Delivered on: Thursday, October 30, 2025

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COLAs vs. Pay Raises: What is the difference?

Understand the distinction between the two and why it matters to federal employees and retirees

• PAY RAISES: When, why, and how they are applied—and what effect this has on your initial federal pension
• COLAs: When, why, and how they are applied—and what effect this has on how your federal pension changes over time
• PROJECTIONS: Current projections for 2026's anticipated pay raises and how newly announced COLAs will be implemented in retirement
• DIFFERENCES: The main differences between how each is applied to CSRS and FERS—and the often significant financial impact on each

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

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's session on COLAs vs. pay raises, what's the difference, and frankly, why should you care? Well, here's the deal.

When we're not looking at the right information at the right time in our career, we can be a little bit misguided on how these things that are announced out there actually affect us. Today we're going to get really straight on COLAs versus pay raises so that you understand what to look at and when.

You guys know me. I'm Chris Kowalik, the founder of ProFeds, the developer of the FedImpact Retirement Workshop. With respect to the workshop itself, I am incredibly honored that we have the opportunity to be able to train tens of thousands of employees each year regarding federal retirement, how all this works, and all the details that get jumbled up in there.

Being able to do that in a workshop setting really gives people an opportunity to be able to ask their questions and even get some one-on-one help after the workshop to pull all their numbers together. We'll talk a little bit more about the workshop and how to get registered if you haven't been here a little bit later in today's session.

COLAs vs. Pay Raises: What’s the difference?

Agenda

For today's topic, let's talk a little bit about the various aspects that we're going to be looking at today. For pay raises, we're going to talk about when, why and how they are applied and the effect that this might have on your initial federal pension if you're thinking about retiring here soon.

Next are COLAs, so why and how those are applied and what effect that might have on your federal pension over time, so long time from now, what's that really look like?

Next up, we'll talk about projections, what we're expecting for 2026. The pay raises were not quite locked in yet, but COLAs are, and so we'll talk about all of those numbers. And then the distinction, so between our CSRS and our FERS employees, how do COLAs and pay raises get applied for each of you?

In both respects, cost of living adjustments and annual pay raises, we're seeing your pay go up, right? I mean, that's the whole idea, that over time it doesn't go down, but sometimes it doesn't go up either so we need to be prepared for that.

Digging Into the Details of COLAs & Pay Raises

So for both COLAs and pay raises, these are the details we're going to be talking about, who gets it, what's it based on, how much you can expect, when does it get applied, where do you have to live to be able to get it, and why does it affect you?

Annual Pay Raises

We're going to start with annual pay raises, frankly, because those are the things that happen first with respect to being employed prior to being retired.

Pay Raises: WHO gets it?

With respect to a pay raise, who gets it? Pay raises are those annual increases that are applied to federal employees who are still working, still working.

It's very different than a pay grade or a step increase. And frankly, most of you are pretty familiar with pay raises by now if you've been with the federal government for a while, but I want to make a special note that pay raises have absolutely no effect for retirees.

When we hear retirees ask, “What's the pay raise going to be for next year?,” they're asking the wrong question or they're looking for the wrong information because that does not affect them in any way.

Pay Raises: WHAT is it based on?

With respect to pay raises, what is it based on? Well, pay raise levels are not tied to a specific economic index. There are some general guidelines out there, but we don't see any administration following it, regardless which side of the aisle that they may be on.

This is often a very political aspect of the political debates and tons of scrutiny on both sides of the aisle in different years based on the agendas of the administration and what's going on.

And again, we're not here to talk politics here, but we do need to recognize that pay raises are highly affected by the political nature of the country that we're in at the time.

Pay Raises: HOW much can you expect?

Next up, how much can you expect? Well, pay raises, for one, are not guaranteed. I think it's important that we acknowledge and appreciate that, that it is not something that is automatic by any stretch.

On the far right-hand side, you'll see that for 2026, we're expecting this to be a 1% across-the-board pay raise, and there is no change to locality pay. Something kind of interesting this year, there's a special subcategory of employees – those are our certain law enforcement officers – who will receive a 3.8% increase.

There's some speculation as to which version of law enforcement officers, which true subcategory of LEOs are going to receive that extra pay. It's not been finalized, but you can see OPM's guidance on this, as far as their thought process right now, if you go to FedImpact.com/leo-pay-2026.

That will redirect you right to the OPM site. The OPM links are just so long and ugly it's hard to put them on the screen, so we just created a quick little cheat to get over there quickly. You can read up on that if you're curious how that works.

But on the left-hand side, if we look back over the last 10 years, we're looking at an average pay increase of 2.49%. Some years it's quite substantial, other years not so much. I think it's worthwhile to acknowledge that sometimes it's quite high and sometimes not at all.

Of course, we're not seeing any no pay raises on here, any zeros, but if we were to look back just a little bit further in the timeline, we would certainly see some of those as well.

Pay Raises: WHEN does it get applied?

When do pay raises get applied? Most of the time, pay raises happen in January of a given year. And so in 2026, this happens to be January 11th. That is the pay period in which the new pay rate will kick in.

If it turns out that the decision about the pay raise is late, most of the time this is retroactively paid back to whatever that original date was, when it otherwise should have been applied. January 11th is really the target date, and we want to make sure that we understand that it's not going to happen January 1.

Pay Raises: WHERE must you live to get it?

Where must you live to get a pay raise? Well, across the board pay raises, so this is the one for everybody, is not specific to your location and so it doesn't matter where you live. That across-the-board pay raise of the 1% would come to you. Locality pay, on the other hand, is determined based on where your duty station is.

And so if you are in one of those areas that has a locality pay, you're probably really curious what's the increase to that portion of your pay. Unfortunately for 2026, there is no expected change to locality pay. So across the board that everyone gets is looking to be 1%, but locality pay is 0% for 2026.

Pay Raises: WHY does it affect you?

Why does this affect you? As far as pay raises go while you are working, your pay raise will somewhat help you keep up with inflation and the rising cost to support your standard of living, right? Things around you get more expensive, naturally your pay goes up.

But when it comes time to prepare for retirement, the higher your basic pay is, the higher your annual leave payout and the higher your pension is once you finally retire, because your pay influences your high-3 average salary that gets put into your pension calculation.

As you might imagine, we get a lot of questions about pay raises and how someone can be personally affected based on their circumstances. I want to show you a couple of frequently asked questions with respect to pay raises so we can get into some of the details.

Question #1 : If I retire on January 31st of 2026, does the new pay raise get factored into my retirement pension?

Answer : The answer is yes, but the higher pay that you're going to receive in January, 2026, once the pay raise goes into effect and all that is going to help your high-3 be slightly higher, but keep in mind your high-3 is your highest 36 months of consecutive earnings.

And so knowing that January 11th is when the pay goes into effect and you're going to retire on January 31st, it's going to affect one of the 36 months in the high-3 calculation so it's not going to be a significant change.

The Effect the Pay Raise Has on Your High-3

A couple of things about the high-3. The effect of the pay raise on your high-3. That high-3 average is one component of the pension calculation.

We're not going to go into the details of the various components of the pension because we'll get a little off track here, but when we think about the high-3, it is the average of the highest three years of consecutive earnings in your career. So three years being 36 months, it does not have to be fiscal year, calendar year.

You don't have to be in a pay grade for a whole year for it to count. It is 36 months of consecutive earnings. They all have to be together. You're going to have an extra higher month of pay based on the pay raise that goes into effect.

I'm going to oversimplify things here a little bit. For all of our mathematicians out there, give me a little bit of grace. I'm trying to prove a point on this next slide here.

If you were to separate in December of 2025, December 31st, let's say, they're going to look back for '23, '24 and '25 and say of all of that pay, what is the average annual rate that you are at? I realize that not every pay period fits squarely inside a calendar year, so I'm overgeneralizing here, but you guys get the idea.

We're going to take that 2023 pay, we're going to of course assume that we had that 5.2% increase that we had going into '24, same thing into '25, at that 2% level that you guys had last year. If this was what your pay rate looked like over the last three years, right before you retired, your high-3 is going to be about $97,077, give or take a bit based on how those pay periods really end for the year.

What does it look like if you were to wait until January, which was the basis of the question that we posed. If I retire January 31st of '26, how much does it change my high-3? Here's what it looks like.

Remember the high-3 is your highest 36 months of consecutive earnings, and assuming that you're like the vast majority of employees and you're earning your highest pay at the end of your career, here's what's going to happen.

They're going to look back to 2023 and they're going to strike one of those months from the calculation. That $7,766 is going to be taken out of the calculation, and in its place comes the 2026 month of pay of $8,417.

That seems to be a pretty significant difference in the amount of pay on a monthly basis, but when all is said and done, it only changes the high-3 by $217 because you don't get a full year's worth of credit for that new pay level, you only get one month's worth of credit.

And in fact, it's even less than that because of the way the pay periods are falling of when the pay raise happens. Again, I'm overgeneralizing here, but just from a practical standpoint, this is the structure, the construct, of the high-3 average. The government actually gets more granular into the pay period level, but here at the monthly level, I think everybody gets the point.

My intent on sharing this with you is that there is not some miraculous difference in waiting until January to “get the pay raise” because it doesn't affect your high-3 in any kind of significant way. This would be an extra $2 a year in your pension, which I'm going to doubt is worth it for any of you.

Question #2 : If I retire on December 31st, does the pay raise affect how much I get paid for my annual leave?

Answer : The answer is yes, and many federal employees don't realize that it actually works this way. For once, the rule falls in your favor instead of the government's favor, right?

Annual leave is paid out at the pay level that you otherwise would've been in had you taken the leave instead of selling back your leave at the end of your career if you actually went on leave for an extended period of time. What pay level would you have been in at that time?

Knowing that the pay raise doesn't happen until January 11th, let's say that you have six months of annual leave saved when you go to retire, about two weeks of that will be paid at your 2025 rate, right, that's from January 1st to January 11th, and the rest of that leave will be paid at your new 2026 pay rate with the 1% pay raise.

Not all annual leave is paid this way, I wanted to just give a little bit of a clarifier here. With respect to how annual leave is calculated, the payout will be calculated based on the hourly rate as if you had continued working for your regular annual leave and for restored annual leave. That 1% pay raise will be included in the lump sum payout for those two pieces of annual leave.

But your hourly rate based on your final salary, this is the salary that you had on December 31st at the time that you retire, will be what is used to calculate your unexpired comp time and any credit hours that you may have to your name at the time that you retire.

I'm not going to go into the super granular details of showing the examples of how the calculation actually happens, but if you are curious, you can go watch the full webinar replay by going to FedImpact.com/webinar-leave.

That will take you right to the replay. You'll be able to get the handouts and listen to more of that granular detail of how annual leave is calculated.

Question #3 : Is it better to retire at the end of December or January?

Answer : In either scenario, whether you decide to go December or you decide to go January, we always encourage employees to retire on the last day of the month.

For CSRS, they have some special rules that allow them to retire at other parts of the month and be fine, but without going into great detail, last day of the month is the time to be able to go because it means that there's less of a gap or perhaps no gap at all between the time you're paid as an employee and the time you begin being paid as a retiree.

But there are tons of factors that go into choosing the perfect retirement date, and it's way more than just pay raises and COLAs, if I'm being honest, so choose carefully.

Your retirement date is an important one, and I'd rather you focus on are you financially prepared to have all of your ducks in a row for retirement, and if the answer is yes, there will be a nominal difference, typically, between December and January.

But to see all the details and why I talk about how this illusion of a perfect retirement date is hard for a lot of people to grasp, you can go watch that full webinar replay by going to FedImpact.com/webinar-perfect. It'll take you right over there, and you'll be able to see all the little levers that go into choosing that right retirement date for each one of you.

It's a very personal decision. Please don't use some broad-brush advice out there that applies to the masses but maybe doesn't apply to you.

Pay Raises: Retiring December vs. January

That's all great, you can go watch the webinar and I hope that you'll do that, but I want to just give from a pay raise standpoint a couple of highlights for the December or the January retirement date.

If you go at the end of December, your high-3 won't be affected by the pay raise at all, right? You wouldn't have spent any time in your career in that higher pay raise environment and so your high-3 will just be what it is.

But if you retire at the end of December, you're not going to lose any of your annual leave. You're going to be paid out lump sum for all that leave because you have not broached the new leave year, so you're not in jeopardy of losing any of your annual leave, the use or lose that many of you are familiar with.

And lastly, most of that annual leave will likely be paid out at the higher pay level like we just described in the previous question.

If you were to wait until January, your high-3 will be slightly increased by the pay raise. Remember, it was only $217 in the example that we just looked at, so we're not talking about some market increase in your pay level for high-3 purposes.

It is possible that you'll lose any of your annual leave that exceeds that max carryover, for most of you, that's 240 hours. There are some different types of employees that may have a higher carryover limit, but if by going into January, specifically the end of January, it means you're going to trip that wire to lose some of the annual leave.

Like let's say you have 400 hours of annual leave. Well guess what? You're going to lose 160 hours of those to go into the new leave year, and so that has to be factored into the decision of whether January really makes a lot of sense.

And lastly, your annual leave will be paid out at the higher pay level because you would've already been in that higher pay level, all of your annual leave will be paid out at that new pay raise amount. That's it for the pay raise.

It's not terribly complicated, but there are some funny little nuances that happen that I'm glad we had some time to be able to talk through today.

Cost of Living Adjustments

Next up are cost of living adjustments. When we think of cost of living adjustments, for those of you who have been in the military or perhaps served overseas with the federal government, served in Alaska and Hawaii, you might have some conjurings of what COLAs are, but I want to be really clear on the COLA that we're talking about today.

COLAs: WHO gets it? 

For cost of living adjustments, these are annual inflation adjustments applied to former federal employees' pensions, either CSRS or FERS, this only applies to people who are already retired. This same number, the cost of living adjustments, those are applied to Social Security benefits.

While you might be looking for federal COLAs with respect to your federal pension, you might also hear talks out there in the general media about COLAs being applied to Social Security, and they're all based on the same number. They're not applied the same necessarily, but they are all based on the same number.

I do want to point out though, current employees are not affected by COLAs. You already have to be retired to be affected by the cost of living adjustment.

COLAs: WHAT is it based on?

What's the COLA based on? Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics sets what we call the CPI-W, and it is all based on the rising cost of what they call a basket of goods.

They have a set listing of things that they track the change in price for, and they're able to determine how much over a given year, actually they do this every month, but over the given year, it's announced in October how much more expensive things are in this basket of goods than they were a year ago, right? That's the concept of the CPI-W.

On the far right-hand side, I want to just get a couple of things really straight for everybody. Most of you on this webinar are under the newer retirement system FERS. This was created in 1984, most of you are in that category at this point, very few CSRS employees left. I want to make sure that we're really clear on how the COLA or the CPIW is applied.

It all determines how much your pension is going to change, and it's based on how high or low the CPI-W is. It's always expressed in the form of a percentage.

On the far left-hand side of that table, you'll see when the CPIW is high, so greater than 3%, you'll see that the CSRS retiree gets whatever that number is. FERS retirees are going to get that number that the BLS released minus 1%.

1% doesn't seem like a big deal, but if it's 1% from 3%, that's a third of the increase that you otherwise would have received had you retired under the CSRS program and not the FERS program.

There's nothing you can do about this, there's not a box you can check or an initial that you can make that lets you get that higher COLA, but it is important to realize that when inflation is high, which is what CPI-W is tracking, that FERS retirees fall further and further behind.

In the event that the CPI-W is between 2% and 3%, the CSRS retiree will get that number and the FERS retiree will get a flat 2%. The feds really want inflation to be right about 2%. Assuming that we're less than or equal to 2%, CSRs and FERS retirees get the exact same change to their pension, CPI-W in its full form would happen for both CSRS and FERS retirees.

This is why we say that CSRS get COLA and FERS get diet COLA, the idea that FERS don't quite keep pace with inflation. In fact, the longer they live in retirement, the further and further they're likely getting behind.

But I also want to share with you that this is the very reason why we don't want to celebrate COLAs. It just means everything around us got more expensive. We're not getting ahead when we get a big COLA to a pension, and so I want to make sure that there's a little bit of a filter in your brain from thinking that this is good when we hear high COLA numbers.

It only means that in the last year everything else got more expensive and so it's gobbling away more and more of our pension.

COLAs: HOW much can you expect?

Knowing all of that, how much can you actually expect to receive in a cost of living adjustment for this year? Well, it's important to note that COLAs are not guaranteed.

It's quite possible you are going to receive a cost of living adjustment because of inflation, but it's never a guarantee each year. But for 2026, the CPI-W that is used to determine the COLA was announced.

A little bit late because of the shutdown, but we're looking at a 2.8% cost of living adjustment. CSRS retirees will get a 2.8% increase to their pension and FERS retirees will get a 2% increase to their pension.

If you're curious what things have looked like over the last 10 years, we have the chart on the right-hand side that shows you those distinct differences between the different retirement systems, and you can see that CSRS retirees over those 10 years have averaged a 3.11% increase to their pension.

Meanwhile, the FERS retirees have only experienced a 2.6% increase. The longer this goes on, the further and further those FERS retirees get from their money keeping pace with inflation.

COLAs: WHEN does it get applied?

Here are the important dates. The CPI-W, or the COLA, is announced in mid-October of each year. It would be applied to the December pension accrual and then it's payable for the first time in the January pension payment.

CSRS retirees will receive cost of living adjustments regardless of their age when they retire. If they retired at 55, they're going to get their cost of living adjustments right away.

FERS retirees, on the other hand, don't start receiving cost of living adjustments until reaching the age of 62. There are some exceptions, a primary one of them being our special category employees, these are our law enforcement officers, firefighters and air traffic controllers.

They receive their cost of living adjustments immediately because they are forced to retire at a much earlier age because of their jobs.

Here's the part that gets confusing, and I want to just set the record straight today. The first COLA that you receive in your pension very well may be prorated based on the number of months of the prior COLA year that you are retired.

Pop quiz, who knows what a COLA year is? Most people don't. They assume we're operating on a fiscal or a calendar year or something that's simple, but I want to share with you how this really works.

Question #4 : If I retire December 31st, do I get the cost of living adjustment in January of '26?

Answer : The easy answer is no. New retirees only get a prorated portion of the New COLA based on how many months of the prior year of the COLA year that they were receiving a pension. The COLA year goes from receiving a pension December of '24 to November of '25.

Well, if you retire December 31st, you did not receive a pension check in November of '25, the prior month, the answer for you would be zero, you get none of the cost of living adjustment, but it's not always quite that simple, right? For somebody that's retiring in December, we know that they don't get the COLA the following year immediately.

But I need to break this down because many of you are questioning, like maybe you retired September 30th with the mass fork in the road offer, or maybe December 31st is your date or maybe March of next year is when you're eligible and you're going to go, I wanted to just break this down for everybody so that it's as clear as mud with respect to how the government is handling COLAs. Here's how it works.

There's a lot on this slide, but you can find the area of the year, the part of the year that you retired or plan to retire, and get an idea of what things are going to look like. Let me walk you through this real quick.

Over on the far left-hand side, the employee separates or retires January to December of 2025, so you find the month in which you plan to retire. Your pension will begin accruing the first day of the following month. If you separate in December, your pension begins accruing in January.

With respect to the cost of living adjustment for January of '26, that middle column, if we go to the very bottom, we know that if you retire in December or November of '25, you'll receive none of the 2026 COLA. It's just the way the math works. If you retired in October, you would get 1/12 of the COLA, 2/12, 3/12, right? We're going to keep going backwards in '25.

For anyone, especially when we have a high COLA year, which we don't have this year, relatively, but you might think like, oh, now's my time, I better retire in December so I can get that big COLA next year, nope, that's not how that works.

You already had to have been retired in October for your pension to begin accruing in November and be part of the COLA year. But again, you're only going to get 1/12 of the 2026 COLAs.

You'll notice as we move to the right, for January of '27 and January of '28, those COLAs, the likelihood is that you're going to receive the vast majority of those COLAs in those years, with a minor exception if you retire December 31st or in December of '25, you're only going to receive 11/12 of the 2027 COLA.

There's a method to the madness, but it can be really confusing, and so I thought this chart would be helpful to you. I also went ahead and included the chart if you plan to separate or retire in 2026.

Many of you are looking ahead to next year, and I wanted you to have a bit of a go-by, same concept here, but a bit of a go-by to know what you can expect to have happen to your pension.

COLAs: WHERE must live to get it?

With respect to COLAs, where must you live to get it? I have good news and I have bad news. Where you live in retirement has no effect on your pension amount. That's not to say that where you live doesn't affect your pension, because it does.

It affects the initial calculation of your pension because your locality pay, or lack thereof, would've been included in your high-3 average, which is put into your pension calculation to determine how much you start with. But once your pension has started, it does not matter where you live, and that can be either good or bad.

If you retired from a high cost of living area, New York City, Los Angeles, those types of places, your pension would've been based on that higher pay level, and you'll receive that for the remainder of your lifetime, but the opposite is true too.

If you retired in an area that had little locality pay, maybe a rest of the United States schedule or something similar, your pension would've been based on a much lower pay level, and if you end up moving to a higher cost of living area, your pension doesn't go up.

COLAs are applied uniformly regardless of your location. The only difference with COLAs is whether you are a CSRS or a FERS retiree, but where you physically live in retirement does not affect your retirement pension up or down, you are going to have your set dollar amount regardless of your location.

COLAs: WHY does it affect you?

Here's the deal, and I alluded to this a bit ago. COLAs are designed to keep the purchasing power of your pension money and really any kind of money like this, but same thing with Social Security, if you think of it at the broader level.

If you had a pension that was flat, imagine living 20, 30, 40 years in retirement and that pension money never rising. That would be terrible. Well, guess what? That's what private sector pensions do all the time.

Very few of them have any cost of living adjustment or inflation protection on it. And what it means is if you didn't have those adjustments to your pension, you're naturally going to rely more heavily on other assets like the Thrift Savings Plan because you're going to need to pull more money from somewhere because everything around you got more expensive.

And your pension, if it didn't keep up with inflation, you're going to have to go dip into other buckets of money to be able to maintain your standard of living.

Very few private sector pensions remain out there, but for the ones who do, most of them do not have any pension protection, and so it's a great thing.

Even though COLAs aren't perfect, they don't ever help you get ahead, they keep you tracking with inflation, even if you're trailing a little bit behind, like is the case with our FERS retirees.

Inflation Compared to COLAs

Let's take a look at inflation compared to COLAs. I just want to drive this point home. For the last 20 years, the U.S. inflation has been 2.55%. The goal is 2%, that's what the feds want it to be. 2.55% is the inflation level.

Our CSRS COLAs are exactly that amount because it's based on the CPI, right, the inflation number. FERS COLAs or those same years has been 2.13%. Let's just do a little math problem here.

On the right-hand side, you'll see the table that says the Effect of Inflation on $10,000 if we start in 2006 and we go to 2026. In 2026, if we look at that second column that says adjusted by inflation, that $10,000, if it was adjusted by inflation, which is 2.55% over those 20 years, it would go from being $10,000 to $16,547.

That is exactly keeping pace with inflation because it is inflation.

The SERS COLA, if this were a SERS pension that starts at $10,000, it would have grown to the same $16,547. For a FERS retiree though, if that $10,000 was their starting pension in 2006, by the time they get to 2026 we're looking at $15,243, so we're over $1,000 behind inflation.

What this means is the amount that originally started as level with inflation, level cost of living, now is further behind. We're looking about $1,300 behind over those 20 years, and imagine over the next 20 years what that's going to look like.

The gap continues to get wider and wider the longer that a FERS retiree lives in retirement. Again, there is nothing that you can do about this except recognize that you are going to have to rely more heavily on other assets to fill that gap.

That's protecting the amounts in your TSP. If you've moved your TSP to an IRA, same concept. We don't want to blow through money that we ultimately are going to need to maintain our basic standard of living.

Let's recap! What happens if…?

Let's do a quick recap. What happens if you retire at the end of October, November, December, January, February, just kind of give you a little bit of a five month swath around the time that we're talking here, do you get the 2026 pay raise?

If you retire October, November, December, no pay raise, right? I don't think that's a surprise to anybody because you're not in the new pay year.

But for January and February, yes, you will get the pay raise, and it will increase your high-3 ever so slightly, ever so slightly. That shouldn't be the basis for you deciding to wait until January or February.

You might end up having some unexpected consequences like oops, you tripped the leave wire and now you have to give up some of your saved annual leave for no good reason.

The question is, do you get the 2026 COLA? If you retired in October, you'll get 1/12 of the COLA starting in January, but nobody else on this list, if you retire November through February, you are not receiving the COLA that was just announced.

Hopefully that helps to summarize what we're looking at here. Definitely a lot to think about for each one of you.

Wrap Up & Next Steps.

Pay raises and COLAs are paid in very different ways to different audiences at different times, and neither of them are guaranteed. Please do not base your decision to retire solely on pay raises and COLAs. You've got to look at the bigger picture.

Are you prepared, generally speaking, to financially weather the storm of what retirement can look like? It can be quite amazing if we've done it the right way, if we've done the planning the right way, and we've looked at the numbers.

Because here's the deal, when you know your numbers, your financial decisions become obvious.

If by virtue of digging into your numbers before you make the decision to retire, you're able to stress test your numbers to say if I get no COLA at all, what do things look like? Am I okay? Are you teetering right on the edge of being able to pay bills and not pay bills regardless of what happens to cost of living adjustments?

It can be part of the conversation, but please don't let it be all of the conversation. You deserve to know your numbers inside and out, and we have a way to help you to do that.

Our retirement workshop is our very best way to help you as federal workers retire with confidence. To attend a workshop, it's actually quite simple. These are in-person training sessions. We did the whole virtual thing years ago during COVID.

There is something special about stepping away from your normal life, sitting in that room, and be focused on your yourself and your future. Get away with all the distractions, like no meetings, no bosses popping in and bothering you. Take the day and be there.

There is no cost to attend. A lot of people say, well, but I have to take leave to go. Well, probably not. Most agencies will grant you admin time to be able to attend this session because agencies have an obligation to provide pre-retirement training to their employees.

This is a way that the agency can put the check in the box that they made that training available to you on the clock. There's no out-of-pocket costs and there's likely no leave cost either with respect to you taking a day that otherwise you'd like to be goofing off.

This will be the most productive day of annual leave, if you have to take it, if your agency doesn't approve it, but 90%, 95% of our audiences are there on the clock because their agency allowed them to go.

During this workshop, we cover all the federal benefits topics and all the decisions that you're going to need to be making. We're not telling you which decisions to make. That can be part of the one-on-one help that's available where you're getting recommendations of putting all the numbers together and seeing what really needs to happen.

But that one-on-one help is so critical because how on earth do you retire with confidence if you don't know your numbers? And knowing your numbers tells you the next move that you need to be making.

I hope that you will take the time to attend this workshop. If you've already attended and you need a refresher, register, get in there, get your brain rewired talking about all this stuff.

And tell your co-workers that need to hear this message, those people who are confused about how things work, even the people who you think have it all together that may, behind the scenes, not really know their numbers and how this all plays out. This is a perfect opportunity for them to be able to get this training as well.

And everyone who attends that workshop has an opportunity for that one-on-one help available in the weeks following the workshop, and I hope that you will take advantage of that as well.

You can see all of the details for our workshops by going to FedImpact.com/Attend. You'll see all the cities and dates that are currently open for registration to select the workshop that's best for you.

We are all done for today's session. Thank you so much for joining us. As a reminder, you can find a workshop by going to FedImpact.com/Attend. And to register for that next webinar, you can go to FedImpact.com/webinar. Thank you all 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