Delivered on: Thursday, July 25, 2024

To watch on YouTube, CLICK HERE

Applying for Federal Retirement

Preparing retirement paperwork to retain your earned benefits in retirement, avoid delays, and know what to expect

• TIMELINE: How far in advance of your retirement date you should submit your retirement application so your agency can do its part
• DECISIONS: Important elections you will make on the retirement application for protecting benefits like your pension, life insurance, and health insurance
• DEFAULTS: What happens to your benefits if you fail to make an election on your retirement paperwork
• CONSENT: The most important decision that your spouse gets to make on your retirement application
• DELAYS: The most common reasons that retirement applications are rejected or held for further review by OPM

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Prefer to read instead? A transcript of this webinar is below:

Hello everyone and welcome to the FedImpact webinar today on Applying for Federal Retirement. If there is a loaded webinar, this one is it because there is so much that goes into making decisions about retiring from federal service and the retirement application process is simply the final stage that memorializes your desire to retire and your decision to do so.

There is a lot that goes in behind the scenes of the process I’m going to show you today, we’ll have a lot of great resources for you to be able to refer back to because this topic of finally stepping into retirement from federal service is one that deserves your attention and investing some time to be able to get this right.

I’m your presenter, Chris Kowalik. I am the founder of ProFeds and the developer of the FedImpact Retirement Workshop.

We’ve got a team of trainers that go out and deliver this training all day every day. They are quite amazing and do an awesome job. If you’ve had the chance to attend one of our retirement workshops, you know exactly what I’m talking about, these folks show up with tons of energy and the desire to help so many of you as you step into that retirement window.

Applying for Federal Retirement: Agenda

Applying for federal retirement, preparing retirement paperwork to retain your earned benefits in retirement, avoid delays, and know what to expect. That is the nature of today’s session. There’s a lot that gets packed into this. So let’s jump into the agenda here. There’s a lot on this page. I’m going to try to make the rest of the slides not look quite as full as this, but we wanted to get it all in here.

Timeline

Of course, we’re going to talk about the timeline for retirement. How far in advance you’re supposed to submit your retirement application.

Decisions

The decisions that you’re going to be making on that retirement application to protect your benefits. Very, very important that we have the right boxes checked.

Defaults

What happens if you simply fail to make an election on your retirement paperwork for some of your benefits? Don’t worry the government has a plan for you. There are some default settings that if you fail to make an election something happens on your behalf. Pay very close attention to this.

Consent

For those of you who are married, your spouse gets to make a really important decision on your retirement application. It is important that both of you are on the same page and understand the ramifications, good and bad, of this particular decision. I will be sure to point this out exactly where it is in the application.

Delays

This is a very common question that we get like, “How long is it going to take OPM to get my stuff straight and what can I do to be better prepared for that process and make it go as fast as possible?” That is the underpinning of everything we’re going to be talking about today.

What this webinar will NOT cover

I will not be able to go into why different elections are made or what the numbers look like in a retirement application as far as the consequences to some of these benefits decisions.

However, we are going to have some resources that we’re going to be able to direct you to on material we’ve already covered in prior webinars and certainly our workshop and some other resources throughout today’s session to be able to refer you to where you can go deeper into that topic and get the answers to the questions that you likely have.

If I were to cover all of this, we’d be here for four days and we can’t possibly do that. So I’m going to try to stay as focused as I can on the retirement application process and knowing that we have a ton of other great resources for you to be able to dig in to the subjects, the topics that we’re going to be talking about with respect to elections of your benefits today.

The 8 ProFeds Planning Principles

I want to start with the eight ProFeds planning principles. If you’ve been on a number of our webinars, you’ve heard these before, but I think it’s timely to be able to talk about these eight principles.

#1. It’s never too late, too early or too often to plan. Some of you are on this webinar and you’ve got a long, long time before you retire and good for you for being here. If you feel like, whoa, I’m too late to the game and I plan to retire at the end of this month, it might feel too late for you. There’s always choices that we can make to better our situation, it’s never too late to do that. We, of course, prefer that you be looking earlier in your career, the more time you can put on your side, the better.

#2. When you know your numbers, your financial decisions become obvious. This is our training motto. This is what we do when we are in our retirement workshops. We want to help you understand the financial consequences and see what your numbers will look like so that you can decide in probably a pretty obvious fashion like, “Whoa, I need to look at this more closely so that I’m sure that I’m making the right decision.”

#3. You are free to choose but you are not free from consequence. I share this with you because there are lots of choices that you get to make and there are lots of consequences that go with those choices, good and bad. It is important that although you can do something, you recognize that sometimes that is not in your best interest to do so. Again, you’re free to choose that option, but you’re not free from the consequence that is built into that decision. I’m going to point some of those out today, very, very important.

#4. If you don’t make a decision, someone will make it for you. In most of these cases that someone is the government, right? There is some predetermined decisions that will be made if you fail to make them yourself. The better option is for you to make a solid decision based on your actual situation and not let that decision be dictated to you later because you failed to act.

#5. It’s okay not to like the government solution to your problem. Listen, this is not me bashing on the government. We’re simply acknowledging that the government could not possibly have created the best default scenarios for the millions of people that fall under the system. They just can’t. They have a set rule of how these benefits are going to work and what your choices are.

If you don’t like the solutions that the government is making available to you, there are likely other choices that you have outside of the government programs that may exactly get you what you want. Don’t be afraid to go look at other options outside of the government programs.

In fact, one of the things that we share in the workshops is the biggest reason you shouldn’t be afraid to go look at other solutions is that most of the government solutions are private products in a government wrapper, they have a contract with a private carrier to provide most of your benefits. Think about your health insurance. Your life insurance is underwritten by MetLife. Long-term care underwritten by John Hancock, do not be afraid to go out and look at other solutions.

#6. The hard conversations are always worth having. I know that it is not fun to talk about the day you die and what happens to your family and your assets, the legacy that you are leaving when that happens, but it is always worth having because the consequences to not having those conversations are just too hard. The consequences are very real and we want to make sure that you have some courage to be able to have those conversations even though it’s not a good topic to talk about.

#7. Retirement is complex and seeking professional help is admirable. Too often I think federal employees get stuck in this idea that you have to figure all of these things out yourself. Maybe you come into some free training like we’re providing and you’re like, “Okay, now I know exactly what I’m supposed to do.”

But guys, this stuff is complicated and you asking for help from a licensed professional who is able to guide you through these decisions and be able to clearly see the consequences to the decisions you are making, not just in your federal benefits, but all of the benefits that you have even out in the private sector, thinking about your spouse’s benefits perhaps from their employer.

You’ve got 401k from your spouse, you’ve got your own investments outside of the TSP, you’ve got maybe a private life insurance policy in addition to FEGLI. You’ve got all these working parts. Don’t be afraid to ask somebody who knows what they’re doing in this space of working with federal employees to help you pull all that together in a plan so that you know that what you think is going to happen is actually going to happen in real life.

Do not be afraid to do that and get sucked into this idea that hiring a financial professional is bad because they’re going to take all your money. That is absolutely ridiculous. I deal with financial professionals every day who are committed to be able to help you guys see the options in front of you and understanding the consequences that you are faced with so that you can be guided properly in this process.

#8. This is the most important planning principle that we have. Nobody should care more about your retirement than you do. Your HR department is not going to care more. A financial professional is not going to care more. Your spouse is not going to care more. You have to care about your own retirement and all of that comes right in line with taking action to put the pieces in motion that need to be there so that you get the very best out of the retirement that you’ve worked so hard for.

Number eight is going to rear its ugly head a couple of times today. You have to care about this stuff and if you don’t, other people are going to step in and start doing the dirty work for you and you’re probably not going to like it. You have to be involved in this process. It is nobody else’s responsibility to get this right than you. And I say all of this with love. I hope you all know that I show up every month for these webinars with little nuggets to be able to share with you, but this is the underpinning.

If we believe that someone else is responsible for our future, we will never take the decisive action that is needed to craft the future that we want. And I believe it’s within your power to be able to do so. And part of what I’m going to be doing today is to show you the mechanics of applying for retirement. But as far as the decisions that you are making on these documents, you need some help and you caring about yourself and your future is going to put you in the driver’s seat to those decisions.

Introduction

Let’s do a quick introduction of this topic. We’ve got some overarching things that we need to talk about before we jump into the documents.

High Level Workflow

As far as the high level workflow here, when we’re thinking about applying for retirement, you as the employee are going to complete the retirement application. You are going to submit it to your HR department. Your HR department is going to complete their checklist. They have a whole slew of things that they have to do on your behalf and when they’re done, they’re going to submit it to OPM. And then OPM will review and finalize the retirement and they’ll simply notify you when that is done.

A Typical Timeline

That’s the really easy-peasy high level workflow that looks really simple. It’s not actually quite that simple, and I want to show you more of a timeline of how this works. Starting at the left hand side, don’t jump ahead here, start at the left hand side.

You submit your retirement application. Most agencies want you to do this about six months in advance of your retirement. Some agencies say, “Hey, just give us three months.” Whatever your agency asks for you, give that to them because they know what they have to do in the next step, which is reviewing and preparing the application, the actual package that is going to go to OPM.

There’s plenty of things behind the scenes that you want your HR department to have plenty of time to be able to do and get right before your application heads off to OPM. Now we have your actual retirement date. That is the moment in time that your HR department will send the application to OPM.

You’ll notice no matter how soon in advance you submit your application to HR, it doesn’t get to OPM faster. You’re not going to be able to accelerate the OPM timeline, but what you are doing is you’re giving your HR department the best opportunity to advocate on your behalf to ensure that that application is complete and accurate.

If you decide because you’ve had three consecutive bad days at work that you’re out and you’re going to drop your retirement papers and leave, you are not giving your HR department the time to go over your application with a fine tooth comb and make sure to get everything right. And so the likelihood that you are going to have errors once that hits OPM and they discover it and then kick it back and it has to be corrected and all of that, you are going to be in a world of hurt as far as this timeline goes.

Give every opportunity for your agency to help you. I hope for all of our HR people on here, you can appreciate I’m not bashing you guys. You have a job to do and you need the time to be able to do it, and I want all the employees listening today to appreciate that role that the HR department needs to play.

I’m generally saying the HR department, depending on the kind of agency that you are with, this may be your personnel department. This may be a special retirement division. It just depends how big the agency is and your part of the agency and what that agency’s process is.

I’m just using HR loosely here because every agency kind of has a different way to do this, which only adds to the complexity of this process. They’re going to review and prepare the application and they’re going to take a while to be able to do this because there are lots of little steps in here. But once they send your retirement application to OPM when you retire, that starts a trigger of other things.

The first is two to three weeks after your retirement date, you are going to receive your annual leave lump sum payment. This is actually coming from your agency, not OPM. Your agency, part of what they’re doing in that six month window is getting all of these things prepped and then they’re ready to be able to issue the final check for your annual leave. You’re going to get that just a couple of weeks after you leave federal service.

At this time, we’re going to switch gears to OPM. About two months after you leave service, you are going to start to get what we call interim payments. I don’t have the time today to be able to go into all of the details of interim payments, but I’ll point out a resource here in just a bit that will let you dig into what that means and some of the consequences of being in an interim status.

That interim payment briefly is going to be typically 60 to 70% of whatever your pension is supposed to be. The reason that OPM is going to start this is it’s going to take them a little bit of time to get to your retirement application. It’s going to sit in a filing cabinet for quite a while before someone picks it up and starts to work it.

They know when they first get the package, that payments need to start and they’re going to go off of the best estimate that their HR department put in the retirement package and they’re going to pay 60 to 70%, sometimes a little bit higher, but 60 to 70% is pretty common.

They’re going to start to pay that and say, “Hey, listen, while we’re trying to get our stuff together over here, here’s some money to tide you over and then we’ll work out all the details a little bit later.” I’m oversimplifying this process, but that’s the general gist of the interim payments. Fast forward 9 to 12 months after you retire, this is when you’re going to start to get regular payments like your actual pension payments from OPM.

There are some people who are able to get into a shorter line with their retirement application based on the criteria of the application itself. Some of the nuances, we’ll talk more about those here in just a second. And some people are able to get their retirement application processed rather quickly.

In all fairness, my husband just retired from federal service about a year ago and his application did not take 9 to 12 months to get his final payment. I would rather you be prepared that for 9 to 12 months you are not going to get the right pension check.

And if it happens sooner, then great, but I want you to be prepared financially cashflow wise to be in a little bit of a state of limbo for about a year. I hope it doesn’t take OPM that long to be able to do so, but because of the number of retirement applications that we review here and seeing the timeline of the payments that come out of that, this 9 to 12 months is not unreasonable to look at.

We’d rather you be prepared for 9 to 12 months and it only take five to six months to process, but either way, there’s going to be a delay that you need to be prepared for.

Big Decisions, Short Application.

Filling out the form itself I will say is relatively easy. I’m going to give you some pointers here today to help unmuddy some of this, but that’s the easy part. Knowing what to choose on these forms, what boxes to check is not so easy. Things like what should your actual retirement date be? Are you prepared to retire? Do you have the money? Is it the best day of the month? Is it the best month of the year? Is it the best year of the decade?

Whatever it might be that ultimately dictates what your pension is going to be. Getting the right date is more complicated than just picking one out of thin air.

Of course we want to make sure you’re eligible to retire and all that basic stuff, but they’re still optimizing of that date. I will show you the webinar that we did on that particular topic here in just a moment, but getting the actual date of retirement is important.

Next, how to protect your pension after you die. This is going to be a huge decision that you and your spouse are making and you want to get this right? Yeah, which box to check. That’s the easy part, but it’s just like, well, which one and what the consequences?

And then the last example that I’m giving here is how to retain your life insurance once you retire. The boxes are easy to check. Knowing which one to do is hard. I mentioned this a moment ago, but we have to appreciate that agencies have different methods for submitting these documents and who they’re going to go to. Some agencies are all electronic and you’ll never deal with a paper form unless you have perhaps a notary that’s required based on your circumstances.

Other agencies are purely paper as well, so it’s really going to depend. For my husband, when he retired, he went through the GRB system, so for those of you who have access to that system or something similar where you’re able to log in and submit your information, see the retirement application process and be able to plug in all of that, that’s a way for an agency to be able to electronically accept your retirement application, whereas other agencies don’t have anything like that at all.

You’re going to need to figure out from your agency what is the method that they have you submit a retirement application. I wish I had an easy flow chart for everybody to know if you’re with this agency, this is what you do and this is how long it takes. But unfortunately, I don’t have a slide large enough to be able to put all that on there and frankly that changes even with location within an agency for how that’s going to work.

Getting Ready

When you are getting ready to apply for retirement, we hope that you have already learned about and decided on what elections you are going to make in the application process way before you ever start the application process.

We want the application to be somewhat of a formality that you’ve already decided, you’ve already put in place in the private sector anything you need to do to shore up some of the shortcomings of the government benefits. You’ve already thought about all of these things, so when it comes time to retire, it’s simply putting the right checks in the right boxes and you’re done.

You do not want this process to be when you’re just learning about how these benefits work and some of the complexity that goes into them. I encourage you to please go to quality retirement training to understand your options. Of course, we have retirement training. I’d be delighted if you came to ours. There are plenty of retirement trainings out there that are amazing and there are many of them that are garbage.

And I hate to hear that federal employees went to a retirement workshop with someone else, whether it’s their agency, maybe it was under contract with a private carrier, maybe it was another private carrier like ours who’s out there to be able to do this type of training where you leave, you are more confused than when you went in there and you have nobody to talk to figure this stuff out.

And so our retirement training, we go to great lengths to make sure that we’re including the right kind of material and we have some ongoing assistance for you following the workshops. We’ll talk a little bit more about that here in just a moment.

Get that one-on-one help to see your numbers. It’s great to learn about things by examples that are given, case studies, that type of thing, and that’s helpful to understand the concept, but what most of you want to know is what do my numbers look like? How is my retirement going to look? And not just your federal benefits but your whole financial picture.

And that is impossible for your agency, your HR department to do no matter how bad they want to help you prepare to retire, that is not their role and they are strictly prohibited from providing advice on what you are doing.

You want to be able, in this process, you want to explore the effect of all these different decisions that you are making. Ask questions to be fully informed and frankly, take action to put a plan in place.

You have to know before you go, if you find out that a benefit works a particular way after you’ve retired and you’ve already made your elections, too bad, so sad, there’s going to be nothing you’re able to do to go back and change those.

There are short little windows that you are able to go in and change your benefit elections and most of the time we don’t see people find it within that period, that window, we find them years later regretting the decisions that they made because they did not understand the consequences. Please don’t let that be you. Make sure that you’re getting all of this information long before it is time to complete your retirement application.

Preparing Retirement Paperwork

Let’s take a look at the retirement paperwork itself of the different types of forms that you would be completing and then we’ll dig into some of the details.

Application to retire

As far as the application to retire, if you are under the old retirement system CSRS, very few of you are left in that system, but you would complete the SF-2801 and for FERS, the vast majority of the rest of you, you would complete the SF-3107. These are applications for immediate retirement.

If you happen to be going out under MRA plus 10, a deferred retirement disability, those are going to be different forms that you’re going to use. But for today’s session, I’m going to focus on the application for immediate retirement because the vast majority of employees go out under this style of retirement.

FEGLI election form

Next up, the FEGLI election form, the SF-2818. I do want to caution you that this is a separate document aside from the application to retire, so please don’t forget to complete this one.

I wish they would’ve just included it as a page in the retirement application so that it wasn’t treated separately, but they didn’t ask me. And so here we are with a separate document that is easy to forget and some default elections happen if you fail to submit this. I will talk about what those defaults are today.

Any requested documents

Of course, there will be some requested documents throughout the application and it is important that we get those specific documents attached to the retirement application and no more. Meaning don’t include documents just because you think they might be helpful to OPM. Only include them if you’re asked for them. That will be a way to expedite your application.

TSP is NOT part of this process

It is important to note that TSP is not part of this retirement application process. The TSP is a separate process altogether, but in order for you to gain access to your TSP account, at least for the majority of you, you will already needed to have retired so that OPM can update the TSP on your retirement status so that then it unlocks the ability for you to take money out of the TSP.

For some of you who are a little bit older, you’re over 59 and a half. There are some options for you to take TSP out. We are not going to talk about TSP today, but for most of you, you’re going to need to wait until OPM has pinged TSP to let them know that you are in fact retired, which will allow you to start that process over on the TSP side if you’re looking to get money out right away.

Retirement Document (For Immediate Retirement)

Let’s talk a little bit more deeply about the retirement application itself and the documents that are going to be included. Again, this is for an immediate retirement. An application for immediate retirement, there are going to be four main pages of the application, so it’s not terribly long. There will be one page for a spouse’s consent to survivor election that’s just a one pager, but a really important one page.

And then a document called the Certified Summary of Federal Service. It’s a two pager and if you’ve been on our webinars before, you’ve probably heard me talk about the certified summary and how important it is for you to know what service has made it into your service record. This is a great way to know, you not only are going to do this as you apply for retirement, you also have the ability to do this well in advance of retirement so there are no surprises.

We’ll talk more about the certified summary and really all of these pages here in just a moment. The FEGLI Continuation of Life Insurance document that I mentioned before, the SF-2818, this is just a one pager. It looks to be really simple, but the errors that are on pages like this are expansive and so I want to be able to show you a real breakdown of what you’re electing and what you might give up by mistake if you check the wrong box.

It is also important if you are reviewing your retirement application, so you’ve gone through and you’ve taken your first guess at how all this is and you’re perhaps doing a counseling session with your agency or you’re having your supervisor look at it or you are coming to a workshop and you’re having one of our advisors look at it, whatever it might be, you probably will not have things in there like your social security number and your banking information and signatures just yet.

You’ve just tried to make sure that you’ve got all the right boxes checked, but don’t forget to go back and add those things before you submit it because, of course, that will cause your application to get kicked back initially from your HR department, but if they fail to catch something, it will get kicked back by OPM as well.

Best Practices

Some best practices when it comes to the retirement application. You want to submit your retirement application about six months in advance of your planned retirement date.

Again, check with your agency, ask what their timeline is and do whatever they say, do whatever they say. They’re the ones that have to do the next stage and they know how long that takes based on the staffing and based on the number of people who are also planning to retire from your agency and any of the other workload that that office might have.

The second best practice is to use the fillable form. This is going to reduce errors. There’s a real push from OPM to use these fillable forms because most of the errors that were happening on these documents that caused these retirement packages to get kicked back to an agency was because of handwriting errors.

They couldn’t read what was written. And so if you simply use the fillable form, we’re reducing all of that complexity for OPM because it’s going to simply reduce the errors that are on the package itself.

Next, answer all the questions. We’ve got to make sure that we are being smart about what we’re doing. If there’s a question there, we need to answer it. Oftentimes, as you’ve seen in every other government form, it’s if you answer yes to this, then go to this question. If you answer no, then go to this question. You want to follow all those instructions very carefully.

Next, do not scratch out, correct, mark through or white out any fields in your retirement application. Let’s say you use the fillable form like we’re suggesting and then you realize, no, I put the wrong date of birth or the wrong retirement date, or I said yes here, but I really meant no, you need to go back and do it again. You don’t white through. Even if you line through it in an initial, that’s not enough. OPM will kick this application back, so make sure it is perfect, no corrections on that document.

And then next, like I mentioned before, I’m going to say it again, only provide additional documents if it’s indicated. If on the application it says, if you answer this way to this question, provide this document, then of course, provide that document. But don’t provide extra documents because it will delay the retirement process.

Helpful Resources

A couple of helpful resources as we think about the gravity of the decisions that are being made.

We do a lot of webinars here at FedImpact and we record all of those and make those available in our webinar library. You can see all of the recordings at FedImpact.com/webinar. There are five that I’m going to direct your attention to that are specific to the decisions being made in this application.

The first is Choosing Your Perfect Day to Retire. We’re going to go into a lot of detail about how this process works, what the payment schedule looks like. Is it the first day of the month, the last day of the month, somewhere in between? Does the month of the year matter? All of those things we’re going to talk about in that webinar.

Next step is the Strategy of the Survivor Benefit Plan. This is the way to protect a portion of your pension for a surviving spouse. For those of you who are not married or choose to leave your pension to someone other than your spouse, at least that’s the idea that you have, stay tuned until the end because I’m going to have some special news for you. The next webinar on this list is FEGLI Choices in Retirement. We’re going to break down and give examples of all the different choices you have about how your life insurance works in retirement.

We’re going to show you how you’re choosing it here on the retirement application itself. But as far as what you’re choosing, please, please go watch that webinar because I take the time to dig into that topic so that it’s easier to understand. Next up is your Retirement Scorecard. This particular one doesn’t have a lot to do with today’s topic, but more so the overarching readiness to step into retirement.

There’s a lot more than just your federal benefits that has to be taken into account for you to know that it’s really time. We like to tell people, “Hey, listen, everybody can retire once. We really don’t want you to have to retire twice, meaning you have to go back to work after you’ve retired from federal service. Do yourself a favor, make sure you’re really ready.”

And this retirement scorecard, not only the webinar, but the actual scorecard itself that you can go through will give you an idea of how you’re scoring on each of these main topics, federal benefits being one of them, but all the other parts of your financial life to give you an idea of where you might be a little weak that you need to shore up before it’s time to actually retire.

The last webinar that we have here on the list is the Last Paycheck Versus the First Retirement Check. This was a really fun webinar to do and it came out of a slide that we have in our workshop. It is one of the favorite slides that the speakers get to deliver because it sums up all of the pieces of the workshop to show people what it really looks like from that last paycheck to the first retirement check, and they see the difference in the dollar amounts and all the levers that can be pulled to change these numbers. Really, really good webinar.

Again, our speakers ask me, “Please do a webinar on that topic because it’s just such a frying pan in the face when it comes to looking at these numbers.” And you might look at your numbers and be like, “Okay, cool. That’s exactly what I was expecting.” But if you don’t say that, you might need to rethink, is it really time to retire before you submit this retirement application?

Next resource is the FedImpact Workshops. You guys hear us talk about this all the time. This is our flagship program, the number one thing that we do here at ProFeds. You can see all of the locations and dates that are available for registration at FedImpact.com/attend. This is full day in-person retirement training with some one-on-one help available afterwards.

A little bit more about this at the end of today’s session to wrap this all up, but great resource to be able to get all the pieces of your retirement in order and start to see all these choices that you’re going to need to make. The last resource that I have on here, this is a little bit of a bittersweet resource. This is the OPM Retirement Guide. They sure have made it look easy to retire and I will tell you it’s not.

You can go to that. We just put a quick link to FedImpact.com/opm-guide. It will redirect you over to the OPM site where this document lives, but that way you have this nice and handy and can download it. It is helpful, but it oversimplifies some of the complexity in this and whether that was intentional or not, I’m not sure, but there’s a lot of moving parts that go into retirement and we want to make sure that you have all of it.

Application for Immediate Retirement

Let’s look at the application for immediate retirement. I’m going to go ahead and share the full application for you, like the OPM version of this application because when we do screen captures of these things, sometimes the words are a little bit harder to read, but I’m trying to show you where on the document you’re looking. You having the full document available to you to be able to read more normally will help you as you’re looking at the slides.

Look in the handout section, you will see a link to the FERS immediate retirement application. I’ve also put it in the area below the slides where you’re able to get to that as well. We’re going to start with the first page of the application. Section A is just the basic identifying information. I am not going to go through every single field here. I’m pretty certain that you know who you are, when you were born, all that good stuff, but there’s a couple of things I want to point out to you. I’ve highlighted them here.

Section A – Identification Information

In section A, question 4C is your home email address. You want to make sure that this is accurate and you also want to be checking this email address once you leave federal service.

You cannot put a government email address in this box because you will no longer have access to that email address when you leave government service. You won’t be able to get any communication from OPM electronically. You’re going to have to wait for things to come to you in the mail. Be sure that this is a legitimate email address that you will check.

The next thing I want to point out is question number eight. Is this an application for disability retirement? If you are retiring under a disability retirement or you are going to apply to retire that way, there are other documents that you are going to have to submit.

You’re going to have to submit this one too that we’re going to talk about today, but you also want to make sure that you’re looking at all of the other documents. We’ve put them in one place. You can go to FedImpact.com/disability and you will see the long list of things that are required of you to apply for disability.

Again, the rest of this document will still be pertinent to you because you’re going to have to complete this one as well, but all the extra documents will be at that link.

Section B – Federal Service

Next step, we want to talk about your federal service in this section. The piece that I want to call your attention to is question number two, your date of final separation. Ideally, we want this to be the last day of a given month so that you don’t miss out on any pay.

This is something that we covered in that Perfect Day to Retire webinar where retiring on the last day of the month means your pension begins accruing the very next day. So there’s no gap in how you’re paid as an employee and how you’re paid as a retiree.

If you retire on a date other than the last day of the month, it is very possible that you are unnecessarily giving up some of your retirement check. There are exceptions to all of this that I’m not going to get into today, but the general rule of thumb, last day of a given month is your final separation date.

Next up number four, have you performed active honorable service in the armed forces or other uniform services of the United States? If you answer yes, you are going to need to complete schedule A and attach it to this form. We’re going to see schedule A here in just a moment, but it is important that you have ever had military service or other uniform service, the public health service, that type of thing, that you answer yes to this document or to this particular question.

Question number five, are you receiving or have you applied for military retired pay? This is if you’re receiving your regular retirement from the military, you’re going to answer yes here and then you’re going to answer another question just a bit later in schedule B.

Section C – Marital Information

Next up, section C is your marital information. With the first question, are you married now? If you are currently married, you select yes, you will need to attach your marriage certificate to application.

You’re also going to enter some information from that marriage certificate, but you’re going to actually have to supply a copy of that marriage certificate along with your application to retire. One field that gets a lot of people tripped up is 1F. Where they’re asking the marriage performed by, it looks like that yellow area where we’ve got that arrow pointing to in 1F, it looks like you’re supposed to put something there, but that is not a field. All they’re asking is was it a clergyman or a justice of the peace or other?

You check those boxes. If it’s an other, you can explain it to the right hand side, but don’t try to alter this document to put something under where it says marriage performed by. They do not want to name of who performed the marriage or anything like that. They’re asking the clergymen or justice of the peace or somebody else.

Question number two, do you have a living former spouse to whom a court order gives a survivor annuity or a portion of your retirement benefits based on your federal employment? You want to be very careful here.

If you have a living former spouse, but the court order doesn’t say anything about them getting any part of your retirement, or if you die getting part of it, then the answer is no. If the court order does not grant survivor benefit or a portion of your pension to be paid to that former spouse while you’re living, the answer is no. Very, very important that we get this right, because if you answer yes, you’re going to have to supply a copy of the court order.

They’re going to do all this research on that court order to make sure it’s legitimate, and then they’re going to be like, “Wait a minute, there’s no benefits awarded in here.” And you got in the wrong line for no reason and it will be a much longer line. The court order line is very long, and so do not get in that line if you don’t need to. Of course, if you have a former spouse and you’ve got a court order, yes, we of course, want you to answer yes and attach that document, but don’t do it if no benefits have been awarded.

Next up, survivor benefits. In this particular part of the application, options number one through three have to do with your current spouse. There are three different choices that you have as a firsts employee/retiree to what happens to your pension when you die. This is one of the webinars that I mentioned a few minutes ago, The Strategy of the Survivor Benefit Plan. Please go in and listen to that if you haven’t already or if you need a refresher.

The default, if you die and nothing was elected here, the default is that your spouse is going to get 50% of your pension for the remainder of their lifetime. But you’re going to pay for it while you’re living in retirement, so be careful. Not making a decision is a decision. Remember, someone’s going to make the decision for you and you might not like it.

The other two options, the 25% and the 0% simply means that your spouse would either get 25% of your pension or 0% of your pension. If your spouse is okay with getting less than what the default is, meaning your spouse is okay with the 25% or nothing, then your spouse is going to have to provide their notarized consent on the spouse’s consent to survivor election. It’ll be one of the documents we review here in just a second. You’ll see a screen capture of that and how that works.

You might ask yourself, “Why would my spouse elect something less than what they’re entitled to?” Please go back and watch that webinar. It will explain the challenges of the survivor benefit plan and what some other options may be.

Next up, option four in the survivor benefits section is what we call the insurable interest. If you wish to name someone other than a spouse to receive part of the pension when you die, you would name them as a, “insurable interest.” And you’d have to prove that you’re insurable and go through that medical underwriting.

We are going to talk more about this particular option in next month’s webinar. I’ll give you some more details here at the end of the session. This is not something to do lightly. There are severe consequences to this decision, and I’m going to dig into all those details next month.

Section D – Annuity Election

Next up is section D, question five. This is only for a former spouse, and this is you choosing to give them part of your pension if you die. This is not the court telling you you have to give them your pension when you die. It is you deciding that you wish to do that.

I don’t know many people who wish to give their former spouse anything much less a portion of their pension. So do not fill out this document, this part of the document if you have a court order granting benefits. That order will already be enforced before any other choice is looked at by OPM on this document. Do not complete this section if there’s a court order granting benefits. Only if you’re voluntarily choosing to give your former spouse benefits.

Section E – Insurance Information

Next up we have section E, which is all about insurance. Question A, and again, I’m just going to show you the parts that tend to get messed up pretty often. In question 1A, the question is, are you eligible to continue FEHB, your health insurance as a retiree? Well, the first is, are you eligible, and then we have a note up here at the top. For two feds married to each other, this happens a lot, so I’m going to go ahead and mention it here.

For two feds married to each other. You want to select yes, as long as both of you have been covered under either one of your FEHB plans and you have been enrolled for five years prior to your own retirement, as long as that statement is true, you want to say yes that you are eligible to keep FEHB. It does not have to be your own plan. It can be the plan of your spouse. None of that matters. They just want to know were you covered under the FEHB umbrella? Are you eligible to keep it as a retiree.

1B on the right hand side, we’ve already talked about this, but if there’s a court order, certainly granting any health benefits or anything like that, you want to select yes and include that court order. And then question number two, are you eligible to continue FEGLI? It’s important to know that all they’re asking for is, are you eligible? This is not asking do you actually want to keep it? We’re going to cover that later in the application, but they’re only asking, are you allowed to keep that coverage?

Then we’ve got some questions about dental and vision and long-term care and all that. Those are pretty self-explanatory sections.

Section F – Other Claim Information

Next step. Section F, have you applied for or are you receiving or have you ever received workers’ comp? Most of the time the answer is no here. Of course, if it’s yes, then you want to answer that.

The part that I want to draw your attention to is question number two. Have you previously filed any application under the CSRS or the FERS system? For instance, for retirement refund deposit, redeposit or a voluntary contribution? If you answer yes, then that means that you have submitted an application to get a refund of retirement applications in the past, you had some service that you needed to make a deposit for. If you were under CSRS, you had the voluntary contribution plan, those types of things.

Most of you are going to say no to this question, and if you say no, then do not answer 2A or 2B. Again, if the answer is yes, then you want to go down to 2A and 2B to answer those questions. But if you answer no, don’t select anything in 2A and 2B.

Section G (Optional) – Information About Your Unmarried Dependent Children

Next up is section G. This is where you’re going to list your unmarried dependent children. You want to list any of your dependent children under the age of 22. Be sure to also list any adult children who are over the age of 22 who are incapable of self-support because of a mental or physical disability that they incurred prior to the age of 18.

This will put OPM on notice that there is a special circumstance here that may allow your children, or specifically this child to retain some benefits even if you should pass and otherwise not have benefits available. For instance, health insurance, if they’re disabled, they’re going to be able to keep that health insurance, but OPM needs to know that they exist and there’s some additional information that’s going to need to be provided in this situation, but at least list them here and then check that box in column three that says disabled, so that OPM is aware.

Section H – Payment Instructions

Next step, payment instructions. Pretty self-explanatory. Most people want their pension payments or their annuity payments to be sent directly to their checking or savings account. That is very obvious. We would encourage you to simply select that and all of that will be easy. If you have some extenuating circumstances, you could certainly look at the next two options.

Section H – Payment Instructions (continued)

Next up is the payment instructions. Assuming that you want it to go to your bank, you’re going to need to tell OPM all that information. That part is self-explanatory here, but I do want to direct your attention to 3A. Do you want federal income tax withheld from your annuity payments? I have a hard time believing that anyone should select no.

If you have some other fancy way of paying your taxes that it’s not going to come out of your pension, but it’s going to come from somewhere else, I suppose that might be an option, but most people want federal income tax taken from their pension so that they’re not surprised come tax time.

If you select yes, then you’re going to go to the right hand side to question 3B, do you want to have federal income tax withheld at the rate currently being withheld from your salary? If you say yes, you’re still going to have to have a copy of the W-4 that your agency has on file. If you say no, you’re going to need to attach a new W-4 and put the withholding rate that you want to have for that document. Either way, you have to submit a W-4. This is you telling the government how you want your pension to be taxed.

Section I – Application Certification

Here at the top, this is where you’re simply going to do your signature, and then we have a checklist here at the bottom. This is a little bit of a trick question or a trick checklist by OPM because you’re not supposed to have any no’s in these boxes. The answer’s either yes or this doesn’t apply. It needs to be one or the other. Look at the questions very clearly. The first five questions are all about military service. If you had none of that, you’re just going to put not applicable down those boxes.

Survivor elections, if you are married at a not initial box, one of section D, meaning that you’re providing a full survivor benefit, did you attach the spouse’s consent, yes or not applicable? If you’re not married or you gave the full benefit to your spouse, then you’re going to say, not applicable, because they don’t need to sign anything and so on. Please read this list carefully and attach the appropriate documents to this application based on this list.

Schedule A, B, C

Schedule A is all about military service. You want to make sure if you had any military service that you are attaching a copy of your discharge certificate. Typically, that’s your DD214, and there are some other documents that can be used to satisfy that as well, but you want to be sure to include that.

Schedule B – Military Retired Pay

We mentioned this briefly a little bit earlier in the application. All of these are relatively self-explanatory. There are some interesting things that happen with military service. But question D, are you waiving your military retired pay in order to receive credit for military service for FERS retirement benefits?

The only time you will ever select yes here is if you are an active duty retiree and you decide that you would rather get credit for your military pension or your military service in your first pension and give up your military pension. It doesn’t happen very often. It’s actually quite rare that this math works out this way. Sometimes it does.

But it is important to know that just checking this box doesn’t mean this happens. You have to still make a deposit for your military service for that service to count under FERS. That’s a whole other process that would need to go through, and that is a rather long process that we want to be really careful to get right.

Schedule C – The federal employee compensation information

The federal employee compensation information. This is all about workers’ comp. Most of you are going to select no, and so you’re just going to be able to go, it says question two, but it’s actually question three that you’re supposed to go to because question two is all about your claim numbers and all of that, which isn’t what it’s referring to.

Question number three, what it’s essentially asking, even if you’re not under workers’ comp, do you agree to notify if that changes? If you were to apply for workers’ comp between the time you’re applying for retirement and the time this is all finalized, are you willing to say that you will let OPM know? And the answer is yes, you need to answer this question.

The second thing is, if OPM and workers’ comp happen to be working together, do you agree that you’re going to, if they happen to overpay you, so even though you’re not getting workers’ comp and this doesn’t appear to apply to you, you still want to answer yes here that you’re saying, yeah, yeah. If that all happens, you’re free to make this right and get the numbers right.

Certified Summary of Federal Service

This is really, really important that we get this part right. The certified summary is a document that we encourage you to submit well in advance of retirement.

Some HR departments will give some pushback on the certified summary because they think that this is only done during the retirement application process, which is not true. You can submit this at any time, and I’ve highlighted on the left hand side where it says this form may also be used to respond to an employee’s request for a record of creditable service.

We’re going to review some of the details here, but it is important that you realize the employee office is actually going to complete this document for you and certify that this is the service that is in your service record. You’re going to submit very little information.

In fact, if it’s with the retirement application, you don’t spill out anything on this document. If you’re doing a standalone certified summary, you at least need to put your name here so that your agency can go in and complete this for you. But if it’s part of your retirement application, you’re going to leave all of this blank.

Section B – Verified Service History Documented in Official Personnel Records

The agency will complete this section that is shown here, section B, that document will be returned back to you. It will be certified by your agency, and it will include a line item for each piece of service that you’ve had in your service record, and it will also identify any service that may not be creditable for retirement purposes or that maybe requires the deposit.

Maybe you had some service really early in your career that can’t count for retirement because of the nature of that service, but you had a year in the middle of your service that you were a temporary employee or you had some refunded service, whatever that might be, and now that’s creditable. You have the ability to see that here on this document so you can do something about it. This document helps you to identify red flags for service that needs your attention.

Section E – Employee Certification

This is the very bottom of the certified summary. You do not want to sign this until you have received this completed version back from your agency. This is you certifying, yep, everything looks great. If it doesn’t look great, then you need to check the second box that says I have additional service. And then you need to justify your other service so that your agency can correct your record. Do not sign this in advance of your agency actually doing the certified summary.

Spouse’s Consent To Survivor Election – Part 1

The next document in the application, I know this feels a little bit out of order, but this is the order in which it appears in the application. The next one is the spouse’s consent to survivor election. I mentioned to you that if you select something less than the full benefit, which is half of your pension being protected for your spouse by you, that your spouse is going to have to consent to that decision. This is the most important decision that your spouse is making on your retirement application. They get a say, they have the final say in how this is going to go.

If you’re not providing any benefit to your current spouse, you’re going to select the A option which will provide 0% of the pension. If you are providing the partial survivor benefit, which is 25% of your pension, you’re going to check box C., the insurable interest piece, which we talked about a few minutes ago, I’m going to be talking about that in next month’s webinar. That is certainly something that you should give special consideration to.

And then D, E and F is all about former spouses. This is only a voluntary election for a former spouse. This has nothing to do with court orders, so please do not check D, E, and F if you have a court order that you’re simply trying to make OPM aware of, they already know and your court order is going to tell them what that is. They’re going to verify it with the court, but your court order is going to tell them what benefit a former spouse has been mandated to receive. Do not select D, E, and F if you are just trying to allow court order to go into effect.

Spouse’s Consent To Survivor Election – Part 2

Part two, this is part of the spouse’s consent to survivor election. This portion should be completed in front of the notary. Don’t sign this in advance of going to the bank or wherever you’re going to get your notary. They need to see you sign it. Really, they need to see your spouse sign it. You also want to make sure that there are no mistakes, mark outs, scribbles, et cetera, by you on the top part of the document by your spouse in this part of the document or the notary.

If you have a pen that’s leaky that makes it look like you’ve crossed something out or your notary operates in a couple of different cities and they started to write the wrong city and they cross it out and put the right city, nope, start over. Get a brand new document. OPM will not accept it. Ask me because I know we did this with my husband’s. We didn’t realize that the notary had made a mistake and submitted it and it got kicked back. Please just do yourself a favor, save some time and make sure that this is right.

The Agency Checklist of Immediate Retirement Procedures

This is part of the application but not part that you’re going to complete. This is for your agency to do. Please don’t do anything on this part of the document.

FEGLI – Continuation of Life Insurance Coverage

The last part of the application process is FEGLI. We need to figure out how it is that FEGLI is going to be treated and what the document really looks like. The first part, all the simple stuff that you already know, I’m not going to walk you through those basic pieces.

But the next section is about basic life insurance. Remember, this is just a one page document where we’re going to break it out to try to make it as simple as possible. As a quick reminder at the very top, the basic coverage is your base salary rounded up to the nearest thousand and add 2000. And because I know we’re going to get the question, yes, this includes locality pay, it includes some other special types of pay too, but that’s the basic.

Basic Life Insurance

With question number seven, the question is do you want to have basic life insurance in retirement if you are eligible, yes or no, it’s not saying what you want to happen to this coverage just yet. Just yes or no. If you want to keep any of the basic coverage and frankly any of the optional coverage A, B, and C, you have to say yes here. You can’t have A, B and C if you don’t have the basic coverage. Very, very important that you know that if you answer no, it cancels all the other coverage that you have.

Speaking of, no, sometimes we have people who say, you know what? I already got a life insurance policy or I just don’t need this coverage. But if you are already age 65, you are going to naturally get some of your basic coverage for free. Please don’t select no because you’re just losing free coverage. This all makes a lot more sense when you sit in our retirement workshop and you get that one-on-one help because you’re going to see the breakdown of every single one of these options in your benefits report.

That’s all part of the workshop process and that one-on-one help that happens afterwards, but at least generally if you are 65 or older, you do not want to select no to the basic coverage if you currently have it. You might as well get the free part. Answer yes and then we’ll show you how to get the free part on the next section.

We already answered question seven, but right below that is question number eight. What level of basic do you want in retirement? You’re only going to check one box.

The 75% reduction is the default. This is what happens if you don’t really need all that coverage, but you want some free stuff. The 75% reduction, if you elect that 75% reduction, you will retain the coverage, but it will start reducing by 75% at age 65 or retirement if that happens to be later for you. But you might as well get the free part here. That is the basic 75% reduction, meaning only 25% of your coverage will be enforce.

If you select 50%, of course, same concept. At 65, that coverage begins reducing by 50% until there’s only half left. And then the no reduction. This is if you want to keep all of that coverage in full force. Maybe you’re uninsurable, maybe you tried to get life insurance in the private sector and you couldn’t because of your health and you want to keep all of this, put no reduction, it’s just going to get costly for you as time goes on.

Again, I’m not going to get all the specifics of the pricing and how it changes and how quickly it changes. All of that is in the FEGLI Choices in Retirement webinar that I really encourage you to go watch.

Option A – Standard Optional Insurance

This is the standard optional insurance. The question being, if you have option A, which is a flat $10,000 of coverage, what do you want to have happen to it? If you say yes, you want to keep the coverage, the only choice at that point, like the coverage will automatically reduce by 75%. There’s only going to be $2,500 left in option A coverage.

But if you say no, then the 10,000 goes away immediately. You have to pick what thing you want and what you’re willing to pay for. Again, you’re going to see all that pricing right in the webinar, you would see your pricing specifically in the retirement benefits report that we would put together for you following the retirement workshop. Again, if you select no for option A coverage goes away. If you select, I don’t have option A, of course, only do this if you do not have option A while you are still working. If you have it while you’re working, you need to select either yes or no.

Option B – Standard Optional Insurance

Option B gets a little bit more complicated. This is your base salary rounded up to the nearest thousand and multiplied by the number of multiples that you’ve selected when you got into the coverage, it’s somewhere between one and five multiples.

Option B, if you say yes that you want to have that option be in retirement, you are going to go in and complete another election that will show you here in a minute. If you say no, the coverage terminates immediately when you retire, there’s no trailing benefit, no little bit over time. It just stops immediately. And then of course, if you don’t have option B when you are working, then you want to select the I don’t have option B choice.

Once you’ve answered question 10, if you answered yes, you’re going to go down to what is by far the most complicated part of this document. It is asking what do you want to have happen to each one of the multiples that you’ve chosen? You have somewhere between one and five multiples of option B if you have option B at all.

Going to the lower left hand corner of the description here, if you elect yes for option B, you will decide how you want each multiple treated in retirement. These are your two choices. If you select no reduction, it means that coverage will stay in force and your premiums will go up and they will go up big time because option B is very expensive in retirement. The full reduction option means the coverage stays in force for a while and then it starts reducing until there’s nothing left.

At 65, the coverage begins going down, and eventually it will be to zero, but it’s free between the time you’re 65 and the time the coverage runs out. You might as well try to get some of that and not let it go away completely, especially if you’re 65. But this is all part of a much bigger discussion that you are having with respect to how your retirement is all put together, all the pieces coming together. Then you want to be able to come here to this document easily and make the elections. You don’t want this to be the first time you’re thinking about life insurance, for instance.

Here’s why it’s complicated for question number 11 is let’s say we have five multiples selected for option B. Between the no reduction multiple choice and the full reduction multiple choice, we have to total five multiples or however many multiples you have. You can say, I want two of the multiples to have no reduction, but I want three of them to be full reduction or vice versa, or one in four, zero and five. Five and zero. Doesn’t matter what the combination is as long as it totals the number of multiples that you have.

Option C – Family Optional Insurance

This gets a little bit confusing. A spouse’s base coverage is $5,000. The children’s base coverage is $2,500, and then those numbers are multiplied by whatever number of multiples you chose for option C when you got into the coverage, it’s somewhere between one and five. A spouse is covered somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000. A child is covered somewhere between $2,500 and $12,500.

For option C, you’re going to make a similar election like you did before. Do you want to have option C in retirement, yes or no? And then of course, the far right hand side is I don’t have option C. Only choose that if you do not have option C while you are working.

Then we go to the dropdown of option C to question 13, the same concept as option B, the exact same concept here, the number of multiples needs to reflect the total number that you’re showing here in question number 13, need to reflect the total number of multiples that you have for option C.

So zero and five, one and four, two and three, three and two, so on. It just needs to whatever number of multiples you have, we’ve got to total that here in question 13.

The Most Common Delays

We’ve got through the application for retirement and even the FEGLI application, but there’s still probably some questions in your mind. The first is, what are the things that cause delays in the retirement application? I hinted at a few of them before, but I want to talk briefly about them now.

The first is not giving your agency time to complete their part. We’ve got to give them the time to do that. Next, including documents that were not requested. That will put you in a longer line, I promise. If you happen to have a court order with a former spouse that has entitlement to some of your benefits, you are naturally going to be in a longer line and there is nothing you can do to avoid it. It just happens. Just make sure you’re giving the copy of your court order and all that like is indicated in the document.

Next, service at multiple agencies or breaks in service. Anytime we have a complicated service history, it takes OPM a little longer to certify all that service and make sure everything’s right. Next is special category employees, law enforcement, air traffic controllers, firefighters, those types of folks because there’s some special documentation that has to be made for them. Sometimes we see delays, although I don’t actually see this very often with this group of people.

The biggest thing, the most common thing that causes delays is missing information, pages of the retirement application that you thought maybe you just wouldn’t submit, and then signatures either you or your spouse on these documents. Make sure all of that makes it on there.

Some Final Thoughts

Putting check marks in the form is the easy part. Remember, the harder part is knowing which options to select. You want to make sure that you have had these hard conversations, you’ve explored your options, you’ve sought out, help all of that so that it’s easy for you to make the elections because you’ve already thought through the hard parts.

Failure to make a survivor benefit plan or FEGLI election has dangerous and irreversible consequences. You have to make sure to get these right. There is a small window, and I know we didn’t cover a lot of those details, but there’s a small window to be able to change your mind on survivor benefits in FEGLI, but it’s not long. Make sure to get those right, right out of the gate.

The financial planning parts of these decisions are always better off when they’re done early and with a professional. Don’t try to do all the financial planning on your own and just hope that everything works out. You might be that person that has to retire twice because you’re coming back to work and that will not feel good if your intention was to actually be retired and be done with it.

Be proactive so you are in control of your retirement. I say to refer to principle number eight, that principle was nobody should care more about your retirement than you do. This isn’t the job of your HR department to get this right. This isn’t even the job of OPM to get this right. Their job is to process what you give them. Your job is to make sure that what you give them is accurate and complete and is aligned with your financial ideas and the ultimate goal that you have in retirement.

Wrap Up & Next Steps

Speaking of taking control of things, I mentioned before, we’ve got our retirement workshops. This is in-person training. This is full day. There is no cost for you to attend the sessions that we’re going to show you. This will cover all of the federal benefits topics and the decisions to be made. And like I mentioned before, one-on-one help is available following the session.

You’ll have several weeks following the session that you’re able to meet. That doesn’t come to you at any cost or anything. That’s just part of the process. But you can see all the details at fedimpact.com/attend. You’ll see all the locations and the dates available for registration right now. We’ve got lots of our workshops that are closed because they’re full, but all the ones that are available will be shown here.

Thank you all so much for joining us. Like I mentioned, you’re always able to find open workshops at FedImpact.com/attend. To sign up for the next webinar or see all those replays of prior webinars, you’re able to go to FedImpact.com/webinar.

Thank you all so much for joining us. I hope today’s session has been helpful. I know we went a little bit long, but I appreciate you sticking with us and being prepared to retire from federal service. Thank you so much. We’ll see you next time.

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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