Retirement planning in Nashville, TCRS pensions included.
Whatever your employer, Robert Boeck builds your plan around Social Security, the order you draw your accounts and Roth conversions, by Zoom from Chattanooga. If you teach or work for the state, your TCRS payout option and claiming age have to fit that plan too.
What does it cost to retire in Nashville?
The local costs are Metro’s property tax and the sales tax on what you buy. Inside the Urban Services District, Metro set its 2025 property tax rate at $2.814 per $100 of assessed value, and Metro taxes 25% of a home’s appraised value: a home appraised at $414,000, near the city’s median of $413,600, pays about $2,910 a year. Purchases carry 9.25% sales tax, 7% for the state and 2.25% for Davidson County. Groceries carry 6.25% until November 1, 2026, when the county’s rate on food drops to 1.75%, for 5.75%.
Davidson County has adopted the property tax freeze for homeowners 65 or older, under a 2026 income limit of $63,470, so a homeowner who qualifies and applies keeps Metro’s tax at the amount for that first year.
Davidson County had 79,270 people drawing Social Security retirement benefits in December 2025, and their checks averaged about $2,192 a month (Social Security Administration county totals, our arithmetic). Of Nashville’s residents, 12.7% were 65 or older in the Census Bureau’s survey for 2020 to 2024.
For any household here, the plan works out when each spouse claims Social Security, which account each year’s spending comes from and whether Roth conversions in the early years of retirement cut the tax on later ones, along with the Medicare surcharge a large income year can trigger two years later.
How do the two TCRS plans differ?
The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System covers teachers and state and higher-education employees, and your hire date sets your plan. Hired before July 1, 2014, you are in the Legacy Plan: an unreduced pension at age 60 or with 30 years of service, based on your highest five consecutive years of pay. Hired on or after that date, you are in the Hybrid Plan: an unreduced pension at age 65 or under the Rule of 90, when your age and years of service add up to 90.
Both plans vest after five years of service. The Hybrid Plan adds a 401(k): the state pays 4% of salary into the pension and 5% into the 401(k), and you pay 5% into the pension and, by default, 2% into the 401(k). State and higher-education employees in either plan get a dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match of up to $50 a month.
What does TCRS ask you to choose?
TCRS offers two single-life options and six joint and survivor plans for how the pension pays, and your age and your beneficiary’s age set the amount under each. A survivor plan lowers your own check in exchange for income that continues to a beneficiary after you.
One single-life choice, the Social Security Leveling Option, pays a larger pension before 62 and a smaller one after: TCRS adds part of the Social Security benefit you could draw at 62 until that age, then lowers the pension by the full amount of that benefit. If you plan to delay Social Security to 67 or 70, the pension drops at 62 before your Social Security starts, and the plan has to cover the gap. The answer on the leveling option works through TCRS’s own example.
You name beneficiaries separately for the pension and the 401(k), and a marriage, a divorce or a death does not change them on its own.
Chattanooga, Knoxville, Franklin, Memphis, Tullahoma and Crossville
Pages for the other Tennessee areas cover what is specific there: Chattanooga, where Robert is based, for the state’s tax rules; Knoxville, for TVA’s pension; Franklin and Brentwood, for executive pay at the headquarters there; Memphis, Germantown and Collierville, for FedEx’s pension and executive pay; Tullahoma and Manchester, for federal pensions around Arnold Air Force Base; and Crossville and Fairfield Glade, for drawing an income in retirement.
Questions from Nashville
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