24.50%
Florida Retirement System, Special Risk Class
Normal retirement is age 55, not 60
If you were hired on or after July 1, 2011 and you believe you have to work until age 60, you are working off a rule that was repealed three years ago.
The 2011 pension law created a second Special Risk tier with normal retirement at age 60 or 30 years. Senate Bill 7024 in 2023, Chapter 2023-193, eliminated that tier effective July 1, 2023.
Florida Statute 121.021(29)(b) now applies to every Special Risk member regardless of hire date. Normal retirement is the earliest of age 55 with Special Risk service equal to your vesting requirement, 25 years of Special Risk service at any age, or 25 years and age 52 where up to four years of military service may count.
The only thing your hire date still changes is the vesting number feeding the age 55 option: 6 years if you enrolled before July 1, 2011, 8 years if on or after.
Be careful what you read. MyFRS's own publication "Understanding Your Benefits under the FRS Pension Plan," dated October 2022, still shows age 60 and 30 years, and parts of the MyFRS plan comparison pages contradict each other on this. The statute and the current Summary Plan Description are correct. If somebody tells you 60, ask them for the statute cite.
There is also a general service test: 30 years of any creditable service at any age if you enrolled before July 1, 2011, or 33 years if on or after.
The multiplier and your final pay
3.00% per year of Special Risk service for all service on or after January 1, 1993. Your benefit is average final compensation times 3% times years of Special Risk service.
| Enrolled | Average final compensation | Vesting |
|---|---|---|
| Before July 1, 2011 | Average of your 5 highest fiscal years | 6 years |
| On or after July 1, 2011 | Average of your 8 highest fiscal years | 8 years |
| FRS Investment Plan | Not applicable | 1 year |
Average final compensation includes payment for up to 500 hours of accumulated annual leave. It excludes sick leave payouts and bonuses.
A trap specific to Miami-Dade, and it is a big one. Your contract lets you accrue and cash out up to 750 hours of annual leave at separation. But Article 10.4(F) says plainly that only the statutory maximum of 500 hours is reported as covered wages to FRS. The other 250 hours is cash with no pension value.
And if you enter DROP, your annual leave payout is capped at 500 hours outright. Going into DROP means giving up that non pensionable 250 hour tier entirely. Whether that matters depends on your balance, and it is worth doing the arithmetic before you sign rather than after.
The sick leave side runs the other way and in your favor. The general County rule caps sick leave payout at 1,000 hours, but the contract carves out Special Risk: Special Risk employees who retire after 25 years of full time County service receive 100% payment with no hour maximum. That is one of the more valuable provisions in your contract and a lot of members do not know it is there.
What you pay, and what it actually costs
3% of salary, pre tax, unchanged since July 2011. DROP participants do not pay it. For context, your employer contributes 37.74% of your salary into Special Risk as of July 1, 2026. The full cost of the benefit is 40.74% of payroll.
DROP: three changes you may not know about
- Maximum participation went from 60 months to 96 months. Eight years, not five.
- The interest rate went from 1.3% to 4.00%, compounded monthly, for accumulations held on or after July 1, 2023. That applies to existing balances, not only to new entrants. If you entered DROP before June 30, 2023 you were earning 1.3%. You are now earning 4%.
- The twelve month election window is gone. You used to have to elect DROP within a year of reaching normal retirement or lose it. You can now enter at any time after reaching your normal retirement date.
As of September 1, 2026 your DROP begin date can be no sooner than the first day of the month after the Division of Retirement receives your application, and participation cannot be made retroactive. Plan the paperwork, not just the date.
New: a 1.5% COLA floor for Special Risk, effective July 1, 2026
The rule since 2011 has been harsh. If your retirement date is on or after August 1, 2011, your COLA is 3% times the fraction of your service earned before July 1, 2011 divided by total service. Service earned on or after July 1, 2011 earns no COLA at all. Someone hired in 2012 has been looking at zero percent for life.
House Bill 5205-E, Chapter 2026-235, establishes a minimum 1.5% annual COLA for eligible Special Risk retirees beginning July 1, 2026.
To qualify you must be a Special Risk member of the FRS Pension Plan with a retirement date on or after July 1, 2011, you must have been retired at least five years, and you must have 6 years of Special Risk service if enrolled before July 1, 2011 or 8 years if after. Members enrolled before July 2011 get the greater of 1.5% or the existing formula. Members enrolled after get a flat 1.5%.
This is the most meaningful improvement for post 2011 hires in fifteen years. It also means any retirement projection you ran before this summer is out of date.
Health Insurance Subsidy
Raised by SB 7024 effective July 1, 2023, for existing retirees as well as new ones: $7.50 per month per year of creditable service, with a minimum of $45 and a maximum of $225 per month. Thirty years reaches the cap. You must provide proof of health coverage, and payments are retroactive only six months, so apply promptly. The annual COLA does not apply to the subsidy.
Pension Plan or Investment Plan
You get one initial election, due by 4:00 p.m. on the last business day of the eighth month following your month of hire. If you do nothing, Special Risk defaults to the Pension Plan. Every other class defaults to the Investment Plan. That default exists because for a career firefighter the defined benefit is usually the stronger deal.
You also get one second election in your entire career, in either direction, and you must be actively employed and earning service credit to use it. Moving from Investment to Pension requires an actuarial buy in, and if your Investment Plan balance does not cover it you must pay the difference out of pocket within 60 days or the election is void. Once the effective month closes it is irrevocable.
How healthy is FRS
As of the July 1, 2025 valuation, 82.2% funded on an actuarial basis and 87.3% on market value, with $43.3 billion unfunded. The State Board of Administration projects full funding by about 2042. That is materially healthier than the local Chapter 175 plans in neighbouring cities.
The County pays nothing toward your retiree health insurance
This is the single most expensive fact in your retirement and it is stated plainly in the County's own 2025 Retiree Handbook: "The County no longer contributes the employer portion on your behalf." You pay the full premium.
Here is what that means in 2026 dollars, for a single retiree under 65, per month:
| Plan | Retiree only, under 65 |
|---|---|
| Aetna POS | $2,053.41 |
| Aetna High Option HMO | $919.91 |
| Aetna Select HMO | $837.38 |
| Aetna Jackson First HMO | $672.97 |
Now look at what the same retiree pays at 65 on Medicare. The Aetna HMO Local Medicare Advantage plan is $0.00 a month. The Medicare Supplement without Rx is $349.44.
That gap is the whole problem. A Special Risk member who goes at 25 years and age 50 is looking at roughly fifteen years of paying somewhere between $673 and $2,053 every month before that number collapses. Over fifteen years at the cheapest plan that is north of $120,000. Nobody hands you that number on your way out the door.
Two subsidies exist. They come from different places and most members only know about one.
1. The County's $200 a month Special Risk supplement
Article 28.11 of your contract provides that Special Risk employees with 25 or more years of service receive $200 per month as a retiree health insurance supplement, for up to ten years or until Medicare eligibility, whichever comes first. DROP time counts toward the 25 years.
You have to apply. The form goes to the Benefits Administration Unit and you must also have a health insurance application on file, either through the County or through the union plan. There are no survivor benefits if you die before the ten years run out.
Two inconsistencies worth knowing about. The County's own application form leaves the dollar amount blank, so the $200 figure comes from the contract, not the form. And the contract says the supplement runs until Medicare eligibility while the form says age 65. For most people those are the same day. For someone on disability-based Medicare they are not. Ask before you assume.
2. The union trust subsidy, which is larger
The Dade County Fire Fighters Insurance Trust Fund is a 501(c)(9) VEBA run by Local 1403. It held $158.1 million in assets as of its fiscal year ending April 2025, and it runs its own medical plan for both active members and retirees.
For 2026 the full retiree subsidy is $460 a month. You do not simply qualify for it, you earn into it:
- You must end employment with MDFR and meet the FRS definition of retiree, meaning 25 years of service or age 55
- You must have participated in the health plan for at least 10 years, which qualifies you for a minimum of 40% of the subsidy
- The subsidy then increases 4% per year, reaching full value at 25 years in the plan
Read that middle bullet again, because it has a consequence most people miss. Years in the plan, not years on the job. If you were on your spouse's insurance for the first twelve years of your career and only joined the Trust plan later, your subsidy is a fraction of what the guy beside you gets, even though you both worked the same twenty-five years. That is a decision you make in your thirties that pays or costs you in your fifties.
The Trust publishes annual dental and vision rates but not the monthly medical premium for the High or Low plan, so you cannot compute your net cost from public documents. Call the Trust at 305-593-6100 and press 2. Also note: opting out of the Trust plan is irreversible. Members cannot re-enroll.
You have to choose between two paths, and one of them is one way
At retirement you either stay with the County Retiree Group, paying the full unsubsidized premium with the $200 County supplement applied, or you go with the DCFF Trust plan and its graded subsidy of up to $460.
Two hard deadlines either way. County retiree coverage is not automatic. You must submit the election form and your first premium within 30 days of your retirement date, and once coverage is cancelled it cannot be reinstated. Budget about three months of premiums out of pocket, because your first pension check can take 60 days and the FRS premium deduction takes another 60 after that.
What I watched people get wrong
I spent almost twenty years at Miami-Dade, and I want to be careful about what I am saying here. There is nothing wrong with the pension. There is nothing wrong with DROP. Plenty of guys chose both and chose right, and I am not second guessing a single one of them.
What I watched people get wrong was doing it without ever looking. Picking the default, at twenty-two, when it did not feel like it mattered, and never going back to check whether it still fit the life they ended up with. A wife. Kids. A mortgage. Twenty years of things nobody could have predicted at the academy.
Nobody ever sat them down and explained that a pension pays you and then stops, while a DROP balance or a 457 balance is an asset their children would actually inherit. One is income. One is legacy. Both are legitimate, and they are not the same thing. A man ought to get to decide which one he is building. Most of us never knew we were deciding.
Same with the 457. Not that everybody should have maxed it out, but that almost nobody was ever shown what twenty-five years of maxing it out actually turns into, so they could weigh it against what else that money could have done.
And the overtime went nowhere. We all worked it. The difference between the guy who retires comfortable and the guy who retires worried is rarely how much overtime he worked. It is whether any of it ever made it past his checking account.
That is the whole thing. Not that anybody chose wrong. That almost nobody was given enough to choose from. Look at it before you sign, while you still have options, because most of these decisions only go one direction.
— Mark Buckley, retired Miami-Dade Fire Rescue
The $3,000 tax break nobody uses
The County's own retiree handbook mentions it and almost nobody acts on it. As a retired public safety officer you can withdraw up to $3,000 per year tax free from your 457 account to pay health insurance premiums. That is the HELPS provision, and given what you just read about premiums, it is money sitting on the table.
I wrote a full page on how it works here: the $3,000 health insurance exclusion.
Your 457(b), and a gap worth knowing about
Miami-Dade offers two deferred compensation providers, MissionSquare Retirement and Nationwide through the NACo plan. You can use both as long as your combined contributions stay inside the annual limit. For 2026 that is $24,500 base, plus $8,000 age 50 catch up, or $11,250 for the enhanced age 60 to 63 catch up, or $49,000 under the special three year pre retirement catch up, which cannot be combined with the age based ones.
New for 2026: if your prior year FICA wages exceeded $150,000, your age based catch up contributions must be Roth. That is a federal rule, not a County one.
The gap: the County publishes no fund lineup and no fee comparison between the two providers. Two providers and no published cost comparison means most members pick one at orientation and never look again. Call both and ask for the expense ratios and any recordkeeping or wrap fee in writing. Over a thirty year career the difference between the two can be tens of thousands of dollars, and it is the easiest money you will ever save.
Five things worth acting on
- Price your health insurance before you pick a retirement date. Between $673 and $2,053 a month, for roughly fifteen years, is the real number. Everything else in your plan is secondary to this.
- Find out how many years you have been in the DCFF Trust plan, not how many years you have on the job. That is what sets your subsidy, and it tops out at 25 years in the plan.
- If you have 25 years of Special Risk, apply for the $200 County supplement. It is not automatic and DROP time counts toward the 25.
- Do the leave math before you elect DROP. You can cash out 750 hours at separation but only 500 is pensionable, and entering DROP caps the payout at 500.
- Call both 457 providers and get the fees in writing. The County does not publish them and nobody is going to volunteer the comparison.
Questions to ask your plan, in writing
- What is my exact accrual rate for each period of my service?
- What is my projected average final compensation, and exactly which pay counts toward it?
- What is my normal retirement date under current law, and under what statute or ordinance?
- If I enter DROP, what interest rate applies to me specifically?
- What do I pay for health insurance the day after I retire, and what changes at 65?
- What happens to my spouse's income if I die first, and what does each survivor option cost me per month?
Ask in writing, and keep the answer. Several of the decisions on this page are permanent the moment you sign them.
Not every firefighter is in the same plan
Two of these four departments are in the state system and two are in local city plans. Same job, different rules about when you can go and who can change them.
- Florida Statutes Chapter 121, especially 121.021, 121.0515, 121.091 and 121.101
- Florida Statute 112.363, Retiree Health Insurance Subsidy
- FRS Pension Plan Summary Plan Description, as of July 1, 2026
- Senate Bill 7024 (2023), Chapter 2023-193
- House Bill 5205-E (2026), Chapter 2026-235
- Division of Retirement Information Releases 2026-240 and 2026-241
- FRS Actuarial Valuation Report, July 1, 2025
- myfrs.com and frs.fl.gov
- Collective Bargaining Agreement, Miami-Dade County and IAFF Local 1403, October 2023 to September 2026
- Miami-Dade County Retiree Handbook 2025, and 2026 retiree premium rate schedule
- Miami-Dade County Special Risk Retiree Health Insurance Supplement application
- DCFF 2026 Retiree Under 65 Booklet and 2026 Active Members Benefits booklet
- Dade County Fire Fighters Insurance Trust Fund, IRS filings, EIN 59-2185490
- Miami-Dade County Deferred Compensation plan materials
- Miami-Dade County INFORMS payroll FRS eligibility codes and Personnel and Payroll Reference, April 2026
I spent almost twenty years on the job before I did this
I am Mark Buckley, retired Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. I wrote Beyond The Firehouse because the same questions kept coming up in station kitchens and union halls and there was no plain language book that answered them for the fire service. If something here raised a question about your own situation, reach out. No cost, no pitch.
mark.buckley@prudential.com
305-608-2690