Q. I am anticipating retiring Jan. 3 after almost 40 years of continuous service for the Veterans Affairs Department. I recall, many years ago, retirees electing withdrawal of their cumulative contributions to the retirement fund and receiving a minimum penalty in their annuity. I am unable to find anything online relating to this option and my human resources people say they’ve never heard of it. When did we lose this option? On that subject, my earnings and leave do not reflect the total amount that I have contributed to the retirement fund, but only the amount contributed since conversion to…
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Q. With all of the financial instability in the Postal Service right now, I am concerned that I will be able to draw retirement under FERS. I have 13 years with the USPS now and do not foresee being able to get a full 20 years, so I will be taking a short retirement. If the USPS goes bankrupt or is bought in a privatization move, what happens to the money I have been putting into FERS for retirement? Would the FERS retirement money still be there should the USPS become insolvent or privatized? My father worked for Kaiser Aluminum…
Q. What is the percentage paid by the U.S. Treasury toward our monthly annuity account when we retire under CSRS? A. It’s not surprising that no one could answer the question, because there isn’t any one answer. It all depends. If an employee retired before June 2, 1986, all of his annuity payments were considered to be a return of his retirement contributions and weren’t taxable, since they had already been taxed as income while he was working. When the amount in his account ran out, all of the annuity payments he received were from the government and, as such,…
Q. I am a CSRS Offset GS14/10 employee who left Veterans Affairs Department employment in 1985 after 11+ years and returned to VA employment in 1991. I will be 66 years old in July and am considering retiring Jan. 3, 2014. At that point, I will have 24 years of offset employment, 30 years of Social Security contributions (including the 24 offset years) and 37 years of service (including sick leave). My wife is in a similar CSRS Offset situation and is also considering retirement Jan. 3, 2014, at age 61. She will not take Social Security benefits until age…
Q. I worked for the Postal Service from late 1979 until about 1991. I had a lot of personal and work-related problems and was also given a letter of termination. I decided to quit. I also tried to pursue a disability, but I dropped that because of stress and depression. I withdrew my retirement to pay an accumulation of four months of bills and rent that I was behind in. I vaguely recall reading that there was a buyback of retirement. Is this true? I am applying for Social Security benefits. I am only 58, but, due to health concerns,…
Q. I will retire in six months and have joint physical custody of my 8-year-old child. I am not married, nor was I previously married. My retirement counselor said that if I wanted my child to receive my annuity should I die post-retirement (and she is under a certain age and a full-time student), it would be very costly, and not only would my annuity be reduced greatly but she would only get small amount. I recently read somewhere that I could elect a survivor annuity benefit for my child at no cost. So: 1. When retiring, can I elect my…
Q. I am a recently retired CSRS employee. I note a huge inequity concerning my CSRS retirement contributions from the federal retirement benefits booklet the Office of Personnel Management sent me. I am told that I have a retirement contribution credit of $164,836 after-tax dollars. From this amount, I will get 310 equal monthly payments of $531.73 that will be a tax-exempt portion of my total monthly annuity. However, I am told once I receive gross monthly retirement benefits that exceed my contributions (tax exempt and taxed portion), there are no more contribution credits in my account, and no lump-sum…
Q. I will be retiring in June and am trying to compute the number of federal tax exemptions, etc., that I take. I looked through my notes from my last federal retirement planning class and saw that I jotted down that the amount withheld for survivor annuity from one’s monthly pension is a pretax item. I thought it would be smart to obtain verification or validation rather than assume I heard and recorded this correctly. If the survivor annuity withheld is subject to federal income tax at the time of withholding, then the portion withheld should be nontaxable when the…
Q. My husband, who is 98 years old, worked for the Postal Service in Chicago from 1937 to 1942, then joined the Army to fight in World War II. He took a leave of absence from the Postal Service until the war ended and returned to the Postal Service in 1947 and worked until 1948, when he entered graduate school under the GI Bill. He did not take a refund of his CSRS contribution. Is he eligible for a pension? A. If what you say is true, he may very well be eligible for an annuity. To find out, he’ll have to…
Q. My father was a federal employee for more than 40 years. When he died, he had the highest civil servant rank possible. My mom died 15 months ago, and my dad died in September at the age of 86 after being retired for 24 years. He was receiving monthly annuity payments of over $6,000 a month until he died. We just received paperwork about a possible lump sum that would be whatever was left in his annuity that was not paid out in monthly payments. What is the likelihood that there is a lump sum left? Typically, do federal…