Guides

Age 62 moves four separate parts of a federal retirement at once, and they do not all move in the same direction. What each one does, and which ones you can still influence.

Every retirement date is counted from an SCD your agency constructed. Two of them exist, the one on your leave statement is the wrong one, and six kinds of service are commonly missing or misread in the right one.

The highest average rate of basic pay over any three consecutive years, weighted by the time each rate was held. Three departures from the obvious reading, each worth thousands a year.

Federal service answers two separate questions — when you may retire, and what the annuity pays. Eleven kinds of service, and where each one lands on both.

Four rules attach money to the calendar at the turn of the year, from four different rulebooks, and they disagree. Including the one FERS does not have.

The answer changes completely at the retirement date, and the benefit nobody plans for — dying in service — is usually the larger of the two.

A part-time job can take the whole supplement away, and the point at which it does is lower than almost anyone expects. What counts as earnings, and when the money stops.

For most FERS employees the deposit pays for itself inside the first year of retirement. The reasons not to are real, narrow, and none of them is about the money.

The premium does not rise at retirement. What changes is that it stops being pre-tax, and a five-year rule decides whether you keep the coverage at all.

Three rules decide what a TSP withdrawal costs, and not one of them turns on your age when you take the money. What each one is actually keyed to.

At 62 the payment from OPM drops by a four-figure amount and the household's income does not change. Why the offset looks like a cut, and when it really is one.

Part-time years never delay your retirement date and never lower your high-3. A factor is applied to the finished annuity instead, and it is gentler than the folklore.

The one-year deadline, the Social Security application OPM cannot proceed without, and why the 60% everyone quotes is a gross figure that can arrive as nothing.

The enhanced law enforcement and firefighter formula is bought by the retirement, not by the service. Leaving one month short can cost $15,000 a year for life.

Postponing is an election you make later, not a box you tick on the way out. What has to be true on the day you leave, and how the health insurance comes back.