Buying Years of Service as Asset Protection

[Mountain_Mike]

Greetings REs and Wannabees,

In the CALSTRS (teacher's retirement) system, I recently found out you can retire as young as age 50 IF you have 30 or more years of service.

I also found that STRS will let you purchase additional years of service. This really has me thinking: my wife will have around 27 years in at age 50, so buying 3 years sounds like a quick ticket to RE. I figure the cost of buying the 3 years to be around $45,000....then, it's a penion for life, 3 years early! Question: does anyone know if purchasing years of service from either a 403b or a 457 is a taxable "event?"

I also got to thinking, after reading the thread on "asset protection" that putting money into retirement service credit seems to be a rock-solid way to get a bit of asset protection. While retirement funds could be raided to pay medical bills or judgements, I don't think that lump sum judgements can be taken from pension plans. If one's home and accounts were somehow lost due to a catestrophic event, at least the monthly income stream would keep coming in...is this correct?