Retirement Eligibility Date Finder

How this is calculated

Retirement eligibility is not one rule but four, each pairing an age with a length of service. You qualify on the first date any one of them is satisfied, so the calculation is to date all four and take the earliest.

date each rule is met = later of (birth date + required age) and (service computation date + required years)

The four rules

• MRA with 30 years — full annuity.
• Age 60 with 20 years — full annuity.
• Age 62 with 5 years — full annuity.
• MRA with 10 years (MRA+10) — paid immediately, but permanently reduced by 5% for each year you are under 62, prorated by month. The reduction never comes back, and it applies for the rest of your life.

Your MRA depends only on your year of birth

The Minimum Retirement Age is 55 for those born before 1948, steps up by two months a year through the 1950s and 1960s, and finishes at 57 for anyone born in 1970 or later. It is fixed in statute, so it does not move with inflation or policy the way a pay table does. This calculator reads it from your date of birth and shows the exact day you reach it.

Why the service computation date, not your hire date

Length of service for eligibility is measured from your service computation date — the date in block 31 of your SF-50. It is usually earlier than your hire date, because it already folds in credited military service and earlier federal service you have made a deposit for. Counting from your start date instead is the single most common way people arrive at a date that is months or years wrong.

Sick leave does not count toward eligibility

Unused sick leave adds to the service used to compute your annuity, but it can never make you eligible to retire a day earlier. The two uses of “service” are easy to conflate, and conflating them is what produces a retirement date the agency then refuses. That is why the annuity figures in the table above leave sick leave out.

Leaving before you are eligible

With at least 5 years of creditable service you keep what you have earned, but as a deferred annuity — nothing is paid until age 62, and FEHB health coverage in retirement is lost and not restored when payments begin. With fewer than 5 years, no annuity is payable at all.

What this does not model

• Early-out and involuntary retirements. A Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) offer, or a discontinued service retirement after an involuntary separation, can allow retirement at age 50 with 20 years or at any age with 25. Neither can be predicted from a birth date, so neither is dated here.
• Special provisions. Law enforcement officers, firefighters, air traffic controllers, and Customs and Border Protection officers retire under different — and generally earlier — rules, with a mandatory separation age. This tool computes the regular FERS rules only.
• Part-time and intermittent service. Your service computation date is taken as given. If it does not already reflect periods that credit at less than full time, the dates here inherit that.
• The FERS annuity supplement, payable to some who retire before 62 and subject to an earnings test, is not included in the annuity figures.

Sources

• 5 U.S.C. § 8412 — the immediate-retirement age and service combinations, and subsection (h), the Minimum Retirement Age table read verbatim by this calculator.
• 5 U.S.C. § 8413 — the MRA+10 option, and the deferred annuity payable at age 62 after 5 years of service.
• OPM CSRS/FERS Handbook, Chapter 42 — Eligibility for Retirement (PDF) — the same combinations as OPM applies them, including the use of the service computation date as the clock.
• OPM — FERS Retirement Eligibility — OPM’s own summary table of the ages and years of service.
• 5 U.S.C. § 8415 — the 5%-per-year reduction under 62 applied to an MRA+10 annuity, and the 1.1% factor earned at 62 with 20 years.

Last reviewed: August 2026