Your employer's tax-qualified retirement investment plan is an excellent way to accumulate money for your retirement. Income from this plan, when combined with other sources of retirement income, such as Social Security, pension benefits and personal savings, can help provide you with what you'll need during retirement.

Experts say that to maintain your standard of living during retirement, you'll need as much as 80% of your final working year's salary. In addition, you will need to take into consideration the effect of inflation. As the cost of living rises, your purchasing power falls.

Fortunately, your employer's retirement plan can help you in many ways. Your contributions will be deducted from your pay, automatically, after tax withholding is calculated. This means you'll be setting money aside without even thinking about it.

Also, you'll have access to a wealth of resources from VALIC. These include local help from your financial advisor, plus educational programs, materials and seminars to help you better understand retirement and financial planning issues.

In this section, you will find details about key features of the Central Texas College Employees' Pension Plan and Trust & the Central Texas College Employees' Supplemental Plan and Trust for full-time and part-time employees, respectively.