It’s baaaack! In 2011 a bill was introduced in Congress that would change the way your annuity is calculated from the average of your highest three consecutive years of basic pay to your highest five. While that bill died a quiet death, Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark.,introduced a new bill that would do the same thing. In his words, “This bill would simply change the formula for determining pension benefits for civilian federal employees from the best-earning three years to the best-earning five years of service. The bill ensures that the program employees of the federal government have paid into for…
Browsing: CSRS annuity computation
Q. As a CSRS annuitant, if I am re-employed and understand the salary offset: How are years of service for leave, retirement from the new salary calculated, and do you re-retire by CSRS for the new federal service period?
Q. If you are a P.O. employee with CSRS retirement and you have 41 yrs. 11 mos. in for full retirement and also have a year and a half in unused sick leave, will the unused sick leave be paid out in cash?
In my last two columns I wrote about calendar year 2015 changes in the dollar amounts or percentages affecting your pay (1 percent increase), cost-of-living adjustments for eligible retirees and more, survivors and Social Security beneficiaries (1.7 percent increase), the Social Security earnings limit ($15,720), Medicare Part B (premiums unchanged), death benefits and children’s benefits (both higher by 1 percent). In this final column, I’ll tell you about interest rates, the salary cap, military deposits, present value factors, the maximum taxable wage base, and the Thrift Savings Plan deferral limit. Previous Installments Part I Part II Interest rates Interest is…
Q. I am recieving CSRS disability retirement and will turn 62 soon. Will my annuity be recomputed at age 62? How will it be computed if it does? A. No. CSRS disability benefits continue until you die. Only FERS disability benefits are converted to regular annuities at age 62.
In my last column I wrote about the calendar year 2015 changes in the dollar amounts or percentages affecting your pay (1 percent), cost-of-living adjustments for eligible retirees, survivors and Social Security beneficiaries (1.7 percent), and the Social Security earnings limit ($15,720). In this one, I’ll describe the calendar year 2015 changes affecting Medicare, death benefits and children’s benefits. Medicare At age 65, you’ll be eligible for Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) at no cost to you. If you are no longer working, it’s free. That’s because you already paid for that benefit through payroll deductions. You’ll still be entitled…
Q. If a CSRS employee has 42 years of service and has over 2087 hours in sick leave, is an additional 2 percent added to the retirement benefits? Or does the employee receive the cash value of the sick leave since the employee maxed out at 42 years?
Q. I have exceeded the 41 year 11 month mark of creditable service hours under CSRS. If I were to continue to work, would I be entitled to an additional 2 percent for every full year worked beyond the 41 year 11 month mark in addition to my unused sick leave hours? If not, how would my CSRS annuity be computed?
There’s a lot of confusion about what happens to your unused sick leave when you retire. In short, the more sick leave you have, the bigger your annuity will be. But before I get into how much bigger and how that’s done, I want to share a little history with you. Once upon a time, Civil Service Retirement System employees didn’t get any credit for their unused sick leave when they retired. When the Congress discovered that employees nearing retirement were burning off that leave at bonfire levels, the law was changed so that they could. However, when Federal Employees…
The “high-3” is an essential element in the formula used to calculate your annuity. But what does the term high-3 mean? And how do you figure out what yours is? The high-3 defined Your high-3 is the average of your highest rates of basic pay over any three consecutive years of creditable civilian service, no matter when they occur in your career, with each pay rate weighted by the length of time it was received. That three-year period starts and ends on the dates that produce the highest average pay. It starts on the first day that leads to the…