<prompt> Human: I just found out that my wife who has little financial knowledge was automatically selected to a defined benefit pension through her states retirement system. As far as my understanding goes, this means she contributes 10 of her income, with the extra benefits of health insurance and an employer contribution when she retires. If you pull out anytime early, however, you lose most if not all of the employer contribution. Also, we are not allowed to choose our own investment options so we will likely only get up to 4-6 interest on her money. This is pretty bad for us, considering we do not plan to stay in this state Ohio for more than a couple of years.This is the only plan of the three Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution, Combined that does not allow you to switch to another option by your 5th year of teaching.Because there is no way of switching to another plan, I asked if there was a way for us to opt out of the pension because the interest is so low and we are theoretically getting no employer contribution, and they said that is not an option.Does anyone have any idea of what I could do, or are we stuck with putting away 10 of her income in this crappy plan until we reset in another state?  <response>: Its not a bad plan. You are making the mistake of comparing your plan to a stock portfolio where the outcome is not guaranteed. If you compared this plan to an inflation adjusted annuity from an insurance company youd see that you are getting a good deal. The added advantage is that if the pensions investments fail, it should theoretically be made whole by the taxpayers of Ohio.If your wife is vested, then she will receive the pension when she retires and receive payments for the rest of her life. Your wife can either choose to retire at the minimum age if she wants to minimize the amount she has in the pension plan or the maximum age if she wants to maximize her amount of guaranteed income. She does not have to work until her retirement age to retire in the eyes of her pension.If she cant vest before she leaves, then you can opt out. In my opinion, you should try to get her pension to vest before you leave the state if its not a huge inconvenience. Its a very good thing for your stock portfolio. If you have cash flows from her pension and social security that pay necessities for your whole life, it means that your retirement portfolio running out isnt a disaster. That allows you to take greater risks in the retirement portfolio and draw down more aggressively throughout your retirement. 