Q. I will retire before I “max out,” but one part of your March 5 article intrigued me: You said that OPM would offer the retiree the opportunity to buy an additional annuity, similar to the Voluntary Contributions program. Is that offered only to “maxed out’” retirees, or can any full- term retiree (I will have 35 years at retirement) do this? I will be 68 when I retire, so this program could be quite good for me. (I had a large VCP account, which I rolled over into a Roth IRA in 2010, when it appeared, wrongly, that the opportunity to do so would be limited to 2010.)
A. There are only two ways to do that. First, if a retiring employee has a voluntary contributions account, he can use that money to purchase additional annuity. Second, if he has over 41 years and 11 months of service, he will receive a refund of his excess contributions and can, if he wishes, purchase additional annuity with that
