Hi, my name is Eric. I am calling because I have a question about buying back my military time. I am retired from the from the Marine Corps. Injuries Sustained in Combat. So I received a CRSC Combat Related Special Compensation, and my question is how does that impact… because I heard that if you buy back your time, you surrender that. So hopefully you can answer this question. Thank you. Bye. – Eric
Micah Shilanski 00:04
Buying back your military time could be a great way to increase your civilian FERS pension, but there could be a special cost, especially if you were receiving some combat related special compensation, and you need to know what these rules are, so make sure you stay tuned for this FERS Federal Fact Check. Hi, I’m Micah Shilanski with Plan Your Federal Retirement today, we have a great question that comes in from Eric, about military time, but just not about military time, about getting some additional compensation for a combat related special compensation that’s coming in, so let’s have a listen to Eric’s question.
Eric 00:39
Hi, my name is Eric. I’m calling because I have a question about buying back my military time. I am retired from the Marine Corps injuries sustained in combat, so I’ve received a CRSC Combat Related Special Compensation, and my question is, how does that impact, because I heard that if you buy back your time, you surrender that, so hopefully you can answer this question, thank you, bye.
Micah Shilanski 01:04
Eric thank you for calling in and giving us that information, that is a really good question. Now I gotta say there’s a couple of caveats in here, I don’t deal with this regularly, so make sure you’re getting up to date information, make sure with DFAS, you’re working with your HR and everything I’m about to say kind of jives with what they’re saying as well. This is a bit of a depends question, and where I’m seeing it when I kind of did my research on this is it’s all tied to, are you retired from the military or separated from the military? If you’re retired from the military and you go back to buy your FERS time, now, there’s exceptions for guard time, right? So let’s assume there’s not guard inside of here, or going, this active duty says it’ll look like or I heard from your question, that this active duty time, let’s say you put in your 20 years, and you’re retired, and you’re getting the CRSC pay, and you go to buy back that military time to make it count towards your civilian service, then yes, that would negatively affect that compensation, as in, that compensation will be reduced, if not, would go away by buying back the retired time. However, if you were not retired, let’s say you had 5 years, 10 years, whatever, in the core, and you worked, but you did not have a retirement, and you separated, you might be getting VA pay, in addition to that, you might be getting the CRSC pay, the combination kind of out of the two, and then if you buy back that, I’m going to say unused military time that’s not counted towards retirement, it should not affect your CRSC pay again there’s a lot of rules in here with this, so make sure you’re looking at DFAS, make sure you’re working with your HR make sure all of that information is meshing together. If you have questions like this that are really particular, this is where it makes sense to kind of sit down with somebody, but we’re more on one to go through the details. It’s not trying to plug us for our service here, but these benefits can get really complex really quickly. So make sure you’re getting the most out of your benefits, and then, in addition, Eric, when you’re going through this process, I would say, don’t just rely on a generic letter from the agency, whichever one that says, hey, if you follow this rule, you’re gonna be just fine. I have found more often, I found several times, unfortunately, OPM will pick on them has made mistakes, they sent a communication to people before they were clients and saying, great news, this is how your benefits work, and OPM was wrong, and the clients could not rely on that letter as verification as to why they did a certain thing and they lost out on benefits, so you really have to know these rules anytime you deal with an agency on something like this, make sure you ask them to cite the rules, directly, you go and read that and make sure you know how the system works this is sure money on what you guys to get the most out of your retirement, until next time, Happy Planning!