ProFeds Founder, Chris Kowalik, sheds light on what military veterans should know if they are going through a RIF (reduction in force) process.
Key takeaways:
- Ensuring your veterans preference is in your service record
- Process of buying back your military service
- Retaining a receipt of your military buyback
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Additional Resources:
- Link to full RIF training series: FedImpact.com/RIF-training-series
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- Webinar replay: Breaking Down the Military Service Buyback : https://fedimpact.com/webinar/replay-breaking-down-the-military-service-buyback/
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Transcript of this episode coming soon:
Originally released on 3/7/2025
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As a military veteran myself, I can appreciate that millions of federal employees who are considering this RIF action that’s about ready to roll, that you are wondering how your military service really plays a factor in all of this with respect to how your ranking amongst your peers for the chopping block, as well as how your military service is going to count to help you to be eligible to retire or perhaps in the calculation of your pension.
My name is Chris Kowalik, I’m the founder of ProFeds, welcome to the FedImpact Podcast, where we offer candid insights on your federal retirement.
Reduction in Force – What Should I Know if I’m a Military Veteran?
Let’s start by making that you’ve secured your veteran’s preference. In order to do that, you need to take a look at your SF-50, your latest one, the one you’re currently on, and make sure that you have in block 23 your veteran’s preference is identified.
If it isn’t, you need to go immediately to your HR department and make certain that it is because this will be part of the factor of you and your rankings based on the number of different factors, but it’s one of the factors of whether you’re going to be retained on government service or if you’re going to be asked to leave. You might as well make sure that that preference has been properly identified.
Military Buybacks
Military buybacks or what’s really called a military deposit, is a way for you to take your military service that you had where you did not retire, and add that into your federal pension.
There’s a way, even for people who’ve already retired from the military to add that time too. It’s way more complicated and not the nature of this particular podcast. But it’s important to realize that, let’s say you had four years of military service that you can make a deposit, you can pay some money to get credit for those four years into your federal pension.
The process for doing so is not fast. That’s the very nicest way that I can say this. It is a long process to get all of the ducks in a row to be able to get your military deposit bought back, to get that deposit paid. You want to make sure, if you’ve made the deposit, that you have a copy of your receipts.
My fear is always that a receipt has come to you by email at your government email address, and once you leave government service, you no longer have access to that email address. Go back and visit The 12 Things We Want Every Federal Employee to Do to Prepare for the RIF, because that is one of them, downloading your EOPF and making sure that you’ve captured all those important documents from your email that you’re allowed to keep.
Military Deposit Receipts
Military deposit receipts is certainly one of them, and we want to make sure that you have all the evidence that’s required to make sure that you get credit for your military time and that you’ve got the receipt that you did what was required of you in order to get that credit.
Here’s the thing. If you have not started the military buyback process, you will likely not get all the way through it by the time the RIF occurs. Sometimes I have to be the bearer of bad news. It’s certainly worth a try.
But if you know that you wanted to buy back your military service and you just didn’t get around to doing it, you might not get all the way through that process in time for a reduction in force. And so it’s very possible that those years of service are simply not going to be included in your pension calculation.
We have an entire webinar that we did on military buybacks. It goes through several examples, case studies. If you’re curious whether this makes sense for you or not, assuming you haven’t made your military deposit yet, I would encourage you to go watch that webinar, but do it fast because there’s not going to be a whole lot of time for you to be able to get all the way through that process with DFAS and your agency to bring that home. You want to get on that.
You imagine all the veterans in federal service right now are all trying to do the same thing, so I can’t imagine what the opposite of DFAS looks like, trying to get all those estimated earnings so that the deposit can be calculated.
But again, worth a shot. Who knows if there’ll be any intervention by OPM to add extra resources or allow maybe an extended period of time for the buyback to happen? That’s not been announced, it doesn’t even make the news, and so we’ll see if that’s something that OPM is considering and if that comes into play,
Get Connected & Next Steps
We always want you to know your numbers, especially when it comes to things like military buybacks. Does it make sense? Is it worth it to make a deposit for your military service to get credit under FERS? Most of the time it does, sometimes it doesn’t. And so knowing your numbers, super important.
If you want access to that military buyback webinar, a really easy way to do it is pull out your phone, text the word podcast to (224) 444-6144. We’ll be connected.
You’ll get a link not only to those webinars where we have the military deposit webinar, but also to our other training resources like our workshop, podcast, and articles, so you’ll have our whole slew, our whole arsenal of training materials for federal employees that eat your heart out, there’s going to be a lot to be able to review, but military buyback, and that webinar was a really good one, and I hope that you’ll take the time to watch it.
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