#80: FERS Supplement Details

Full Episode Transcript
With Your Hosts
Micah Shilanski and Tammy Flanagan

Micah: Welcome back to another amazing episode of The Plan Your Federal Retirement Podcast. I’m your host Micah Shilanski and with me, as usual, the amazing Tammy Flanagan. How’s it going, Tammy? 

Tammy: I’m doing great, Micah, and it’s good to be back as usual. I’ve been gone for a little while now for the last few sessions; we’ve been doing this together, so we’re making it a habit again. 

Micah: I love it. I get super excited about that, especially because we get to talk about some really fun things, right? We kind of pregame, you know, we chat a little bit in advance of these are kind of what do we want to talk about? What questions do we have coming in? Then, when we do the pod, we kind of pregame a little bit. And it’s always fun doing that because we’re always in a good way kind of challenge each other by asking each other some different questions. How do we do this? What’s your situation in this? It’s always fun because there’s always new stuff to learn, and you think, great, the benefit system has been out for forever. Why is there new things right, but there’s new interpretations of it? There’s slight changes in the law. There’s just a practical application. There’s the theory of what should happen, and you and I were chatting with this because you work with a lot of pre-retirees and help them get ready. Not a lot of retirees, and so we’re talking about the little bit of differences and how you set them up for retirement, then I work with them through retirement and different OPM communications. So it was really fun. 

Tammy: It was, yeah. And it’s funny too how we look at things from those perspectives, whether we’re in that pre-retirement mode, or we’re seeing things in the future, versus if you’re in retirement and you’re really acting out the process, and it can be different, the devil is in the details, as they say, that’s so true when it comes to some of the things we’re going to be talking about today, in regards to this FERS special retirement supplement. 

Micah: Yes, which is a great benefit that you have, but there’s like some other benefits or some misconceptions out there, Tammy, at least that I run into on not only how does it work, how it’s calculated, but also some people kind of feel they get a little bit of a penalty depending on the age they retire and not getting the supplements. So we want to make sure we’re addressing that. And if you ever wondered about how to apply for your first supplement, then make sure you’re staying tuned for this podcast because at the end, that’s right, this is the teaser at the end. We’re going to make sure we answer that question in detail to make sure you get it, but Tammy, kind of before we get really into it, I guess we should start at a high level. What is the FERS supplement or the special retirement supplement? 

Tammy: Yeah, and there you hit it on the head, Micah; it’s because we don’t even know what to call it. You know, some people call it the SRS, the special retirement supplement. Some people call it the Social Security supplement. Some people call it the FERS supplement. I mean it goes just like everything else that goes by multiple names, what it was or what it is, it was a benefit that’s part of your first basic benefit. So when you retire under FERS, you may be entitled to receive this as part of your FERS retirement benefit. It’s it’s administered and processed at the Office of Personnel Management. And it was designed by Congress to create that social security piece of your retirement that’s missing if you retire younger than 62. Because when we think of FERS, we really think of a three-part Retirement System. The basic government pension which is your first basic benefit, Social Security retirement that you typically apply for between the ages of 62 and 70. And then of course, the Thrift Savings Plan, which we’d love to talk about, which is the investment part, the retirement savings part of your retirement. So this supplement was there to allow federal employees just like forever, just like back to 1920, we allow federal employees to retire at a young age, and that young age is called the minimum retirement age. So for an employee who retires between their minimum retirement age, which is typically 57. If you were born in 1970 or later, if you’re older like I am, it could be 56 or somewhere in between. But if you retire between the MRA and 62, you’re too young for Social Security. So this supplement plays the role of substituting for social security while you’re waiting to turn 62. Now, not everybody who retires under 62 will get it,so if you retire on a disability retirement, sorry, no supplement because disability retirees have to apply for Social Security disability, which they may or may not qualify for. So that’s one caution. To someone who might be filing for disability retirement. They may not qualify for disability under Social Security and are not going to get the FERS supplement. The other group of folks who will not get the supplement are those who resign with entitlement to either a postponed or a deferred retirement. In order to get the supplement you have to have an immediate unreduced benefit, immediate meaning that benefits gonna start within 31 days of when you leave, and unreduced meaning that you’re not subject to any age reduction, which we have to apply when you retire under an MRA plus 10 which is a whole another podcast but if you go out and do the the age reduced benefit, you’re not going to get the supplement. So it’s only for those people who retire with 30 years or more at their MRA or someone who retires at 60 or 61 with 20 or more years. It can also be for our special groups or law enforcement officers firefighters, air traffic controllers, CIA operatives, Foreign Service dignitaries, y’all these folks who retire under these liberalized retirement provisions that allow them to retire maybe they age 50 and have mandatory separation. They’re also entitled to receive the supplement throughout those years leading up to age 62. And then the last group, and this isn’t a big group right now. We’re not going to start any new rumors but those who get offered early outs. Somebody who took an early retirement at age 50. They’ll get the supplement but for them it doesn’t start until their minimum retirement age so we’ll leave that one out for now because I haven’t heard any, any good rumors about early outs being offered to too many federal employees these days. 

Micah: What do you mean? I like it basically what I’ve heard in here is this as you’re gonna get the vers you’re eligible for the FERS supplement if you retire with an immediate pension, and you’re less than 62. I mean, those are kind of the big things. You’re you’re hitting those two requirements, and now we’re eligible without a penalty as well right unreduced and now we’re going to be eligible for it which is fantastic. And this is one thing that I always want to check whenever I’m looking at a federal employee retirement estimate. I’m always checking that FERS supplement number. Now several pieces of software getting much better, who is not only to far ago that there was completely missed entirely announcing the FERS supplement a lot more on these FERS retirement estimates, which are fantastic, but I’m always checking that I’m always checking the math so Tammy,  let’s get into a little bit on how we calculate the first supplement. Because it can be different for every single employee, right? The math is always the same, but just because one employee has a 30-year career, another employee has a 30-year career, what makes up those 30 years could really affect what’s eligible for supplement or not. Right? 

Tammy: That’s right. Yeah, the supplement loosely follows the Social Security formula. And the other thing about the supplement that does not follow Social Security is that it’s only based on your civilian federal service, where Social Security includes private sector jobs, part-time jobs back in high school, military service that may count towards your FERS retirement, but we cannot count; unfortunately, you cannot count military service in computing the supplement. So it strictly is limited to credit for civilian federal employment, and creditable service under FERS. And that’s one mistake that sometimes we see is that it is, you know, some people have an estimate that includes the military service, which can greatly inflate the supplement, but unfortunately, the reality is they won’t have that larger benefit when OPM processes their retirement. So it’s only based on civilian service. Now, there’s two ways to to ballpark it. You know, one of them is to add up the years of civilian service that you’ve had rounded off to the closest whole year. So whether it’s 30 years or 20 years or 35 and a half year, whatever, but round it to the whole year closest, and then divide that number whether it’s 20 divided by 40, or 35 divided by 40. Put the number 40 as the divisor that’s constant. That number 40 represents a career from age 22 to 62 is 40 years. So if we say 30, 40s, that’s 75% of a career you spent under FERS. So take your FERS civilian service divided by 40 and multiply that by your Social Security benefit payable at age 62. Now how do you find out what your Social Security benefit is payable at age 62? You would need to set up a my Social Security account at the social security.gov.gov website. Now we have another way; we came up with a little shortcut for our listeners as we were prepping for this because we figured that there’s a ballpark of somewhere between 30 to $40 per year under FERS; if you’re in, let’s say, GS 13 below income level if your GS 13. And above, we said it’s going to be somewhere between 40 and $50 a month for every year that you have under FERS. So if we’re going to use us that we use $40, and you have 30 years under FERS, 30 years under FERS times 40 bucks a month is $1,200 a month, or about what 14,400 a year. Then that would be a pretty close ballpark. It’s not going to be down to the penny. But you’ll be within let’s say $100 of what it should be.

Micah:  And the supplement is great. Right? What I like about it is it’s a benefit because again Tammy what you said your benefits really based on those three things. It’s your FERS pension, TSP and Social Security and it’s early access, and I would describe it early access to some of your Social Security money that you earned while you were a federal employee. But because it’s tied to your Social Security benefit, that means as soon as you’re eligible for Social Security is when the supplement is going to stop. So it doesn’t matter when you turn your Social Security on. Once you hit the age of 62 your supplement is going to turn into a pumpkin and because you’re eligible to turn on your Social Security. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to turn on your social security by the way, there’s still some really good reasons why you want to delay your social security. We’ve done multiple pods on that before we have some great videos on there. So make sure you jump on on our website and looking at those and for that decision about when to turn my Social Security on. But regardless of that, the supplement turns into a pumpkin at 62. Right? 

Tammy: That’s right. And a lot of people wonder about that because I’ve gotten the question multiple times saying, hey, Tammy, when I turn 62 does my Social Security start coming instead of the supplement? No. OPM does not notify Social Security anything about this supplement. The supplement is strictly a benefit coming as part of your FERS retirement. And it just terminates when you turn 62. The month after your 62nd birthday, you’re going to look in your bank statement. That’s going to have less money. So you don’t even get a warning saying hey, by the way, we’re going to stop yourself; they just stock; you just need to know, Happy Birthday. That’s right. But Micah, there’s another way that that supplement can either be reduced or terminated earlier than 62. Right. 

Micah: And that’s something that we talked about with a lot of clients that are going to assume retire early. Right to retire early is generally less than 60 to 65. Or retiree a little sooner than maybe your counterparts in the private sector wood a little bit of early retirement. So if you retire at 57 years young, you may not be done. You may still want to go work; you may still want to contribute in some other way that has an earned income. And Tammy, that’s where this earnings limitation kicks in. So the same earnings limitation that affects your social security if you take social security early, which is between age 62 and your FRA, your full retirement age is between 65 and 67. If you take your Social Security early, there’s a limitation for every $2 you make above a threshold they take $1 away. Server for this year 2023 for every $2 you make above $21,240 they’re going to take $1 of your supplements away. So if you go get a job and you make $40,000 year after you retire you have roughly speaking $19,000 of excess earnings now I don’t know but you guys I have never had access earnings by the way. I always think my earnings are fantastic not excess but anyways, so but it OPM eyes you have $90,000 of excess earnings. So they’re gonna take $1 away for every $2 over so we take that 90,000. We cut it in half about $8,500 and they’re going to reduce yours is like $9,500. They’re going to reduce yourself of it by $9,500 that year. And so this is really important to know. So a couple of things. One, it doesn’t catch you by surprise that it’s going to happen. And also OPM is on a lag. OPM doesn’t know that you retired from this job from federal service, went over and picked up another job doing something else. So what they’re going to do is they’re going to send you a survey, Tammy this is what we’re talking about beforehand that I always want to tell clients, we need to be proactive with OPM because not all of my clients tell me they get this survey report from OPM, but in April of the year after you retired with between April and May, right is when you get that survey letter from OPM, and then it says, Hey, how much earned income do you have? And if you don’t have any earned income you just put zero and you send it back and life is good and they’re not going to reduce your supplement. But if you do have earned income, OPM wants to know about it so they can start reducing your supplement. Now, if you’re thinking hey, I’m just gonna pull a fast one on OPM, I just won’t fill out this form. Don’t you worry about it. They will find out it just takes them about a two year lag because they get your income tax data from the Social Security office, they get that data and then they’re gonna see that you have excess earnings, and then they’re gonna go and reduce your pension in order to get that money back. So I like my clients. I say being proactive with this, right. I don’t want to wake up one day and say, oops, what happened to my pension that just got massively cut? I want to know what that dollar amount is going to be. I want to know what my client’s excess earnings are. So we’re always planning for it. 

Tammy: Yeah, and a couple of other things about the earnings limit for our friends who are retiring and or law enforcement, firefighters. All those special provisions that can retire younger than 57. They have a little bonus benefit. So let’s say you’re a law enforcement officer, you work for a DEA or FBI or ATF or any one of those three letter law enforcement agencies, and you’re getting the supplement as early as age 48. Because I retired with 25 years of service or in 50. With 20 years, you’re gonna get the supplement regardless of your earnings, you didn’t earn 500,000 a year and OPM will still pay you the supplement until after you reach your MRA. So what will happen in that case? Let’s say you reach your MRA this year in July, so from August until December of 2023, OPM is going to want to know how much money did you earn earned income wages, salary, self employment income did you have after you turn 57, if that’s your MRA, but you don’t report that to OPM until the spring of next year, so they’re gonna send out the survey next year asking you what did you do last year after you reach your MRA until the end of that calendar year and as long as you respond to that survey when it’s set, and you get your answers in by the end of May, that just that supplement on time and you won’t owe anything back to OPM. So what you’re seeing with your clients sometimes, Micah, is that either they didn’t get the survey from OPM, or it came, and you thought, Oh, this is just junk mail advertising from OPM. You know, they’re selling me something; I’m going to throw them away. Or if I don’t respond, maybe they won’t know that I went back to work. But there is a double check. There definitely is, so the best thing is to respond to the survey. On-time. And that will take care of itself. So you don’t have to tell them the minute your retirement, go back to work because they don’t care about that until the following year. 

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Micah: I guess the other reason I like it a little bit I’m gonna say being proactive with it, like scheduling it in our calendar is I was just thinking about this when he explained it. I had a client recently who’s come up and he got this letter, but he’s busy he’s working another job. He’s doing other things he’s traveling, etc. And he emailed in our office last week this whole week. It says I got to send this and by the end of May. And we had just a couple of days left in May and he’s like I gotta send this in. I was like great news, Bob. We already took care of that in February. And it was a it was like what I was like it we already had it on our schedule. So we already printed the form off when he came in for his employment. We already went through that with him. And so we did it in advance of the survey, so much of him getting it but we knew it was going to be coming out and so that’s what I would encourage our listeners to do. If you know you’re going to have earned income and you’re going to be getting the supplement, put it on your calendar, because here’s here’s my concern, and maybe I’m geeking out about this too much. We had one client she was law enforcement. And so she separated from from service. She got her pension which is fantastic. She got her supplement, which is great. And she went to work in the private sector. She’s earning really good money and Tammy just as you said she was eligible to keep her entire supplement up until she reached her MRA. Once she hit her MRA I was like hey, we need to contact OPM and let them know about your income. And her claim was like well, maybe we just don’t and if they catch it, they’ll also you know take it from my pension later, which is a true statement. I mean, that is that’s not what I’d recommend, but that is an option. But here was the problem. She got her pension, she had her supplement. She had a really good job. She was in a 28, 32% tax bracket. She was in a very high tax bracket and she was going to retire next year. So here’s what would have happened. She gets the supplement. She has to pay taxes at 32% today on that money. She retires in two years and that’s it takes about two years for opening to figure out what your income is, right? And then they would go back and reduce her pension. So she’s paying taxes on the supplement today a 32%. She then goes to retire her income goes to a 22% bracket now; she has to pay the supplement back, but at 22%, that cost her several $1,000 in taxes, just because of when this came down. So it’s not a matter of fact of saying oh well, they can pay me $1. I’m going to give them $1 back; that dollar has a tax consequence. So it may be something we want to think about. 

Tammy: Another example of how tax planning and retirement planning go hand in hand together. While you were talking to Micah, I was thinking also the fact that hey, I’m working now, but maybe I’m gonna stop working before I turn 62. RighT. So you’ve had your supplement terminated because OPM calls that termination if you make way too much money. They’re not going to keep sending you surveys once it’s terminated; it’s gone. However, if you have stopped working or at work low enough wages that, you can get it back. It’s important to contact OPM and let them know that because then they can start it back up again. They won’t do it unless you tell them you stop, right?

Micah:  It’s it’s an annual thing when you do your taxes, right that’s where I put it why when you do taxes because you have all of your information, you know what your earnings were for last year, versus trying to guess you should be looking at this going backward and saying hey, do I receive a supplement is there any earnings limitation that I need to report was my earnings dropped? And now I can go apply for them? And I guess that kind of leads into our next question Tammy, that we kind of teased our audience with about when someone retires, and we get this question all the time, which we love, but the question is, how do I apply for my FERS supplement? How to return. I see my retirement application. But nowhere in that retirement application for an immediate retirement, it says nothing about my supplement. I’m supposed to get 1500 bucks a month from a supplement Tammy where do I send that application? 

Tammy: Yeah.

Micah: What do you mean I don’t? So how do I get the pension? How do I get my supplement? If there’s no application for it’s a government process? There has to be a form, right? 

Tammy: Well, like I said in the front of this, I said only some people get the supplement. So OPM makes the determination when they process your FERS immediate retirement application. So you file for retirement. You put your application in 90 days ahead of time. Now it’s with OPM, they accepted in the US Postal Service or a FedEx delivery truck, and they’re gonna put you into interim retired pay. While you’re an interim retired pay, they’re gonna review with a fine tooth colony. They’re gonna calculate your final annuity calculation. That’s when they determine if you’re entitled to the supplement. And if you are, they’ll calculate how much it is. So that tells you one important thing. So let’s say you’re counting on $1,500 a month. In for a supplement. And you just retired in May of this year. So you’re saying well, am I going to get my supplements starting with my June retirement payment? You will eventually but it might take OPM six months to figure that out. So for the next six months, you’re not getting any supplement because they don’t even know yet if you’re entitled to it because they make that determination. You didn’t apply for it. It’s like a little bonus you get when you get your retirement process. They say oh, you’re entitled we’re gonna give you some extra money to tide you over. It’s temporary. It’s not part of your lifetime annuity. But you will get it at the time your retirement is adjudicated or finalized. 

Micah: And that does come in your retirement blue book, right. The retirement blue book you get which is a few weeks after I say to my clients attended 10 days to 14 days after they finalized your pension is when most of my clients see it, and it will talk about the supplement in there. And of course, as Tammy said, since you weren’t paying that supplement interim payments, they do back pay, they do make you whole and I was like to run the math on that. I’ve only had one time, and it was a VERA visa case on early retirement where OPM did not do the supplement correctly because he retired under a VERA in early retirement. And then, like three months later, he was 57 and eligible for the supplement. But by the time they processed his retirement, they didn’t include that in there because they were just looking at this and a little bit of a catch-up. But most the time I got to say OPM is pretty good on the supplement. I don’t really see too much of a difference in their Tammy how about you?

Tammy: Either now it’s been pretty pretty routine. It usually comes if you’re entitled to it. But like I said there’s some people that retire younger than 62 who don’t get it. But for most immediate retirements, law enforcement, firefighters, they all get the supplement if they retire. Now the other question that comes up like this, this is kind of funny from our perspective, because we understand the big picture. But you’ll get someone who says, Why don’t want to work until I’m 62 or 65 or until I have 38 years instead of 35 years because I’m not going to get the first supplement if I wait until 62 to retire. So it’s like they’re missing out on something is they’re feeling like, Well, I gotta retire 57 consent, I’ll get the supplement for five years. Is that logical to think that way? Is that the right way to look at your planning for retirement date. Hey, I gotta retire. 57 So I get five years of the supplement.

Micah: I can understand where that comes from right? Because it does feel like you’re losing out on your benefit. But there’s another benefit you get while you continue to work. Your paycheck. I didn’t have it really is a great benefit. So this is Tammy more of a math question versus I’m losing a benefit question. Can you financially afford to retire at 57? If you can, and you’re financially independent? Well then we check the financial boxes we talked about before, right? There’s two categories. We got to meet both of these when we go to retire. Number one is the financial category. Are we financially independent? Can we make this transition? Number two is the emotional category, Am I emotionally ready to make this transition? And we’ve got a bunch of clients that sometimes they’re just not there financially, they got everything aligned. They still enjoy the mission. They enjoy what they want to do. They’re not done making a difference. That’s totally fine. So we got to check both of those boxes and it also works sometimes the other way where we are emotionally we are ready to leave and go and go do something else which is fantastic. But we’re not quite there financially, right?And so I would never tell somebody who can’t afford to retire, stop working because you get the supplement. It’s a cash flow question. If you don’t have enough cash flow coming in, it doesn’t matter what the supplement is. The supplement, Mr. Augman is to help replace that Social Security income. So great news. You still get Social Security at 62 years young if you weren’t titled for the supplement. So you’re still going to get that benefit. It just comes in the form of social security. You’re not losing anything. 

Tammy: That’s right. Yeah, that’s a tough one to think about because we think we’re missing out or we’re losing some valuable benefit, but I don’t think of it that way at all. And I love what you said about making sure you’re financially ready. Now the other part of that could be let’s say I’m not financially ready, but I want to do something different. And I should add a lot to all our work after I retire. Well keep in mind that if you do work after you retire, you’ll probably lose the supplement unless you’re just working at a part time minimum wage type job. So that’s another part of this whole puzzle that you have to put together saying okay, I’m gonna I do want to retire 57 or even at 50 as a law enforcement officer. The good news for those special groups, they can take advantage of that second career while they’re very marketable in their early 50s. And they can get the supplement with no earnings test until 57. So that group by all means, you know the day you become eligible. If your goal is to have a second career, don’t wait, because you’ll never be more marketable in the private sector than you are today. But on the other hand, you know, for someone who says, Well, you know, I just want to do something a little bit on the side. That’s probably not going to be enough to make you financially more secure because you’re giving up pension benefits. If you had stayed in federal service in exchange for maybe the income the delta between your your retirement check in a paycheck. So you got to do there’s some real tough financial planning there. That’s usually above my paygrade that’s when I say you better go see a financial advisor and make sure they’re going to taxes so that they can really help you make the best decisions 

Micah: And Tammy to put a little financial planning credit pro tip on that one as well. And I know you know this, where I get concerned with special provisions are the people that want to retire and go get that second career. It’s sweet, we’re gonna get a good pension. We’re gonna get a supplement. We’re gonna get a healthy paycheck and you went from living on just that government pension to now you’re living on the government pension times two. Our government paycheck times two, right? We got the pension, the supplement, and this new earnings and now, what have you done to your lifestyle, you dramatically increase your lifestyle now you’re no longer on track for retirement. So this needs to be a balanced question that’s here. I’m not saying don’t get a second career, but be really careful of that lifestyle addiction. I’ve seen a lot of people go from financially sound, they could permanently retire, they could be good. They transition they get this other job, another six-plus figures in income, and now their lifestyle creeps up to that level, and they went from financially to secure to not able to retire. Ooh, that is a tough pill to swallow. So one of the things we do with our people that making that second career hey, I want 100% of your pension check or you’re supplement or your paycheck whichever one of those two categories. I want 100% of that deposited into an investment account where you don’t see in touch, live off your paycheck, and then let that pension check build and grow, etc. So you’re not living on it as lifestyle money. 

Tammy: That’s exactly what we did. And when my husband retired, he was, I don’t remember how old he was, now he’s been retired a good 10 years fully, but we put his retirement check in the bank. Didn’t look at his different bank accounts. I never saw it because we put it out of sight out of mind. And by the time he fully retired, we had paid off all mortgage payments, which I know is not always in everybody’s best interest, but we didn’t want a mortgage, so we paid cash for our house and we’re able to do that because we’d set aside years of collecting a pension while he was working that second career. And the second career paid about the same as his first career. So we were living on the same income, but we still had that extra money. Big chunk of extra money going into the bank. Building up and using that as our retirement ticket. It is possible, it’s well worth doing.

Micah: All right Tammy, tis podcast it’s all about an action item’s for our listeners, right? So not only great entertainment but action to do so I am gonna say number one is, the supplement It’s so tied to your Social Security. Go pull your social security statement, go to ssa.gov, Social security.gov. Create an account if you don’t have one. This is also you really need to create an account especially if you’re eligible for Social Security. One of the fraud things that they are seeing, if you don’t have a Social Security account, someone else has created one for you. They’re applying for your Social Security at 62. But don’t worry, they change your address and your bank accounts you’re not getting the money. And so by having an account, it makes it a little harder for those people to do that. So go get a Social Security account and go pull your statement. Know what those numbers are, what your age 62 benefit what your FRA benefit, what’s your 70 benefit.

Tammy: Very good advice I would put on my to do list for our listeners to get two estimates. So if you are thinking about retiring in your 50s, great, get an estimate of not just your FERS benefit, but make sure it includes the supplement and start to consider what else you’re going to need to pay your bills, make sure you have enough income. But then just for fun and giggles, run another estimate what if I work until I’m 62? So let’s compare that not just six months down the road, but let’s look at five years down the road. Yeah, can I afford to retire now or how much more comfortable will I be if I hang in there just a couple of more years is it’ll make a big difference in many ways. 

Micah: Tammy it’s fantastic. And I think the third action item is help us achieve our goal which is helping another million federal employees with retirement by giving them great information, share the podcast give us some likes, but YouTube is going really good. It’s been growing with our traffic. So thank you guys so much for that the podcast has taken off. So please keep sharing this information and until next time, happy planning.

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any forward-looking statements or opinions provided will prove to be
correct. Securities investing involves risk, including the potential loss of
principle. There is no assurance that any investment plan or strategy will be
successful.