Q. My projected CSRS creditable service is 37 years, five months and 12 days based on my projected retirement date of Jan. 2, 2014. Would it be to my advantage to work an additional 18 days or so to get to six months instead of five months?
A. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that unused sick leave will be added to your actual service that doesn’t add up to a full month and used to increase the amount of your annuity. To figure out how much additional service you’ll be credited with, take those 12 days, convert them to hours and add them to your sick leave hours. Divide the total by 174 and you’ll have the approximate number of additional months that will be used in the computation of your annuity.
FYI, for CSRS retirees, a month is worth an additional 1/6 of 1 percent of annuity.
