Q. I will reach my full retirement age of 66 before I have 20 years of service. I understand that I will receive credit for 100 percent of my unused sick leave (since I will retire after January 2014) for computing my annuity. If I were to retire with 19 years and 10 months of actual creditable service with an additional three months of unused sick leave, would that additional sick leave also result in my annuity being computed at the over-20-years-of-service factor of 1.1 percent x number of years service? Or would it remain at 1.0 percent unless I actually completed at least 20 years of actual service?
A. No, it would not. Your annuity would be based on your actual service, after which it would be increased by any unused sick leave. To have the higher multiplier used in the computation of your annuity, you would have to have 20 actual years of service.
3 Comments
My service personnel office has given me a FERS retirement estimate that allows 4 months sick leave credit towards qualifying for the 1.1% multiplication factor. I am 66 and plan on retiring with 19 years and 8 months service plus the 4 months of sick leave.
That’s a mistake. Unused sick leave can never be used to meet a length of service requirement.
The personnel office said sick leave was allowed to increase the annuity since I already qualified for normal retirement. Their annuity calculator did the same allowance. I mentioned your article and they didn’t agree.