The Wyoming Retirement System (WRS) pension is an impressive retirement plan, offering guaranteed income to thousands of Wyoming employees across hundreds of employers. 

Among its many features, a cost of living adjustment, or COLA, is available at varying amounts. This feature helps your benefit keep pace with inflation, but it reduces your payment initially. When does opting for COLA make sense, at what levels, and what is the financial impact?

The WRS Public Employee Pension Plan serves more than 450 employers across the state “including state agencies, school districts, counties, cities and towns and other government organizations.” By Wyoming standards, it’s a big pension.

I’ve had the pleasure of helping several employees navigate some of the ins and outs of this pension plan, so it felt timely to do an overview of how the plan works, giving detailed focus to the benefit areas that have carried the most importance for my clients. The complete WRS pension handbook can be found at retirement.wyo.gov in the “Pension Handbooks” subsection under “Members.”