Q. How can a FERS employee change their retirement date if they’ve already declared one?
A. You need to inform your supervisor (and your personnel office if you have already submitted your retirement application). Usually, changing your retirement date won’t be a problem. However, if your position is being eliminated as of a certain date or your agency has already committed itself to someone who will fill your position, then it can refuse your request to change the date of your retirement. The reason for its refusal will have to be presented to you in writing.
4 Comments
There’s two RPAs out for positions in the unit I work in. The RPA for my position has been submitted but no one has been hired. My supervisor was told my current leadership not to sign anything to change the date or withdraw my retirement. I am a Civil Service employee of the required age to retire but want to retire at the end of the year instead of the end of June- I’ll continue to provide guidance in the unit and increase my retirement pay. If leadership does not sign and human resources agree not to sign, what are my options to continue working til the end of the year?
If you have applied for retirement but the paperwork hasn’t been sent to OPM, you can withdraw that application and resubmit it when you are ready to retire. Even if the paperwork has been sent to OPM, you can ask to have it returned to you. The only possible impediment to you’re staying on the job would be if your agency had already extended an offer to fill your job to someone else and that offer had been accepted. If what you say is true, that hasn’t happened.
Thank you for responding. An offer has not been extended to anyone. With the current guidance, does leadership have to sign the withdrawal? The predicament I’m in is denial of retirement because current forms must have the supervisor and the HR rep sign…
Is this a valid reason for not extending my retirement date?
–we respectfully decline your request to change your retirement date. This is for a few reasons, primarily being that we have already submitted the RPA to recruit-fill your position and are trying to speed the process along as much as we can to get CSS back up to a fully-manned status and stopping the process and starting over later further delays that ability to get there. Additionally, you were hired under an older core document that does not align with the security requirements required of the position as shown on the UMD. It is currently a discrepancy for the squadron that I hope to correct as soon as possible. When we recruit-fill for your replacement, it will be with the updated UPC core document and duties that will correct the mis-match between the core doc and UMD. We are hoping to have as much of this fixed prior to the new Commander’s arrival at the end of June or soon thereafter in order to set him up for success as best as we can. —