FERS - TSP Withdraw

[chief04010]

Quote:

Originally Posted by painterbill "I should get the SS Sup that will be an extra 1400 - 1500/month until age 62". The SS Sup I receive is about 75% (~$200 less) of my agencies estimate and about half of what SS estimates I will receive at 62. I had OPM show me the math after retirement and my agency was wrong. They also only count time during your federal employment, 1,400-1,500 would take a very high salary and many years. A friend also retired during the same time period and his supplement was about 75% of the estimate he was given. All things considered, I'm still a happy camper two years in!

Do you know if when you say they only count time during your federal employment if that includes military time that you've bought back? Also just for the record I'll have 37 years, 8 months and 27 days when I retire that includes about 7 years military time that I bought back.

[Greg V]

For the FERS Annuity Supplement, the time used in the calculation is only your time as a FERS employee...it does not include any "bought back" military time.

An approximation of your Supp amount would be FERS time divided by 40 times your Age 62 SS amount. In my case (I bought back mil time as well), I had 16 years as a FERS employee so my Supp was 16/40 (40%) of the Age 62 amount. The online calculators in EBIS do not take this into account and will give you an inflated number.

I won't go into the reason that OPM uses 40 years...tough to explain in detail...but that is the case. Your agency should be able to get close when you get a retirement estimate from them. However, the only official number will come from OPM when they finalize your retirement package.

Best of luck with your retirement. I've enjoyed mine immensely.

[chief04010]

After reading the post about the FERS SSA sup being too high I revise the data that I entered in fedcalc.com. Using 75% of my SSA estimated benefit at age 62 it gave me this result:

Based on your estimated annual social security benefit at age 62 of $15,000.00, you would also receive a FERS Annuity Supplement of approximately $1,125.00 (per month) until age 62, depending on other personal history and restrictions. Please visit a financial retirement specialist for an accurate estimate based on your employment history.

That is using a monthy benefit amount of $1,200
As I said that is based on 75% using the 30/40 formula that would seem to be correct.

SSA gave me an estimate of $1716 per month at age 62.

[Greg V]

If you're curious about more detail on the Supp, here are a couple of links. The OPM info on exactly how to calculate is mind-numbing.

The FERS Supplement - Little Known Benefit for Some FERS Federal Employees

http://www.opm.gov/retirement-servic...dbook/c051.pdf

The rough estimate (Qualifying years/40 time Agr 62 SS) got me within $25 or so of the actual OPM number.

YMMV. Good luck

[painterbill]

Greg is right and I would say you are now pretty close. Then at age 62 you will get a pretty good bump up when you start SS (if you decide to start at 62 which I think I will because I will be use to the supplement by then and it would hard to lose that amount) I dug out my letter from OPM which was about 4 pages long explaining in detail my income from the time I first started paying SS, to the formulas and actually calculations to reach my Monthly Retiree Annuity Supplement. But it basically came down to FERS time divided by 40 times the age 62 estimate, it put mine right to the dollar. It also appears that they use only whole years and not the additional months in these calculations.