ProFeds Founder, Chris Kowalik, reviews the rules for getting the FERS Special Retirement Supplement for employees who are RIF’ed.
Key takeaways:
- Explanation of the FERS Supplement
- Who gets the FERS Supplement?
- When do payments begin?
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Transcript of this episode coming soon:
Originally released on 3/7/2025
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There is a really unique benefit to federal employees called the Special Retirement Supplement. This is a program that looks a lot like Social Security, but it’s paid prior to the age of 62. The question is, are you eligible for it or not, and is it changing?
Hi, I’m Chris Kowalik of ProFeds and welcome to the Fed Impact Podcast where we offer candid insights on your federal retirement.
Reduction in Force – Will I still Get the FERS Supplement?
There are lots of questions surrounding the Special Retirement Supplement and if it’s set to change, but first we have to decide how do you know when you’re eligible to be able to get it in the first place? There are some very distinct categories of employees that we want to talk about with respect to their way in which they are retiring that will determine whether they are going to get the supplement or not.
Who Is Eligible?
We’ll start with fully eligible employees. These are employees who met the normal eligibility rules to be able to retire. As a quick reminder, for those of you who maybe aren’t as familiar with that, that is age 62 with at least five years of service, age 60 with at least 20 years of service and somewhere between 55 and 57 called your minimum retirement age with at least 30 years of service.
That is what qualifies someone to be fully eligible to retire. And assuming that they’re under the age of 62 when they go, they will qualify for this special benefit, the Special Retirement Supplement.
There’s also, when we’re thinking of RIFs, there’s also another two categories of employees that kind of look awful lot alike. It’s those employees who took a VERA, which is a voluntary early out, and those employees who took an involuntary discontinued service retirement.
That’s the involuntary version of the early out. Same rules. You have to be at least 50 with 20 years of service or any age with 25. Those folks do qualify for the Special Retirement Supplement, but there’s a catch. If they’re too young, they’re going to have to wait until they’ve reached their minimum retirement age to be able to draw it.
If you are 50 years old and you take an early out, you’ve got your 20 years of service, you qualify for that, and you take the early out, you still get the supplement. It just won’t start until you’re 57 and then it will run from 57 all the way up until the point that you turn 62.
In the event that you leave government service and you have no pension, okay, there’s no supplement to be paid to you. That’s just the rules. You have to be retiring to be able to get this supplement.
There are two other categories that I think we do need to talk about, and that is those who retire under a disability retirement, and those who retire under the minimum retirement age plus 10 or MRA plus 10 rules. Neither one of those two categories qualify for the Special Retirement Supplement. So an immediate unreduced pension is the calculation and we need to make sure that you hit that in order to get the supplement.
Get Connected & Next Steps
Hopefully this was helpful. Poke around to all these other videos. There’s lots of different topics in this video series. I hope that you’ll take the time to do that, to brush up your knowledge on the reduction in force.
Of course, if we can help you in any way, I hope that you’ll allow us the chance to be able to do that. To be able to see all the ways that we can help federal employees, you can either visit our website fedimpact.com, or you can pull out your phone and text the word podcast to 224-444-6144, and we will get connected right away.
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