News from Your Fairfax County Retirement System
I must first apologize for not sending out any updates for six months. It's been a busy summer for staff and me, but that's no excuse for my not keeping you (our retirees) up to date. I can promise that we have more things planned for you and we will keep you updated on these plans over the next few months.
Some things in particular that we are planning for are:
- Conducting a virtual retiree meeting for our investment team to discuss how they do what they do. If you have any questions that you would like answered, we will include a way for you to do that when we schedule this meeting.
- Hosting focus groups for retirees to tell us about what they like and do not like in our online MyRetirement website. We will use this as we prepare to upgrade or replace our current system (PensionGold).
As always, I love to hear from you. Whether it's to point out something that you are having trouble with or to tell me about general questions or concerns that you have, I want to hear about it. As staff here are probably tired of me saying, the only problems that worry me are the ones I don't know about. That is particularly so for anything that affects you - our retirees.
The easiest way to reach me is by email, and my email address is: jeffrey.weiler@fairfaxcounty.gov.
All of the Retirement Team and I wish you a continued good retirement!
 Jeff Weiler
Executive Director - Retirement Systems
703-279-8200
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Thanks to the hard work of our Chief Investment Officers and their Investment Team colleagues, investment returns for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 were quite good. Credit is also due to the systems' Boards of Trustees, whose leadership and dedication to their fiduciary responsibility is admirable.
As of June 30, 2025, the end of FY 2025, all three retirement systems had the following investment returns:
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 All three systems had investment returns in excess of the 6.75% assumed by the actuary in determining the funded status of the system. While there are other factors that affect the systems' funding, such as salary increases and annual cost-of-living (COLA) increases, investment returns are a big part of the overall actuarial funding picture.
In simple terms, when investment returns are higher than assumed, the funded status increases. On the other hand, when investment returns are lower than assumed, the funded status decreases. Additionally, when active employee salaries or retiree COLAs are lower than assumed, the funded status increases. And, when active employee salaries or retiree COLAs are higher than assumed, the funded status decreases.
 In reality, these and other actuarial assumptions do not vary in lock step. Rather, as in FY 2025, they actually can offset each other in whole or in part. In FY 2025, investment returns were higher than assumed. Salary increases and COLAs were higher than assumed as well. The net effect in FY 2025 was that the good investment returns were partially offset by other factors, such as salaries, being higher than assumed.
Again, this is an oversimplification of how the funded status of the systems increase or decrease. For more details on the actuarial funding of the systems, click the following button:
In addition to the good news about investment returns, the funded status of the three systems also improved.
 The funded status of each system has continued to increase, and all three systems are projected to reach full (100%) funding by FY 2036. These projections of future funding assume that, over the next 10 years, there are no significant long-term financial market disruptions and that other factors are not significantly different than assumed actuarially.
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