Q. I am a federal employee under CSRS and can retire at any time. If it is now taking an average of 133 days to process retirement claims, do you have to leave while your claim is in progress? Also, will I receive checks or one check for the more than four-month waiting time? How does one survive for four months without any income? It used to be that if you retired by the 3rd of the month, you’d receive your first check the following month.
A. Your retirement application can’t be sent to the Office of Personnel Management until you have retired and are off your agency’s rolls. While no one disagrees that the processing times have been unacceptable, things are improving, with interim annuity payments going out much more quickly. However, if you have a choice on when to retire, you might want to consider waiting until the end-of-year glut of retirement applications has made it through the system.
