Q. FERS annuity computation includes only whole years and whole months worked in calculating longevity service time. But unless you retire on an exact date — completing a whole year or a whole month worked on the specific date of retirement — you will be left with some workdays not credited for longevity service time purposes. But can these few uncredited days — not amounting to a whole month — be added to your sick leave balance and have those non-whole month days PLUS your sick leave hour balance combined and added to your total service time for longevity?
A. Yes. All leftover days of actual service are added to any unused sick leave days and used in the computation of an annuity. However, because an annuity year is treated as if it was made up of 12 30-day months, those days have to be converted into months. To do that, 360 (12 x 30) is divided into 2,087 (the number of hours in a work year). Therefore, on average, a month equals 174 hours. Once the number of additional months is determined, all remaining hours are discarded.
