Delivered on: Thursday, May 22, 2025

To Watch on YouTube, CLICK HERE

Ready or Not: Preparing Your Exit from Federal Service

How VERA, VSIP, DSR & Severance may change your perspective

• METHODS: Understanding voluntary and involuntary departures (including DRP 2.0)
• ELIGIBILITY: Knowing exactly who is entitled to what (and when)
• BENEFITS: Identifying how the pension and other benefits are affected
• EXAMPLES: Highlighting various scenarios for federal employees

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

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's FedImpact webinar titled Ready or Not: Preparing Your Exit from Federal Service. No doubt all of you have been wondering how everything's going to shake out since the new administration took office.

And maybe along the way you also got some clarity. And so that's our hope today. Don't worry though, if you're still feeling a little bit fuzzy, we've got a lot of great resources that we're going to be talking about in today's session to help you get clear.

Preparing Your Exit from Federal Service

You guys know me. I'm Chris Kowalik, the founder of ProFeds, the developer of the FedImpact Retirement Workshop that happens all over the country, and the host of the FedImpact podcast. And so I love being able to help federal employees get that clarity that they're needing.

And not surprisingly, many of you have needed that over the last few months just because of some of the chaos that's been happening. And getting that clarity has been top of mind for me, and I so appreciate that you're here today to be able to see some of the bigger picture of what you should be looking at when you are stepping into retirement.

Agenda

For our agenda, we're going to talk about a couple of things as we're going through all of the material. The first is understanding voluntary and involuntary departures, including the DRP 2.0. Many of you are experiencing that now.

Some of you even took the first version of the Deferred Resignation Program and you're simply waiting until that September 30th mark when your retirement is final. This session is for you too because there's going to be a lot that we're going to be talking about and making sure that you're really clear on what's going to happen to your benefits.

As far as eligibility goes, we want everyone on here to know exactly who is entitled to what and when, we've got a special chart. We've actually shown it in a previous webinar. But the response that we got from it was really, really positive, and it gave people a lot of clarity, and so I'm excited to be able to share that with you today as well.

And then lastly, the benefits, identifying how the pension and the other benefits are affected. Of course, these are all very loaded questions because each one of you have your own set of circumstances, your own age, your own service years, what your agency has offered as of right now.

Each of you are going to be in a little bit different of a boat, but being able to look broadly at the lens of being eligible to retire and knowing what happens when you go is really important.

What this webinar will NOT cover

Of course, this webinar is not going to cover all of your individual situations.

That's not possible to do in a session like this. We will do our best to answer questions, just please keep them associated with today's material so we can get through as many questions as possible.

Pending Legislative Changes

Right off the bat here, I'm going to talk about some pending legislative changes because I know that this is what the Q&A is going to be filled with today. And so I'm just going to put these out there to give everybody an update on what we covered last month in our webinar about the pending legislative changes.

Of course, a lot has happened since then, and so I want to bring everybody up to speed just so we can clear the air and get this off the table.

There are some notable updates on the pending legislative changes that are in Congress right now. Still on the table for consideration right now, these are set to go into effect January 1st of 2028 in the event that they're passed.

They have not passed yet. And we don't know; will they still look like this? We're not really sure, but as of right now, this is what's being considered.

Notable Updates on Pending Legislative Changes

The change of the High-3 to the High-5 for pension calculations. This would be for people retiring January 1st, 2028 or later. Their pension would be calculated using the High-5.

The next is the elimination of the FERS special retirement supplement for regular employees. The only group that would receive it are those who are subject to mandatory retirement, and that is our law enforcement, firefighter, and air traffic controller community.

Again, who knows that this is going to remain this way, but as of right now, these are the two pieces of changes specifically for federal employees that we see.

There are some other benefits changes like paying for merit protection board reviews and all of that. That's aside from federal benefits that we're going to be talking about today. I'm just looking at those pieces.

But definitely even on top of this, there are some changes to brand new employees who are coming in, which all of you probably aren't really concerned about. You're concerned about people who are already working for the federal government and mainly those people at the end of their career who feel like their rug's being pulled out from underneath them.

This is a marked improvement for these items that are on the table, these two items. Way better than what we were looking at a month ago. I'm encouraged by this. I would love to see still some change happening to this and taking the foot off the gas a little bit with respect to Congress.

But at the end of the day, we do expect there to be some sort of change. Will there be some other version? Do they consider the High-4 versus the High-5? Do they allow the special retirement supplement to stay intact for regular employees, but maybe not make it the calculation so rich to where the benefit is a little bit lower, but everyone still gets it?

Who knows how this is going to go? But if you've been paying attention to federal benefits throughout the probably decades that you've been working for the federal government, you know there are always weird rules like, well, why did that change at that point? Or why is that the effective date of something?

And it's all because when they're in sessions of Congress and they're trying to battle out these changes, this is the wheeling and dealing that they do on the floor of the House and Senate to try to get legislation passed. We're going to continue to keep our eyes on these two pieces that are still pending, and we'll certainly keep everyone updated through our newsletter.

As far as what's off the table, this is a really important one. And it was a proposal to increase retirement contributions into FERS from 0.8%, which is what the vast majority of employees, or really all federal employees under the first program who were hired prior to 2013, that's what everybody was paying, the 0.8%, and then bring that up to 4.4%.

Which frankly is what every federal employee hired 2014 and later is contributing. It's just bringing everybody up to that same level. The good news is that this is off the table.

The really good news is that this was going to have a huge impact on the retirement savings for federal employees. Had this passed, the contribution is so much higher for FERS contributions for funding the first pension that my fear was that federal employees would reduce the amount that they're contributing to the TSP, which overall has a negative effect on everyone.

It's not just paying more money, it's what suffers because of that. Luckily, this part is off the table and we're only dealing with the other two. The other two are significant, don't get me wrong, but they're not insurmountable issues. And I'm hoping that we're still going to see some positive movement on them before this goes for vote.

Again, I needed to get this off the table because I knew that this was going to be populating our Q&A, and so I'd love just to make sure everybody's up to speed on where we stand right now.

Eligibility for Federal Retirement

Let's shift our focus to eligibility for federal retirement. Many of you have probably sat through different retirement trainings that your agencies provided.

Maybe you've come to one of ours, you've watched webinars, you've listened to podcasts, whatever it might be, and the idea of federal retirement and becoming eligible for it is always top of mind because everything else flows after that.

Once you are eligible and you choose to go ahead and retire, then you have a slew of decisions of what happens to all of your benefits and what you keep and what you agree to let go. There's a lot that goes in motion at that point.

But if we don't have eligibility right, none of those other things come into play. If we aren't really clear on what we're eligible for and when, we can have assumptions in our mind about what we're going to do only to be surprised when we go to file retirement paperwork that, in fact, you are not eligible to go.

Determining if (and when) you are eligible for a FERS Pension

I'm going to start with this chart. This is the chart that I mentioned that we released a couple of webinars ago. And this helped clarify some of the eligibility. This chart talks about when you are eligible for a FERS pension. I've not included CSRS on here; that's a totally different deal. For our FERS employees, this is what we're looking at. We're going to just walk through this piece by piece.

We're going to start on the far left-hand side with that big red bar. Anybody who has less than five years of federal service as a civilian, not military service, but as a civilian, if you leave federal service before hitting your five-year mark, there is no pension payable to you. Doesn't matter how old you are; if you have less than five years, you are not vested and you will not receive a pension.

Next, we're going to go to the gold area, the other end of the spectrum, which is full eligibility. If you are 62 with at least five years of service, 60 with at least 20 years of service, or have reached your MRA, which in this chart we have as 57 with at least 30 years of service, you are eligible for a federal pension. There may be some employees still sticking around that may be eligible to retire a few months prior to 57, but 57 is a great bet here.

Next we'll move to MRA+10. For our FERS employees who have met their minimum retirement age, in this case, again, 57 with at least 10 years of service, but you don't have the full 30 that are necessary to be eligible, you can go under an MRA+10 retirement. We'll talk a little bit more about the consequences of that here shortly.

And then you'll notice all this gray area. And I put gray as a little bit of symbolism here because this is the fuzzy part for everybody. They don't really know what they qualify for.

Absent VERA or DSR, absent and early out being offered by your agency or an active RIF where we have discontinued service retirements, all this gray area is where you would naturally be eligible for a deferred pension.

If you have at least five years of service but you are simply too young to qualify for an MRA+10 or full eligibility, then you would be entitled to a pension, but it would be paid to you later. It won't be payable right away. It's going to be paid later in your life. We'll talk about what that delay looks like here in a moment.

But in normal circumstances, not when we're in a VERA environment, not when we're in a RIF environment, but simply in normal circumstances, if you're in that gray area, you're eligible for a deferred pension.

But in the situation that we're in right now where many of you have been offered an early out by your agency or OPM through the Deferred Resignation Program or you're under an active RIF and you've been told, it's not even an offer, it's being told that you're receiving a discontinued service retirement, you'll see all those white stars in those areas. For VERA or DSR, you need to be at least age 50 with at least 20 years of service or any age with 25.

When I originally delivered this slide a couple of months ago, I did not have any stars in the gold area where it shows full eligibility because in reality, someone who's fully eligible doesn't need a VERA, they don't need a DSR retirement, they're already fully eligible. They can go on their own will.

They don't need to be told to leave. But I don't want there to be any confusion. If you're under a VERA situation or you're under a DSR, you still have the ability if you're 60 with 20 or MRA with 30, you're still going to be able to go out under the VERA and the DSR, it's just you don't need those programs to be able to go.

Again, you've already met the full eligibility requirements and you can go on your own free will. I updated the slide just to eliminate any confusion.

But I think that this chart helps take all of those crazy charts that are out there and just put some structure around it so that it is really clear who is entitled to what based on how old you are and the number of years of service that you have.

Hopefully this is helpful to you to get your brain wrapped around everything that you're thinking with respect to eligibility.

The Different Types of Retirement

I want to talk a little bit about these different categories, these different colors that you saw on the chart. Of course, the red area was where no pension was payable ever. Those were for people who had less than five years of service when they left federal service, and so there's nothing available for them. That part's pretty easy.

Deferred pension, that big gray area that you saw on the previous chart, this means that a pension is payable in the future. An employee must wait until age 62 to draw their pension if they had between five and 19 years of service or age 60 if they had 20 to 29 years of service or at their MRA if they had 30 plus years of service.

This is where they're able to receive those deferred pensions. It's all a matter of how many years of service that you had when you left.

Next up is the VERA and the DSRs that we saw on the chart. This was still in the gray area, but in the event that you have been granted a VERA or been told that you are receiving a DSR, these will now be available to you. The pension will be payable right now with no penalties. Very, very important.

There's a lot of confusion out there about whether you're receiving a penalized pension if you go out under a VERA or a DSR. I assure you there is no penalty.

That's not to say it will be the same pension as you would have received had you stuck around until you were fully eligible, because you'll have more years of service, your High-3 would be higher, all of those things, but there is no technical penalty to the VERA or the DSR. Just know that this has to be granted to you. You cannot simply decide that you're going to do an early out. Your agency has to offer it to you first.

Next up is the MRA+10. The good news is that there is a pension payable right now, but it will have a penalty associated with it if you take it right away. If you qualify for MRA, it's great. And if you decide to leave and draw your pension right now, you will suffer a 5% penalty to your pension for every year you are under the age of 62. And this pension will be penalized permanently for the remainder of your lifetime. Very important that you realize that.

If you're like, “Hey, listen, I just want to go ahead and take the MRA+10, but I don't really need the money; I'm going to go get another job,” or, “I have other assets to be able to live on; I can do without that pension for a while,” you can do that. And to avoid the penalty, you could start receiving your pension at age 62 if you had between 10 and 19 years of service or you can start to receive that pension at 60 if you had between 20 and 29 years of service.

Again, there is an opportunity to take an MRA+10 retirement and draw your pension now, but you are going to have some pretty hefty penalties. If you choose to postpone receiving your pension to be able to avoid or at least mitigate some of that penalty, you can do so at either 62 or 60, depending on the number of years of service that you had when you left the government.

Next up is full eligibility. Of course this is when someone has met all of the age and service requirements to be fully eligible to retire. You can leave on your own accord. You are in full control of when you decide to leave the government. Nobody has to offer you anything, you can just decide. And of course, the pension would be payable now with no penalties.

When I originally delivered this set of slides through that webinar a couple of months ago, somebody said, “Oh, you left off the DRP.” Nope, we didn't leave off the DRP because the DRP is not a type of retirement. That was simply the invitation to go.

There were some special things added to that that allowed someone to leave work, be paid through the end of September or perhaps a little bit longer, depending on the circumstances, and receive their full paycheck but not be working. That was a special invitation, that is not a type of retirement.

You were still bound by what you qualified for on this screen. If we go backwards and look at this chart, the DRP, when that was offered back in January, and many of your agencies have re-offered it in the 2.0 version, you still had to look at this chart and figure out what you qualified for. It didn't magically make you qualify for anything.

There was no special pension calculation or anything like that. You're going to naturally fall into one of these categories. Think of the DRP as the invitation, but this eligibility and your retirement is the party. I don't want there to be any confusion of what DRP is. That was simply the invitation to leave service.

You still have to figure out what you qualify for on this chart and what you are subject to based on those different requirements.

Submitting Retirement Paperwork

Next up, let's talk about submitting retirement paperwork. Tons of confusion about this with respect to the DRP and VERAs and DSRs and all that, so we're going to set the record straight as far as what paperwork needs to be submitted.

When it comes time to complete your retirement paperwork, you're going to make some really important decisions on your retirement package, if you will. That's just a collection of different forms that you're going to need to submit.

The first is you're going to choose your retirement date. Sometimes this is chosen for you. For instance, if you're taking a VERA or a DSR, that date might've already been established by your agency. But that will be reflected on your retirement paperwork.

Next is you're electing how much of your pension is going to be protected for your spouse. This is the Survivor Benefit Program. And the decision on how much of your pension your spouse will get if you die once you've retired is made on this document.

This is a really important decision and one that should not be made lightly as you're trying to rush out the door to take your VERA or just go out on a normal retirement or whatever your situation might be. This is something that requires a lot of thought because the consequences are pretty high if your spouse needs your income from your pension in the event that something should happen to you.

Next step, you're going to confirm your eligibility to keep other benefits that you've earned like FEHB, your health insurance, your life insurance, dental and vision insurance, and the Federal Long-Term Care Program if you have that. You're simply going to be identifying whether you qualify to be able to keep those benefits in your mind.

Of course, your agency's going to be doing the same to make sure that you've met all the rules, but this is going to be an important piece that you're doing on your retirement paperwork.

Next, this is a different form that you're going to see here in a moment, but this is where you're deciding how much life insurance under the FEGLI program that you will continue to carry in retirement. Are you going to keep all of it? Are you going to keep some of it? Is there a free part? Is there something that works best for you?

You're going to have a choice to make those decisions right here in your retirement package. And next, selecting your tax withholding for your pension. Of course, you can modify this throughout the years, but you want to try to get this right so that the right amount of taxes is being withheld and you are not surprised when it comes time to file your taxes in that very first year of retirement.

For those who are exiting VOLUNTARILY

For those who are exiting voluntarily, want to talk about the forms that you're going to need. On the left-hand side, you'll see that we've broken this out into those who are starting their pension right away.

And those who are going to start their pension later because the forms are different. If you're going to be starting your pension right away, this would be those of you who are retiring under full eligibility, MRA+10 where you're agreeing to go ahead and start your pension right away with a penalty, those who are taking an early out offer under the VERA, or a disability retirement.

For any of these four categories, prior to your exit from federal service, you're going to submit your retirement application. You're going to submit some other things as well, but you're going to complete either the SF-2801 if you're a CSRS employee or the SF-3107 for all of our FERS employees.

For anybody going out under disability, this is going to require a slew of other documents. I'm not going to get into that today, but they certainly fall within this category. And a disability retirement still requires a regular retirement application along with all those other documents that the agency or really OPM is going to need to determine whether they qualify for disability.

With respect to starting a pension later, this would be somebody who goes out under the MRA+10 rules and agrees that they're going to start their pension later to either lower or eliminate the penalty altogether.

Maybe they wait just a couple of years to draw their pension to mitigate that penalty or they wait all the way until the established years that we talked about a couple of slides ago and be able to avoid the penalty completely. Also in this category are those under a deferred retirement.

This is not a choice that an employee has, this is simply the government saying, “Hey, listen, you're vested, you're entitled to a pension, you just can't get it for a long time, whether you like it or not.” A deferred retirement, or MRA+10 retirements, about 60 days before you want your pension to begin, you're going to submit your retirement application.

You'll notice the forms are different than somebody starting their pension right away. OPM 1496 for CSRS employees or the RI 92-19 for FERS. Just make sure that you're thinking about the right forms that you're going to be completing.

For those exiting INVOLUNTARILY

For those of you who may be exiting involuntarily, we need to talk about what happens here. Some of you are going to start your pension right away. That would be those of you who are taking a discontinued service retirement.

You are going to submit a retirement application prior to exiting federal service. They're the same retirement applications that we talked about in the prior slide, the SF-2801 for CSRS employees or the SF-3107 for our FERS employees.

Those of you who are going to start your pension later under a deferred status, you got RIFed but you had at least five years of service but not enough to be fully eligible, now you've got a deferred pension available to you that you're going to be required to take later.

About 60 days before you want that pension to begin, you're going to submit your retirement application. It's important that you submit this on time so that your pension gets paid to you properly. It's not going to automatically start for you. Again, same documents that we saw on the prior slide.

Many of you, or hopefully not too many of you, but some of you may not get any pension at all. Those people in the red area that had separated from federal service with less than five years of federal service, the only option that you're going to have is prior to your exit from federal service, you can request that your first contributions be refunded.

In reality, you can ask for this after you've already exited federal service, but it's much easier and faster for you to do it prior to your exit. You'll use SF-3106 to be able to request that refund.

Making Your Decision About FEGLI in Retirement

I mentioned a few minutes ago that you'll also be making a decision about how much life insurance you're going to be keeping in retirement, so we've broken this down into two different categories.

For those of you who are retiring under full eligibility, MRA+10 that you're drawing right away with a penalty, an early out, a disability retirement, or a discontinued service retirement, prior to you leaving federal service, you're going to submit a document called the FEGLI Continuation of Coverage form, the SF-2818.

This is where you're going to be able to decide what happens to each part of your FEGLI coverage, the basic option A, option B, and option C. It's a one-page form, but one that's really, really important so that you get your coverage elections correct.

And we've got some training about FEGLI in retirement and all of that. We'll talk a little bit about where to find some of that training if you're not exactly sure what you should be doing or what to be thinking about as you're making that decision.

The other group are MRA+10 retirees who plan to start their pension later. This is called a postponement. This is where you're trying to avoid or mitigate the penalty. When you go to submit your retirement application, you're also going to submit the FEGLI Continuation of Coverage form.

It's the exact same form, it's just when you submit it will be a different time if you're taking that MRA+10 and plan to postpone receiving it to avoid the penalty.

An Evolving Perspective

I want to talk a little bit about an evolving perspective. If there's one thing that the beginning of 2025 has shown us is that perspective is everything. When we can breathe a little bit and start to put some clarity around what we're doing, things become clearer.

But it probably started looking like what you see on the screen right now where things were really fuzzy, and the more you tried to look at it, the more of a headache that you got.

Has Your Retirement Perspective Changed This Year?

There's a couple of things that I think probably happened to many of you that altered your perspective this year. Perhaps you felt a little bit panicked. When the DRP was announced at the end of January and there was mass chaos amongst the federal workforce, you may have felt your blood pressure rise and that you were panicked, that you didn't know what to do.

You felt ill-prepared to make really important retirement decisions. People started talking about VERAs and the early out option, and you're like, “I don't know. Should I take that? What if I stay and then I get RIFed?” Are you going to be forced out? Because the next step after a VERA or an early out is involuntary separations.

One thing that I definitely felt, it was palpable amongst the federal workforce, was this feeling that you're underappreciated or undervalued. And that can take a big blow to your confidence of what you're doing and what the next steps are. And are you prepared to make all these decisions?

Many of you were scared because you felt like you couldn't provide for your family. What happens if you lose your job? That feeling of inadequacy to be able to provide for your family and make all that happen like you've been doing for probably several decades, it was unnerving for a lot of people.

People felt pressured to make big decisions really quickly and without any help. Many of you went to your HR departments in the first part of February when all this was announced in late January, and you're like, “Can you help me figure out what I'm looking at?” And they're like, “I don't know. Beats me. We don't know either.”

And that felt really unsettling to most people. And hear lately concerns about Congress changing your benefits. We talked about that here at the beginning of today's presentation, of all these considerations that they're making to wildly change the benefits that you've been expecting over all these years.

Where you thought you stood in early January with respect to what your career was going to look like and what you were going to expect when you decided to leave federal service on your terms may have been turned on its head and now you have a different perspective.

But whether that perspective is positive or negative depends on what you've done since January to get your stuff straight.

My Question: Are You Better Prepared Now?

My question to you is are you better prepared now? Have you taken steps to do things like certify your service so that you're really clear on the level of service that you have with respect to eligibility and the calculation of your pension? Along with certifying your service, have you gotten a retirement estimate from your agency to start to see what these numbers look like?

Have you gotten clearer on all of your numbers? Not just your federal benefits, but all the numbers, because you have a whole financial life outside of your work for the federal government that has to be taken into account. Have you overlaid all of that on top of one another to make sure that you're really going to be in a good spot?

Have you figured out what survivor election to make? Remember, you're going to do that right on your retirement application. It's not something you decide later, it's something you decide right now as you're walking out the door. Have you determined how much life insurance you're going to keep? Do you know if you're going to have enough money in retirement?

It's easy for everybody to retire. The question is can you stay retired? If you run out of money, you're probably going to have to come back to work, and that's no fun.

Have you figured out how much money you can generate from the assets that you have, like your TSP, for instance, to be able to supplement the retirement pension that you're going to receive from the federal government? Will that last you? And will you be able to live the standard of living that you are hoping for?

Have you optimized your tax situation? Boy, taxes are another surprise situation in retirement for most people. But have you really looked at strategizing and optimizing the tax situation that you have? And have you taken advantage of retirement training opportunities and help that is available to you?

I know that this whole thing has been unsettling for a lot of people, and I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to help a lot of people in this process, whether it's through our workshops or various training methods that we have that we're going to talk a little bit more about, but there's so much that goes into preparing for retirement, you deserve the chance to live the retirement that you want.

But it doesn't happen by accident, it happens because you're taking the steps to arm yourself to get the knowledge that you need to be able to make the decisions that are important to you. And there are a slew of other important steps. I only have these ones on here because the slide could only hold this many.

But there are a ton of important steps in this process, and so my hope to you or for you is that, as unsettling as this has been since January where there's lots of chaos and calamity in the federal workforce, my hope is that it was a little bit of a wake-up call to get your own situation straight so that you feel good if this happens again or if maybe this isn't over for you with respect to your agency and downsizing and all of that, that you are going to step into retirement confidently because you've taken the steps to get there.

I'm happy to be able to help in that process for a lot of people, but so much of this is on your own of figuring these things out.

Training Resources Available

Of course we have lots of training resources available. Just real quick, I've listed all of the links here. We're actually going to go through a couple of these because I think it's important for you to realize the depth of training that is available to you at your fingertips right now. I'm just going to speak to the training that we have available for you.

Of course, you might have some other resources through your agency or other platforms, but very important that you know what is available.

RIF Training

I'm going to start with the RIF training series. This is a 22-part series that we did. We have it on YouTube, we have it on our site. You can go to fedimpact.com/rif-training-series. And we have tons of videos; 22 videos about all these different topics.

I've combined a few of them here just so that they would all fit. But this idea of these questions that you have in your mind about how these things work and the worries that many of you have, I've addressed so much of that in this training series. I hope that if you haven't already gone here and identified the videos that apply to you that you will do that.

These are short videos. They're typically five to 15 minutes long. It just depends on the topic, but I hope that you'll go there and give it a listen. Again, this is on YouTube as well, but you can find all of these embedded right on our site that you see at the very top of the screen.

Fact Sheets

Next are fact sheets. This is something that we put together specifically happen to be about RIF topics. We have the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority. This is the early out. We've got the Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment.

This is the cash buyout that some of your agencies are offering. Then we have the involuntary versions, which are the Discontinued Service Retirement and severance pay for those of you who maybe don't qualify for an immediate pension.

And there's so many questions about these different RIF actions or pre-RIF actions that I felt like it was important to put this all in a very organized fashion in our fact sheets. You can go to fedimpact.com/fact-sheets and you will see all four of these that you can download.

They're typically one to three pages, just depends on the complexity of them. And you'll have everything that you need right there. Each one of those sheets includes an overview of what that program is, how to become eligible for it, tons of frequently asked questions that really get to the heart of the confusion about each of these programs and how they work.

And then lastly, how each of the federal benefits are affected based on the different type of retirement or situation that you are in. I encourage you download those fact sheets. You can get all four of them at that link.

Articles

Next are articles. We have tons of articles, I've just chosen a few to showcase here. But there are tons of different topics about things that we want you to be thinking about as you are preparing for and approaching that retirement window.

Depends on where you're at, what you feel like maybe you're a little weaker on that you need to shore up or an area that you're like, “I just want to make sure that I'm good to go.”

And you go through it and you're like, “Yep, got all those things done,” or, “Oh, those 10 tips to test drive your retirement, I got nine of them, but that 10th one, boy, I need some help on.” But this is an opportunity for you to be able to shore up your own knowledge. fedimpact.com/articles

Podcasts

Next, our podcast episode. Of course this is the audio version of the training that we do. That RIF training series that I mentioned that we had on YouTube and on our website, we also have the audio only version of this if you want to listen to this in podcast form. We also have a slew of other topics like The Truth about Water Cooler Experts.

You guys know that person in your office who thinks they know everything about everything? What risks do they actually pose to you? We talk about the eight planning principles.

We've got a couple of different sports themes. Retirement: Are You in It to Win It? This was our Super Bowl edition. This was a fun podcast. Striving for Financial Freedom.

Why That Estimate From Your Agency Isn't Enough. It's a great starting point, but it's not enough. And I walked through the reasons why when the TSP tanks and now we're in a down market, what's your mindset look like?

Another sports related theme, Playing Offense and Defense in Your Retirement, making sure that you have both because you need both in retirement.

And then Three Key Professionals to Have in Your Corner. I talk about the three pros that if you don't have these people helping you in retirement, you're probably missing out on some great opportunities or being able to avoid some pitfalls.

Again, subscribe to the podcast. You can find our podcast on all the different players that you see out there, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple, all that good stuff. But you can find all of them right on our website as well by going to fedimpact.com/podcasts.

Webinars

Next are webinars. Of course you're listening to a webinar right now, but we've captured all of the replays at fedimpact.com/webinars. It's the same place that you went to sign up for this webinar.

But if you scroll down, you're going to see a wide variety of different topics that we have talked about in the webinar platform. These are typically 45 minutes to 75 minutes, just depends on the complexity of the situation that we're reviewing.

But we've got a ton of material here for you to be able to review and really dig in and start to see some examples and details that perhaps you haven't seen in other training before.

Workshops

And lastly, our workshops. I would be remiss if I didn't talk more in detail about these workshops because of the quality of training that is being provided in these sessions and how important it is for each of you to have good perspective of how things are going to look in retirement.

That's what our entire workshop is built around. You can see all of those workshops that are available at fedimpact.com/attend.

These sessions are full day in-person training sessions. They're available throughout the country, so you can find your location and see what we have close by. These sessions are free to attend because they're sponsored sessions, so there's no cost for you to attend.

And in fact, you can even attend on the government's time by using the SF-182, your agency can authorize you to be at this session on the clock by filling out that form and getting that approval. Our trainer will sign it that you were present there at that training.

And I hope if you are married that you will bring your spouse with you. They are welcome to attend. And I would go so far as to say they are encouraged to attend because them hearing this firsthand is way better than you trying to go home and explain it.

Let them be there. Let them soak in this material, ask the questions. Then you guys have a better chance of collaborating on the real plan for retirement.

And lastly here, one-on-one help is available. After the workshop. You'd be creating a special FedImpact report that's customized to you. Most of them end up being 20 or so pages. Typically a little bit more than that, just depends on the situation that you're in.

But it's going to outline how all of these benefits are going to work based on what we've seen in the past with things like cost of living adjustments, increases to the FEHB premiums, rates of return for TSP.

All those pieces we're going to show you a projection of what things are going to look like, not just at the time that you retire, but well into retirement for you to be able to get a peek into the future. This will help you to know where you may feel really strong and where you might find that you have some gaps that you need to address before you go.

Each one of the workshops that we do is going to cover some general retirement planning, some overarching themes so that we're looking at the rest of these benefits appropriately. Of course we'll talk about the federal pension. This is a big, meaty section because there's a lot of complexity with respect to the CSRS and FERS pensions.

The survivor benefit, remember, that was the one where you're selecting how your pension is going to be protected for your spouse in the event that you die. The retirement supplement; we're hoping that we're going to continue to be training on this if the SRS is intact beyond the congressional legislation that is being considered right now.

And then the three insurance programs, life insurance, health insurance, and long-term care insurance specifically through the federal government, but also looking at the broader picture of what we hope that you're considering given your entire financial situation. And then lastly is a thrift savings plan.

We know that this is a huge part of your retirement, and knowing what you can do between now and the time that you leave federal service and then what you're able to do after that point once you're in retirement and you may be starting to draw on your TSP.

How's that going to work? What access do you have? What are some important things to consider so that you don't end up running out of money or leaving it to the wrong people?

So much goes into these workshops. Our speakers are really energetic. You're not going to have some boring training at these. If you have not been to one of these workshops, or even if you have and you need a little bit of a refresher, great opportunity to grab a spot today. You can go to fedimpact.com/attend.

Wrap-Up & Next Steps

Quick wrap up here. If you don't feel better prepared now to retire than you did in January, it's time to fix that. Things aren't going to get better without you making them better. I say this with love.

I share all these training resources because I want you to feel empowered to understand what you're getting yourself into when you accept a VERA, when you decide to leave under full eligibility. If you are told that you are getting a DSR, I want you to be prepared for that moment because when you know your numbers, your financial decisions become obvious.

Many people were so worried about being RIFed or whether the VERA was a good idea or, “Should I take the fork in the road?” Because they worried about their numbers. They didn't know that their financial situation was going to be okay.

That's very normal. But once we start putting some certainty around those numbers, we get clarity about what we're doing and we also get clarity of where we're maybe falling short that we need to figure out.

Here's the reality. This is one of the ProFeds planning principles. Nobody should care more about your retirement than you do. We want you to own your own future and nurture it carefully.

Your HR department is not going to care more about your retirement than you do, the person in the cubicle next to you who's the water cooler expert, they're not going to care more than you do, or at least they shouldn't.

Even people who have very good intentions and want to help you, you still have to be the one that cares most about your future and that you're willing to take the steps necessary to get it figured out. I believe that you deserve to feel great about the decisions that you're making.

We want you to feel confident stepping into retirement, but again, it doesn't happen by accident, it happens by being sincerely involved in the decisions and not feeling like a victim of circumstance with all the chaos that's been going on, but recognizing you have an opportunity to step into retirement with your head held high, knowing your numbers, and being able to figure it out. Again, lots of ways to help you.

And I hope that we have the opportunity to do that beyond today's session, whether it's listening to a podcast or a webinar, coming to a workshop, being able to sit down and do that one-on-one meeting where you're developing the benefits report and starting to see your numbers come to life. Whichever step you need to be taking right now, I hope that you will do that and that we can play a part in that process.

This is a slide we have at the end of every one of our webinars, retiring with confidence; that is the name of the game with ProFeds.

That is what we do for federal employees, helping them to know what they're doing. I'm not going to go into great detail here on the workshop because we had a special slide for that, but this is a great opportunity that you have to get some real specifics around your situation, not just the workshop itself, but the one-on-one help that is available after it.

Now that you've got the context of the workshop and the content that was in there, now you can start to put it to great use in that one-on-one report that you're going to be developing. You can see all of those details, the locations and the dates at fedimpact.com/attend.

Thank you all so much for joining us. I hope that you'll stay tuned for benefits and news updates. Of course, we're sending out the newsletter, so you're going to stay up to speed on how all these things work.

As always, you can find a workshop by going to fedimpact.com/attend. And our next webinar as well as all the webinar replays are at fedimpact.com/webinar. We'll see you next time.

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