Delivered on: Thursday, August 21, 2025

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Deferred Retirement: What You Get & Give Up

Exiting federal service before you can get an immediate pension

• ELIGIBILITY: Who qualifies for a deferred retirement
• PENSION: How much of a pension can you expect to receive
• TIMING: When you can expect to begin receiving your pension
• OPTIONS: What choices do you have if you don't want to wait
• BENEFITS: What happens to your other federal benefits

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Prefer to read instead? A Transcript of this Webinar is Below:

Hello and welcome everyone to the FedImpact Retirement Training for today. This topic today is one that is on the top of minds for many federal employees kind of navigating everything that's happened in 2025. Deferred retirement, what you get and what you give up. We're going to jump into all the details today. You guys know me.

I'm Chris Kowalik, the founder of ProFeds. I am the developer of the FedImpact Retirement Workshop. And having done so, we've been able to see so many federal employees on their path, on their journey to retirement and trying to get their arms wrapped around all of these crazy benefits that you guys have.

I'm really lucky that we have firsthand knowledge of the real things that federal employees are concerned about. We're delighted to be able to do today's session for a little bit different of a subset than we normally focus on.

Deferred Retirement: What You Get & Give Up

We're normally focused on the group of people who are right on retirement's doorstep and they're making decisions, but for deferred retirees, you guys might be much further away from your natural point of retirement and you've got all these decisions to make as well.

For today's session on deferred retirements, I think it's important that we strike a balance between recognizing what you can gain in the process, so what you're getting out of a deferred retirement, but also being fair to what you give up. And certainly if this is a voluntary choice that you are making to leave government service, there are certainly things that you want to have top of mind before you make a decision like that.

This session today is going to be all about exiting federal service before you can get an immediate pension and we'll kind of jump into some of those details today.

Agenda

For our agenda, we're going to talk about eligibility, so who even qualifies for a deferred retirement? Next, we'll talk about how much the pension is that you can really expect to receive, when you're going to receive it, some options that you have if you don't want to wait to receive that pension, and then what happens to all of your other benefits.

What this webinar will NOT cover

For today's session, we're going to cover the wave tops of several different benefits as far as what you might be able to keep, what you might lose. We're not going to be able to dive deep into the details of all of those benefits today, but we have lots of training available on demand, right on our website at fedimpact.com.

You can go to webinars, articles, podcasts, all of that where we have a wide variety of these topics that are covered where we dive much deeper if you're interested in that kind of depth of the material.

Full Eligibility

For today's session, I'd like to start with full eligibility because we have to give some context or some framework around this concept of retiring before you're fully eligible, you have to first know what it means to be fully eligible. To be fully eligible, you're going to need to meet age and service year requirements. You have to meet a combination of age and service years.

Next, being fully eligible means that this is a voluntary decision that you get to make to leave government service. Nobody has to approve your request. You can simply leave. We always want you to give a little warning to your agency, but you don't have to get anybody's approval.

You are already eligible and can walk out the door on your own accord. By virtue of being fully eligible to retire, that means your pension is going to start immediately and there are no penalties applied to your pension.

If you look to the right-hand side, kind of in that middle area, you're going to see the FERS full eligibility rules. You'll need to meet at least age 62 with at least five years of service, at least 60 with at least 20 years of service or have reached your minimum retirement age, which for most of you will be 57.

We might have a few that are a little bit younger, but most of the time we're working with people who are 57 at their minimum retirement age with at least 30 years of service. If you're curious where you might fall in that MRA kind of continuum here, you could look off to the right-hand side and find the year in which you were born.

You go to the right-hand side and that is your minimum retirement age. If you meet these rules right now, this is probably not the webinar for you to listen to because if you're already fully eligible, you don't need to worry about a deferred retirement.

You've already met the rules and like we said on the left-hand side, you don't need to seek anyone's approval to be able to drop your retirement papers and go. But I'm going to guess that you all read the description of today's training and you realize that this session is for people who may not meet these rules and you want to see what options might be available to you.

“Deferred Resignation Program” vs. “Deferred Retirement”

Before we dive too deep in deferred retirement, I feel compelled to call out the difference between the deferred resignation program that was offered by the Trump administration earlier this year and where some agencies continue to offer this in different rounds and contrast that with the deferred retirement type.

With the deferred resignation program, this is not a type of retirement. Let me repeat that. The deferred resignation program is not a type of retirement.

The DRP, the fork in the road, all the names that we have for that program, that is not a type of retirement. It is simply an invitation for federal employees to voluntarily leave government service and that could be under a wide variety of conditions and they threw in a couple of perks. Right? We know one of those perks was you get to stay employed through September 30th and you don't have to come to work, you still get your normal paycheck.

That was a perk that we had never seen before. But when we think of the various conditions that someone could retire, they may be fully eligible, they may meet the rules for MRA plus 10, we'll talk a little bit about that today, they may be offered a VERA, that early out, a deferred retirement, which is the primary thing we're going to be talking about today, and frankly, some people took the DRP knowing that they weren't eligible for any pension ever if they left right now.

I just want to stress, I don't want there to be any confusion between the deferred resignation and the deferred retirement. I was really hoping that they would not name these things so similarly because it's causing a lot of confusion amongst the federal workforce that we're going to try to dispel today.

For the deferred retirement that we're going to be talking about today, this is a type of retirement that allows for you to draw a pension payable in the future. It's not available to you right now because of your agent service requirements. It is available in the future and it can either be a voluntary choice or an involuntary one.

A voluntary choice is you just deciding that you're going to go ahead and separate. Maybe this just isn't for you. You have another job opportunity, whatever it might be. This is your choice to just walk out the door.

An involuntary deferred retirement would be a scenario where you're under a reduction in force and your agency has exhausted all the other opportunities to get people to voluntarily leave and now they have to move to involuntary separations. If you have had the required amount of service to be qualified for a deferred retirement, that RIF would put you in that deferred retirement status.

Let's talk about what that is. There are lots of different ways to be eligible to retire. I've used this chart several times now and I always get a great response from employees of just how clear it makes things. But I want to talk a little bit about each one of these areas. Let's start on the left-hand side where we have that red column.

It's probably pretty small on your screen, but at the top of that, if you have less than five years of service when you separate, there's no pension for you. It doesn't matter how old you are, there's no pension and there will never be a pension if you did not have at least five years of federal service.

Now I want to go to the bottom, to the gold area, the full eligibility. This is simply a different way of describing what I've already showed you in a previous chart, which was if you have at least five years of service and are at least 62, you are fully eligible to retire. If you're at least 60 with at least 20 years of service, you are fully eligible.

And if you have reached your minimum retirement age, in this chart we're showing at 57, it might be a little sooner for you, but if you're at least that MRA with at least 30 years of service, you are fully eligible to retire as well. If you find yourself in that gold area, you are already fully eligible and again, this might not be the webinar for you.

Next I want to go to the blue area, the MRA plus 10. This is a scenario where an employee has met their minimum retirement age, so again, on this chart we're showing 57, and they have at least 10 years of service, but they don't have the full amount to be fully eligible to retire the 30 years.

If you've met your minimum retirement age and you have at least 10 years of service, you are eligible for an immediate pension. It's just going to be penalized if you take it right away. We're not going to dive greater into those details today. We have a whole webinar on MRA plus 10 and I would encourage you to go listen to that if you find yourself in that scenario.

I want to go to the far right-hand side of the screen where you see all of those little stars. In the event that we are in a situation where we have early outs being offered, which are the VERAs, that is a voluntary decision for you to go ahead and leave government service, or we have a discontinued service retirement situation where you are under a RIF and your number's called and you are put out into retirement, it would be considered a discontinued service retirement.

VERAs and DSRs operate exactly the same. The only difference is one is voluntary and one is involuntary. Anywhere where you see those stars, if there's a VERA offered, you are able to leave government service and draw an immediate pension. If you are already fully eligible, you do not need a VERA or a DSR to be able to leave.

You have your own authority to be able to walk out the door. But I went ahead and put stars in all those areas. I don't want there to be any confusion that you're not allowed to leave or anything like that. Anywhere where you see a star, the VERA and DSR authority is kicking in here.

As for the rules for VERA and DSR, an employee must be at least age 50 with at least 20 years of service or any age with at least 25 years of service. That's where you see all those stars. Of course, if you are already fully eligible, you do not need a VERA to be able to leave, but I went ahead and put stars in all of those areas in the event that a VERA is offered, you know that you can still leave under those rules.

Now I want to look at the deferred area that has stars and doesn't have stars. Many of you are in a scenario right now where your agency is still offering the early out or perhaps they've moved into the RIF. If that's the case, you're going to be looking at the gray area with the stars on the right-hand side.

If your agency's offering a VERA or DSR, then great, you qualify under that. If they're not offering those and you don't qualify for one of those, you're going to be just in the regular gray deferred bucket here and that's the nature of the training that we're going to be doing today.

For your handouts, I went ahead and included just a little bit of a legend so that there was no confusion. I'm going to talk more of course about the deferred retirement today, but I wanted you to have this in your handouts in the event that you had any questions.

Who is Eligible for a Deferred Pension?

Let's talk about deferred retirements and eligibility to be able to qualify. Like we just saw in the chart federal employees who have at least five years of federal service but otherwise don't qualify for an immediate pension like being fully eligible, the MRA plus 10, the VERA or the DSR, you would qualify for a deferred pension later.

We're going to get into all the details, see some numbers here in just a moment. But I also want to mention that if you happen to find yourself in a special category like federal law enforcement, firefighters, air traffic controllers, you still have the ability to take a deferred pension, but you need to know that you're going to be treated like everybody else.

Your pension is going to be calculated just like a regular employee, not like a special category employee who has a higher pension payout typically. It's important you still qualify, but there's going to be a negative drawback for you if you're in one of these special categories.

How is a Deferred Pension Calculated?

Now that we've established what it looks like to be eligible for a deferred pension, I want to talk specifically about the pension itself so that you understand how it's calculated. The calculation for a deferred pension is done exactly the same way as a regular pension formula.

The only difference for a deferred pension is you're not going to get it right away. You're going to get it later as the name would imply. Let's take a look at an example and you guys can plug in your own numbers here to get an idea of what you're dealing with. But let's say on the far left-hand side, let's cover the formula and then we're going to look at an example.

The formula that we're going to use for a deferred pension is the 1% formula, and this is always, always, always used for a deferred pension. We're going to take your high three average salary, we're going to multiply that by 1% and multiply that by the number of years.

Now of course, full months are included in there too, so there may be a decimal place, but this is the basic formula. We do that math and we come up with your FERS pension. On the right-hand side, if we look at an example of a FERS employee, let's say they have 10 years of federal service with a hundred thousand dollar High-3, they would have a 100,000 High-3 in the formula times 1% times 10 years. That would give them a $10,000 a year pension.

Hopefully that helps you understand the basic calculation and again, you can plug in your numbers. Don't get too distracted on that that you miss out on the rest of the message today. You can always circle back and do this another time.

When Does My Deferred Pension Start?

Now that we know how the pension is calculated, the next question is when does it start? Well, the deferred pension with no penalty will start based on your length of service. If you had between five and 19 years of service, it's going to start at age 62 for you. If you had 20 to 29 years of service, it will start at age 60.

If you had at least 30 years of service but you just weren't old enough to qualify when you left service, that pension will start at your minimum retirement age. When it begins is all based on how many years of service that you had when you left federal service.

I will make a special note and this will confuse the situation a little bit, but I think it's fair to say if you had at least 10 years of service when you left, you can actually begin to receive the pension at your minimum retirement age even if you otherwise didn't qualify for it.

The thing is, you're going to suffer a penalty that is a permanent 5% penalty for every year that you're under the age of 62. If you have an MRA of 57, that means you would have a 25% penalty on your pension forever. This is just like the MRA plus 10 rules, but the government is allowing this earlier start of the pension with a penalty even for deferred pensions.

I run the risk of confusing people with that. But if you happen to have at least 10 years of service when you're leaving, you do at least have an option to start that pension earlier, but you're going to suffer a pretty big penalty for the rest of your life by doing so.

Do I Get COLAs in Retirement?

Next up, once you've received the pension, the next question is do you get cost of living adjustments? The answer is yes, but you're not going to begin to receive them until you reach age 62. Those COLAs, even for regular FERS employees who retire being fully eligible to retire under FERS, you're still not going to be able to get COLAs until 62. It's no surprise that the deferred pension doesn't get a COLA until 62 either.

But here's what you need to understand. There's no cost of living adjustment or no otherwise adjustment between the time you separate from government service and the time you turn 62. As an example, if you separate from service at 40 and you have a deferred pension payable at 62, that figure, whatever your pension is calculated at the time that you're 40, it's still going to be that same number at 62 when you go to draw it.

There's no adjustment for inflation or anything like that for 22 years. We need to recognize that when we have a deferred pension scenario, we are losing purchasing power because that pension is not inflated as we move forward in our lifetime up until 62. From 62 on, it's going to have the normal increase just like a regular FERS pension would.

But that gap between the time you retire or the time you separate and the time you actually begin drawing your pension can be pretty substantial and we want to make sure that you realize that there is a significant amount of purchasing power that is being lost during that time.

Can I Take a Refund of My FERS Contributions?

Let's talk about refunds. I would be remiss if I did not talk about the options that federal employees have when they separate from federal service. The question is, can I take a refund of my FERS contribution?

To be clear, I'm not talking about the Thrift Savings Plan. We are talking about the pension fund that you have been contributing to for your entire federal career, whether you like it or not. That is held at the Office of Personnel Management and again, has nothing to do with the Thrift Savings Plan. If we ask ourselves the question, can I take a refund of my first contribution? The answer is yes.

When you separate, you can choose to receive a refund of your first contribution instead of receiving a pension later. Let me repeat that. You can receive a refund of your first contribution instead of receiving a pension later. The question will be, which one is more valuable to you?

The amount that can be refunded is an amount that's equal to what you have personally contributed into FERS. Based on when you were hired, if you were hired prior to 2013, you're contributing 0.8%, so less than a percent into FERS every pay period.

If you are hired in 2013, you are contributing 3.1% into FERS and if you are hired 2014 or later, you are contributing 4.4% of your salary every pay period throughout your federal career. How much you have contributed will be largely based on when you are hired.

One, because that many years have passed and you have that many more years of contributions that you have made, but also because of the percentage of your pay that you're going to have to contribute. You would naturally think that someone who has more years of service would have more in their FERS fund, but in reality, because of how substantively different the 4.4 is from the 0.8%, you may have a lot more in that FERS account for an employee who has fewer years of service.

Many employees are curious how to know how much you've contributed so far into the first program. I will share with you most pay stubs show the amount that you've contributed so far, but there's a catch.

First, some of them don't. Some of them don't have a field for that at all so you're going to need to ask your HR department. But the second thing is if you have moved around to different agencies, the amount that you've contributed to FERS if you see it on your pay stub is only for the time that you have been with your current agency.

They for some reason don't show the full amount. Keep that in mind and if the number doesn't make sense to you, go to HR and ask some questions so that you fully understand what you're looking at. Just remember if you take a refund of those first contributions, you forfeit any future pension that you otherwise would be entitled to.

Is it Better to Take a Refund or Wait for a Pension?

The question is is it better to take a refund or wait for a pension? And sadly the answer is it depends. Let's look at a quick scenario just to put some framework around this discussion. Let's say that you have a $10,000 a year pension. You know you're going to draw it down the road based on your years of service that you have right now.

It'll either be 62, 60 or your MRA that you're able to draw that $10,000 a year. Next up you look at your pay stub. You've only been with that agency and you see $30,000 that you've contributed to FERS so far. The question is is it better just to take the 30,000 and put it in your pocket or is it better to wait for the $10,000 a year pension? And here's why it depends.

Just a couple of questions that I'm putting here. How long do you have to wait to start your pension? Are you waiting 22 years or two years? Right? That will be very different. Here's a question that none of you can answer. How long will you live while you're drawing your pension?

If you start to draw your pension at latest 62 and you live 30 years, that's a very different scenario than you dying early after you begin drawing your pension or frankly before you ever started drawing it. And then the last question that I have here is, if you take a refund, what are you doing with the money?

This is the part that makes it so difficult to do a break even analysis, if you will, because if you're taking the money to blow it versus taking the money to invest it, the outcome of that 30,000 in this example will be very different.

What do you have to show for that 30,000 other than the initial principle? What can it do for you between now and the end of your lifetime?

That's why I'm not going to show you a graph of the perfect point and it takes you this number of years before you break even because there are so many factors that go into this decision of whether it's better to take a refund or wait for a pension that I think I would be misleading you if I oversimplified that graph to show you what that looks like.

You owe it to yourself if you're thinking about taking a refund or frankly taking a deferred retirement to begin with, that option of leaving service to make this decision, you owe it to yourself to do your own analysis, get some help from a financial professional who does this type of cost benefit analysis for a living, and be able to see where that breakeven point really happens for you based on the factors that are affecting this decision in your circumstances.

What Happens if I Return to Service Later?

Then the next natural question that we get is, what happens if I leave and then later want to come back to federal service? If you leave federal service and end up coming back, two different things could happen, and it all depends on whether you took a refund of your first contributions or not.

If you took a refund, so you decided to take that 30,000 out in our example, if you want credit for that original time that you had with the federal government, you're going to have to pay that money back with interest, and that allows that original service that you had to count towards eligibility for a full pension and in the actual calculation of the pension itself.

Two different parts of this that we want to make sure that time counts for, being eligible to retire and calculation of the pension.

However, if you did not take a refund, let's say you said, you know what? I'm going to wait for my deferred pension later. I'm going to go out and get another job. I'm going to go on and live my life and later I'll draw the pension. You would've simply had what we call a break-in service.

You can pick back up right where you left off if you're rehired, and those other benefits can also be restored thinking of things like your life insurance and health insurance and those normal things that come along with being a federal employee. This does not preclude you from coming back into federal service if you leave. It is simply understanding what happened at the time that you left.

If you took a refund or if you did not take a refund, that will ultimately determine what you need to do if you're ever rehired into government service. Next up, let's talk about other benefits. I hinted at some of this in the previous slide, so I want to kind of jump in to what this looks like.

What Happens to My Other Federal Benefits?

The question is, what happens to my other federal benefits? If you take a deferred retirement, you will lose the following benefits forever. Your health insurance, dental and vision insurance, life insurance, and the special retirement supplement.

You will never ever be able to regain these four benefits if you take a deferred retirement unless you are rehired into government service. If you leave and you stay gone, you will lose these four benefits and there is no point in time that you get those back.

For instance, when you start drawing your pension at 62 or 60 or whenever that might be for you, you don't get an opportunity to flip the health insurance switch back on. That ship has sailed and there's no more of that benefit there for you. You are able to keep a couple of benefits. You're able to keep long-term care insurance through the federal program if you've already purchased it.

It is a program that is closed for registration right now. It has been for a number of years and we expect it to be closed for the foreseeable future. If you already have long-term care insurance, you are free to take it with you and the Thrift Savings Plan.

Although you can keep the account, of course you can't contribute anymore to it once you've separated from service, just to make that clarification here.

What Happens to My Annual Leave & Sick Leave?

There are two other benefits that I think are worthwhile to talk about here, and that's annual leave and sick leave.

Annual leave is payable as normal, just like you had been a regular retiree, you are going to get a check equal to the hours that you had unused annual leave based on your hourly rate that is payable to you within a few weeks after leaving government service.

Annual leave, there is absolutely no difference if you went out on a regular retirement or a deferred retirement. It all works exactly the same.

For sick leave however, normally sick leave is applied, it's converted to years, months, and days and added to your pension calculation, but not so for deferred retirements. Your sick leave will be forfeited when you separate from federal service.

It's important if you don't want to lose it, you need to use it during that time. If you're thinking about going out under a deferred retirement, consider all of the legal ways that you can take sick leave so that that's not wasted time that you earned.

Will My Spouse Get My Pension if I Die First?

Next up is survivor benefits. This is a way to protect a portion of your pension for a surviving spouse. The question is, will my spouse get my pension if I die first? The key is when you file to begin receiving your pension, you're going to make an election on the retirement application for the survivor benefit, and this is what your spouse will receive when you die.

You can make an election for your spouse to receive half of your pension when you die and you're going to pay 10% while you're living. Another option is to protect 25% of your pension and you're going to pay 5% while you're living.

And the last option is to protect none of your pension, and of course you won't pay anything while you're living as far as a premium for this benefit. It is important to know just like a regular retirement, your spouse, if you are married at the time when your pension starts, your spouse is entitled to a 50% survivor benefit and they must provide their notarized consent for a lesser amount.

If you don't want to give up 10% of your pension and your spouse agrees with you, then by all means you can select a lower amount, but they have to provide their notarized consent for you to be able to do so.

What if I Die Before My Deferred Pension Starts?

What if I die before my deferred pension starts? In that period where you've separated from federal service but your pension hasn't started yet, if you die during that time, your spouse will not receive any survivor benefit.

So What happens? Well, remember, you've contributed all this money in to FERS. In our example, we showed 30,000. Someone is going to get that 30,000 back. So you're going to use the SF-3102. This is a form that you're going to make all your elections and decide who you want to receive a refund of your first contribution in the event that you die before your pension starts.

So very important, go ahead and fill that out. We'll drop the link to that form in the handouts area so that you have that nice and handy.

Save that link because of course once the webinar portal closes, you're not going to be able to go back and see that Q&A area, but you can grab that link and keep it handy to be able to update that beneficiary or name a beneficiary to begin with.

Can I Access My TSP Once I Separate?

Next up is the Thrift Savings Plan. The question is, can I access my TSP once I separate? When you separate from federal service, you're going to have the exact same kind of access to TSP just like had you regularly retired.

The TSP does not delineate between someone who's retired and someone who is separated. You're either working or you're not. You're either employed or you're not. So as far as the TSP is concerned, you're going to have the same type of access like every other retiree does. Generally TSP funds are not accessible to you for at least 30 days after you separate from federal service.

You need to give your agency and OPM time to coordinate with TSP to notify them that you are now separated or retired so that they can change it in their system and now they know that you have access to that account like a regular retiree or separatee and not that you're still employed because the rules are different for how you access TSP money, whether you're employed or whether you're not employed, and the TSP just needs a little bit of time to be notified that that is in fact the case.

Now, of course, you're going to be able to leave the money in the TSP if you wish, or you can move it to another type of account like a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. All depends on the type of money that you have in the TSP. So traditional money goes to traditional money, Roth money goes to Roth money on the private sector.

You'd want to look at the type of account that you're moving it to, but you are free to be able to do that at the time that you separate, as long as TSP has been notified that you're now separated and that unlocks the ability for you to move your money.

Will I Be Penalized if I Take Money from TSP?

Next up, will I be penalized if I take money from TSP? This is a great question. Just because you have access to it doesn't mean you're not going to be penalized. Generally, the IRS penalizes employees who take money out of accounts like the TSP too early. That too early mark is 59 and a half.

There are some special rules for accounts like the TSP where they're going to make some special exceptions here, but it is important to realize 59 and a half is a really important mark in time.

Here's the deal with how penalties are going to be assessed or not assessed. If you will be at least age 55 on December 31st of the year that you separate, you'll have penalty free access to the TSP from that point forward. Penalties only happen prior to 59 and a half. In this case, between 55 and 59 and a half, there are no penalties assessed to any money that you take out of the TSP.

And I'm not talking about taking it and moving it to another company, another type of investment product. I'm talking about you actually receiving the money to be able to spend it. This is a great perk as long as you are separating in the year in which you turn 55. If you will not be at least 55 on December 31st of the year that you separate, you will have a 10% early withdrawal penalty on all money that you receive from the TSP prior to 59 and a half.

It's not like once you hit 55, there's no more penalty. No, if you separate at 40, any money you take from 40 to 59 a half will suffer a 10% early withdrawal penalty. We really want to try to avoid that if we can or at least help you to understand that there is going to be a penalty that helps you hopefully be a little bit more judicious in how it is that you take money from an account like this.

What Forms Do I Use?

Next up are the forms. You're in a situation where you think deferred retirement's a good idea. What do you do? How do you actually put the wheels in motion here? Well, as far as what forms you use, it will depend on what it is that you're doing.

When you leave service, you're going to complete a document called the SF-52. This is a request for personnel action. This is what initiates your resignation.

When you are ready for your pension to start way off into the future, you're going to file form RI 92-19 which is the application for deferred retirement. You're going to do this about 60 days prior to the date that you want your pension to begin.

Today we've talked about an awful lot. Thinking of wrapping this up into a little bit of a ball here, there's a lot that goes into deciding whether a deferred retirement is right for you. If this is a voluntary choice that you are considering, you have the ability to really think through everything and decide, run the numbers. Is this the right way for me to go?

But of course, if this is an involuntary separation under a RIF, and it just so happens that you have at least five years of service so you're eligible for a pension, you might not have the time to be able to sit down and run the numbers. And frankly, even if you run the numbers and decide that this is not ideal, this might still happen to you.

I really encourage you when you're thinking of what you do with today's information that you give that some serious thought.

Wrap-Up & Next Steps

Just a quick wrap up for today. Once you have at least five years of federal service, you are considered vested for a federal pension. I do want to point out it is five years of federal service, so military time doesn't count in that vesting period. If you don't qualify to retire with an immediate pension based on your age and service requirements, you will be eligible for a deferred pension to be paid at a later date.

Most of the federal benefits are lost and cannot be regained later with a deferred retirement. And I think you can appreciate from today's material of the decisions that you're going to need to be making. If you don't have clarity on your numbers, it's really hard to know what decision is right for you.

I encourage you, get some clarity on your numbers. Find out how much you've contributed into FERS. Do your own cost benefit analysis. Get with a financial professional. There's links right in the webinar portal to be able to request a meeting to be able to do something like that, if that's something that you're interested in.

Get to a workshop, understand the benefits, all of those things, very, very important because here's the deal, when you know your numbers, your decisions become more obvious. Through everything happening this year, we had too many federal employees make decisions and then look backwards and say, oops, I didn't realize that that's how that worked.

Conversely, we also saw employees who did not take the deferred resignation during this whole process, and they looked back and they said, wow, had I realized what my numbers would've been, I would've done that. When we know our numbers, our financial decisions become more obvious. Do yourself a favor, get some clarity on those numbers.

Lastly, retiring with confidence. If you're really far away from retirement, you might not have even given this a second thought last year, but once everything started in motion at the beginning of this year with the federal workforce, you probably got smart real fast on all of these benefits and maybe scrambling a little bit to try to figure this out.

While I'll agree that it's never too late to start planning, there is a great opportunity to plan earlier in your life to make things simpler on yourself. Give your future self something to cheer about, that you took a lot of great steps earlier in your life to be able to get your head on straight and really know exactly what to expect in retirement because you put in the work, you put in the reps to be able to make it happen.

If that's you, I hope that you'll attend one of our workshops, even if you're far away from retirement. These are in-person retirement trainings. There is no cost for you to attend. So these are sponsored sessions, so you don't have to worry about paying anything to attend. We're going to cover all the federal benefits, those topics and all the decisions that you need to make. And one-on-one help is available afterwards.

That might be, hey, what if I stick around and actually qualify for a full pension, but what if I take this deferred retirement? Or what if I take a refund instead? You can start to see all those numbers come together in that one-on-one help. So you can see all the details at fedimpact.com/attend.

I hope that you will find a location that is close to you on a date that works, and give yourself a fighting chance to live the retirement that you're hoping for.

Thank you all so much for joining us. I hope that you'll stay tuned for benefits and news updates from us here at ProFeds. We are delighted to be able to continue to offer workshops all over the country for federal employees.

You can find those at fedimpact.com/attend, and to register for the next webinar or to see any of the replays of the library that we have, the extensive library that we have of past webinars, you can go to fedimpact.com/webinar.

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. We will catch you next time for the FedImpact Webinar.

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For an introduction to a financial professional in our network: FedImpact.com/request-to-meet

Register for our next short webinar: FedImpact.com/webinar

Find a comprehensive retirement workshop for your area: FedImpact.com/attend