ProFeds Founder, Chris Kowalik, lists 12 things every federal employee should do in light of the pending Reduction in Force (RIF) plans in the works from federal agencies. These items will help smooth the transition for employees who may find an abrupt end to their federal service.
Key takeaways:
- Accessing funds to allow for a smooth transition until federal pension begins
- Retaining important documents before you no longer have access to government systems
- Updating your records before you exit federal service
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Additional Resources:
- Link to full RIF training series: FedImpact.com/RIF-training-series
- Download your electronic Official Personnel File (eOPF): FedImpact.com/get-your-eOPF
- Update your federal beneficiaries: FedImpact.com/beneficiaries
- Local workshop locations and dates: FedImpact.com/attend
- To be introduced to a local financial professional: FedImpact.com/request-to-meet
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Transcript of this episode coming soon:
Originally released on 3/7/2025
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There are millions of you wondering what round two of this RIF is going to look like and if it’s going to affect you. It may or may not. But what we do know is there have been a lot of surprises for a lot of federal employees here recently. Many of them have felt very unprepared.
They got their banker’s box and told to fill it up and exit the building. No notice. And if that happens to you, have you done all of the things that you needed to do to be prepared from an administrative standpoint when you leave the government? Just in case, let’s talk about the 12 things that every federal employee should do right now in preparation for the RIF.
Hi, I am Chris Kowalik of ProFeds, and welcome to the FedImpact podcast where we offer candid insights on your federal retirement.
Reduction in Force – 12 Things Every Federal Employee Should Do NOW
I know that many of you feel like you are right in the crosshairs, and others think you’re completely safe. We’ve seen too many people leave the federal government completely unexpected and unprepared. We put together this list of items that are simple, but maybe not always easy, and we’re going to share them with you today.
#1 Download Your Electronic Official Personnel File
This is so critical. Once you leave your position at your agency, you will no longer have access to this. This is not something you’re going to get over on the OPM site or through some other portal. You are going to lose access to your EOPF. This is where all of your service history lives. Think of all of the SF50s that have been generated over your whole career. You need a copy of this document.
Some of you have a relatively small EOPF, for some of you it is quite extensive. If this is a new process for you or you’re just not quite sure how to do it without downloading all the individual pages, we’ve put some really simple instructions together for you on our site. You can go to fedimpact.com/get-your-eopf. Please go there, follow those instructions, have that nice and handy. You will not regret having that in your hot little hands as you depart federal service.
#2 Download the Last Three Years of Your Pay Stubs
Each of you are going to have a little bit different of a way that you access your payroll processor. Some of you, it’s MyPay, and all of that. There’s all these different processors out there. Wherever you go to be able to get your pay stubs, go and just download all of them.
If there’s an easy button for you to be able to push and download all of them, wonderful. If you need to go through and do it individually, do that too. Because if something isn’t quite sitting right with respect to benefits that you had prior to leaving federal service, like life insurance. Even health insurance, if you’re looking to verify all of that, go back five years.
But what we’re really hoping for is that we have a really clear line of your pay during the last three years, presumably your highest three years of earnings, because that will go into your high three average to calculate your pension. You want to have all the backup possible to be able to have that in the event that OPM doesn’t calculate it quite the way that you expected.
#3 Download Your Training Record
For some of you who are going on to actually retire, perhaps your training record doesn’t feel very important. It might be some great memorabilia to go back and look at. But for those of you planning to go on in the federal workforce, or hopefully be able to return back to the federal workforce, having that training record will give you the certifications and all the pieces that you may need to be able to promote on your new resume.
Very important. Again, some of you’ll have a really thick training record and others of you might be a little lighter, but having that in your hot little hands, super easy.
#4 Update Your Login Information on Your Payroll Processor
Like we said before when you’re looking at pay stubs, you want to make sure that once you leave government service that you don’t need your Cat Card to be able to access it. Some agencies call these different cards. Whatever your access card is that you plug into your computer to be able to get information or log onto the network.
If your payroll processor requires you to be logged into that, if you’re using a government email, make sure to update it with your personal email so that you can still log in and get all the information that you need. Just to be safe, we want you to make sure to download all your pay stubs, but being able to go back through and see perhaps your final pay stub with your annual leave on it, those types of things, having that login will be really helpful.
#5 Update the Email That You Use with Your Thrift Savings Plan
If you have your government email attached to your TSP account and you leave the government, when you go to log into TSP, you will not be able to satisfy the two-factor authentication. Because they’re going to send a message to your government email that you no longer have access to.
You can fix this by contacting the TSP, but when there are a lot of people just like you contacting them to solve this problem, you’re likely going to be on the phone for a really long time. Do yourself a favor, don’t get stuck in this mess. Update the email address that you use with the TSP so you’re able to satisfy that two-factor authentication.
#6 Get a Retirement Estimate
Most of you do not need to talk to a human to be able to get a retirement estimate. Your agencies have provided some sort of portal for you to be able to log into and pull your own estimate. You put in a retirement date and it spits out approximately what your benefit is going to be. You don’t want to hold this as gold. These retirement estimates are just that, they’re estimates.
And oftentimes they include service that won’t actually count in your pension calculation or eligibility, like military service if you haven’t bought it back. But it’s a great starting point for the information that your agency has on file for you to get an idea of where you’re standing with respect to your agency.
Grab one of those retirement estimates. Heck, do a couple of them if you feel like it, with different retirement dates, but have that. Because once you leave your agency, you will not have access to that system any longer.
#7 Ensure that Your Veteran’s Preference is Indicated on Your SF50
This will be important as your agency starts to rank employees through the RIF process of identifying who’s on the chopping block to be let go. You want to make sure, looking at block 23, that you have your veteran’s preference identified. If it’s not, be sure to contact your agency right away to be able to try to get it fixed.
I know it’s tough contacting HR, many of them were affected by the deferred resignation program, that offer that was made. And so, HR departments, they all saw the writing of the wall of how much work was going to be coming into their inbox with everything that was coming, and so many of them decided to go ahead and retire.
I understand if it’s hard to contact HR and get an answer, but at least try, because it may be the difference between you being on the chopping block and not.
#8 Make Sure You Have a Copy of Your Military Deposit Receipt
While we’re talking about veteran status, let’s talk about the military deposits as well. If you have already made your military deposit, make sure that you have a copy of your receipt for that deposit, that will be in your EOPF. If you followed step number one, you’ve already got a copy of that, assuming that it made it into your EOPF, but make sure that you’ve got that.
If you got an email from your HR department that showed the receipt, remember, you’re not going to have access to that email anymore once you leave. We want to be prepared. When you leave work one day, be prepared that you are not coming back, and make sure that you have everything that you need.
With respect to military deposits, if you have not already made your deposit and you want to do so, something very important that you need to know, military deposits must be made prior to departing federal service. If you have not started the process where you have to contact DFAS first and get your earnings, and then your HR department has to calculate the deposit that you owe, and then you have to apply to make those deposits, you will likely not have the opportunity to do so if you take an early out with a short window or a discontinued service retirement with a short window.
Of course, if you’re flat laid off, you’re not going to have that opportunity either. So very, very important now, before these offers start to come out or these demands start to come out through the RIF, please start this process if it’s your intention to make a military deposit.
We did a whole webinar on military deposits, so I’m not suggesting that everyone should make their deposit, but I do think it’s worthwhile to explore what those deposits allow to happen with respect to making you eligible to retire sooner, or perhaps simply increasing the pension that you’re going to get. But whatever you do, keep your receipts for any deposits that are made. And get on it if it’s really your intention to make those deposits.
#9 Keep Documents
I’m going to leave that nice and broad. But think about the documents that you have access to at work. And I’m not talking about sensitive documents or anything like that. We’ve all done it, we send personal things to our work email, and then we realize we no longer have access to that. Be sure to download that.
We’ve talked already about your EOPF and your training record, and those types of things. But any of those documents that you will no longer have access to that are either in your email or at your office, make sure that you’re getting a copy of those.
Again, assuming that it’s okay to have a copy of those. Not suggesting we have any classified material or sensitive material that’s out there. But according to what you know to be true with respect to document retention, being able to keep a copy of those if it’s worthwhile to you.
#10 Save Contacts
Number 10 is along the lines of saving documents, but it’s saving contacts. If you have all of these different people that you’ve worked with for all these years and you want to remain in contact with them, you are going to have to find a different way.
Because the likelihood that you or them, or both, might be RIF’ed and you no longer have that central access point of email or an office line to be able to find somebody, you want to make sure that you have those contacts saved. Get a personal email, get a personal phone number to be able to contact them.
#11 Update Your Beneficiaries
Number 11, this one’s getting really serious here. Number 11 is update your beneficiaries. I can’t stress how important this piece is to everyone, even if you think your beneficiaries are good to go. We’ve made a very simple place to be able to find all of the beneficiary documents that you are going to need.
You can go to fedimpact.com/beneficiaries, and it will link directly to all four of those documents. Actually, three of them. And then, TSP you actually have to log into, but we’re at least telling you what to do for each of those. Please make sure that those are updated. Again, even if you think you’ve done it in the past, make sure you get them updated and keep a copy.
Once you update those beneficiaries, it should hit your EOPF. You should see a validation that beneficiary was updated. If you’re already gone by that point, you’re not going to be able to see that validation. But at least if you’re still onboard, you’d be able to have to be able to save for your family to make sure that if something should happen to you, that the right people get paid.
#12 Have Cash on Hand for this Transition Period
And then, finally, number 12, this is an important one, and one that gets overlooked too often. And that is having cash on hand for this transition period. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the government with respect to how quickly they’re going to pay people who are leaving in one fell swoop with respect to the RIF, but I do believe that it is important that you have cash to tide you over until OPM can get their act together and get everybody paid.
Our hope is that all those payments and the processing of your retirement claims happen quickly. But if it doesn’t, we don’t want you to turn to high interest credit cards or going to get a loan when you no longer have a job. There are a lot of what ifs in that process, so make sure you’ve got cash for that transition period.
The fastest way to fill your savings account in a crunch is to lower the amount that you’re contributing to the TSP. I’m a big fan of contributing to TSP and making sure that you are giving yourself the best opportunity to have a big bucket of money to be able to pull from when you are retired.
However, it can’t be at the expense of having a well-funded savings account that you’re able to tap into until everything settles down and the finances become a little bit more regular. I’m not a fan of reducing the amount that you’re putting into TSP, but in this case, being able to let that money flow to your checking account instead of going to TSP will allow you to set that aside for that transition. Hopefully that’s not the only savings that you have, but it is a way to beef that up right here at the end.
I would encourage you, of course, if the money can support it, to at least do the 5% in your TSP for those pay periods. Because you are getting a match, which doubles your money. I would hate for you to get rid of that. But hopefully being able to lower the contribution that you’re making to TSP will allow you to have a beefed up savings account to help in that transition.
There’s a ton of additional information that you guys need to know if you plan to actually exit federal service and figure out what to do with this pension and how all these benefits work, and the choices that you’re going to need to be making. It’s one thing to be prepared administratively, it’s another thing to be prepared financially.
Get Connected & Next Steps
We encourage you to know your numbers. When you know your numbers, your financial decisions become obvious. This series is all about helping you to better understand all the different levers that are in the RIF process, whether it’s a voluntary separation through an early out, or an involuntary separation through a discontinued service retirement, or something in between. We want to help you to be sure to know what that is.
Our workshops that we provide throughout the country, it’s the flagship program that our company has to be able to provide great training to federal employees who really need to understand all the choices that are available to them. Following those workshops, we always give one-on-one help for anyone who asks for it.
We’re delighted to be able to do that. You can see all the details of the training workshops that we have available to you by going to fedimpact.com/attend, or pull out your phone, text the word “podcast” to (224) 444-6144, and we will be connected and be able to get you all the tools and resources that you need.
I hope today’s session has been helpful to you with respect to the 12 things we want every federal employee to do. Some of them might’ve been really obvious to you, but I hope there were a couple that were good reminders for you to be more prepared for this RIF when it comes.
Thank you so much. And if this episode was helpful, I hope that you’ll give us a subscribe so that you’re sure not to miss an episode.
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