Q. I have a question about early outs. I am 53 and have 25 years of Federal Employees Retirement System service. If an offer is made in 2012, will I be penalized for the number of years I am under age 62? Reading the past posts, I am confused. Also, are health benefits based on the non-postal rate for federal employees? Is unused sick leave added to the annuity or years of service in the coming year? A. Retiring CSRS employees are penalized for being under regular retirement age; retiring FERS employees aren’t. The premium rates for retired Postal Service…
Browsing: FERS annuity computation
Q. I am not married, and will retire under the Federal Employees Retirement System. After I retire, if I then get married, can I then elect survivor annuity? If so, what is required to make the election? A. Yes, you can, as long as you do that within two years after the date of your marriage. To pay for the survivor annuity, there will be two reductions in your annuity. The first will be the standard reduction to provide for the survivor benefit. The second will be an actuarial reduction to pay the survivor benefit deposit. That deposit equals the…
Q. My wife started working under the Civil Service Retirement System in July 1982 and continued to work under CSRS until August 1989. She is re-entering the government workforce. She plans to stop working in eight years when she will be 57, and will have 15 years of government service. It appears she would be eligible for deferred retirement benefits at age 62. How will her benefits be calculated? A: It all depends. When she returns to work for the federal government, she’ll be covered by CSRS Offset (CSRS and Social Security), with the option of transferring to the Federal…
Q. I am a GS-14 Step 6 Federal Employees Retirement System law enforcement employee with 3 1/2 years to go to before I’m eligible to retire. With locality pay and availability pay, I am capped and have about $133 per pay period withheld from my paycheck. My question is, what is being used to calculate my high-3? The money I should have been paid or what I am actually paid? A. Your high-3 will be based of what you actually received, which is the amount from which retirement deductions were taken.
Q. I am a 57-year-old Federal Employees Retirement System employee eligible for retirement. I am also a widow. Can I retire and receive the special retirement supplement until age 60, then take the Social Security widow’s benefit — which would be greater than my SRS — and keep that until I reach full retirement age at 66? Could I also delay retirement until age 60, bypass SRS and take the widow’s benefit? A. Relax. The Office of Personnel Management automatically pays the special retirement supplement until age 62 to FERS employees who retire on an immediate, unreduced annuity. The SRS…
Q. I’m 52 years old. I bought back my active-duty time while I was working at a federal prison. This gave me 15 years with the federal prison. I am now working in a non-law enforcement job at the Veterans Administration and have five years with the VA system, which gives me 20 years’ service in total. I know that I will retire with 20 years in the Federal Employees Retirement System, but my question is, will I get the credit for the law enforcement retirement, which is at 56, or the regular FERS retirement at age 60? A. The…
Q: I am a 62-year-old FERS employee. I am in a 27 percent locality pay area and have been for many years. There is discussion at my base about transferring our work to another base that has a much lower locality pay. I heard that if I transfer to the other base and then retire, my FERS annuity high-3 would be based on the lower locality pay. Since my pay is topped out, locality pay is the only thing that will change much. Is this “lower” high-3 calculation correct? A: Your annuity will be based on your highest three consecutive…
Q: I am a federal firefighter working in a “secondary firefighter” position. My LES shows a FERS retirement code of “K.” What benefits/retirement does this code entail? I also heard that legislation is in the works to increase the mandatory primary firefighter retirement age from 57 to either 62 or 65? Is there any truth to that? A: “K” applies to anyone covered by FERS and FICA who will be entitled to regular retirement benefits. Any period of service which is classified as “K” isn’t covered service for law enforcement or firefighter retirement purposes. I don’t pay attention to legislation…
Q. If I pay about $4,000, I will have my 12 years of military service counted toward my FERS retirement. I got hurt at my federal job and I’m thinking about asking for FERS disability. One problem, I am a month shy of the 18 months required. Can I pay only a portion of the $4,000 (to have the month required), or do I have to pay the whole amount. Are we allowed to just pay part of the buy-back money? A: First, you have to have 18 months of creditable civilian service under FERS to be eligible to apply…
Q: I’m an employee under the Federal Employees Retirement System with a hire date of Jan. 19, 1999. I plan on retiring the day after my 60th birthday in 2015 under the minimum retirement age plus-10 provision with 16 years of service. Will I have to take the 10 percent penalty for being two years younger than age 62, or does being age 60 somehow eliminate it? A: The 5 percent-per-year penalty will apply for every year (5/12ths of a percent per month) that you are under age 62. If you had 20 years of service and retired at age…