The FDNY Pension Book

Since December 2025, Albany has raised the Tier 3 pension at twenty years to fifty percent, moved full escalation from twenty-five years to twenty-three, and added a new pension raise at twenty-five years. The newest Tier 3 booklet in circulation was revised in July 2022, before all three. This is the edition written after them, with every number traced to the law or the Fund document it came from.

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Quick Answer

When does an FDNY Tier 3 firefighter get full escalation?

At twenty-three years of credited service. Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026, Part ZZ, signed May 26, 2026 and effective immediately, added section 510(b)(2-a) to the Retirement and Social Security Law, setting the full escalation date for uniformed FDNY members at twenty-three years; police stay at twenty-five. Escalation is reduced by one thirty-sixth for each month payments begin before that date, so a member who retires and starts collecting at exactly twenty years gets none, at twenty-one about a third, and at twenty-two about two thirds. The July 2022 Tier 3 booklet still says twenty-five. This is educational information, not personalized investment, legal, or tax advice; only the Fire Pension Fund can confirm how any rule applies to your own record.

What's inside

The rules, and where each one comes from

What changed, and when

Fifty percent at twenty for Tier 3, escalation at twenty-three, the new twenty-five-year raise, and the World Trade Center deadline that moved to 2030. What each law did, and what it did not.

Your tier, in plain words

Tier 2 against Tier 3, what final average salary counts (overtime included), the December check and the banked lump sum, escalation, and the Social Security reduction at sixty-two.

The five decisions

When to go, disability or service, the deferred compensation plan, the survivor election, and leaving before twenty. The rules laid out, with no recommendation attached to any of them.

Seventy-two worked cases. Both tiers, every year of the twenty-to-twenty-three escalation window, and six salary bands, as tables you scan for the row closest to your own situation. Every figure computed by the same engine behind our free FDNY calculator, not typed by hand.
A source for every number. Each figure carries a tag pointing to an appendix entry that names the statute, session law or Fund document behind it, and the date it was last checked against that source.
The things other guides get wrong. There is no FDNY DROP you elect into; the banked supplement is automatic. Overtime does count toward an FDNY pension. And the thirty-day survivor-option deadline in the Tier 3 Enhanced booklet runs from your retirement date, not from when you learn the costs, which is the police rule.

Cover of The FDNY Pension Book, 2027 Edition

Free. We will send the book and occasional planning notes for FDNY members. Unsubscribe any time. Sirmium Capital LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser; this book is educational information and not personalized investment, legal, or tax advice.

Why this one is different

Pension rules change in Albany and the booklets do not. The newest FDNY Tier 3 booklet was revised in July 2022. Since then the Legislature has raised the Tier 3 pension at twenty, moved full escalation to twenty-three years, and added a raise for members with a quarter-century on the job. No new booklet has followed.

So this book was built the other way round. Every regulated figure in it is checked against a registry of primary sources — statute text, the session laws that changed it, the Fire Pension Fund's plan documents and audited financial statements, and the Administrative Code — before the file can be produced at all, and the check runs again every time anything changes. The appendix prints what each number rests on so you can go and read it yourself.

That is the whole promise. Not that we are cleverer about your pension than you are, but that you should not have to take anyone's word for the rules, including ours.

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