What is my Minimum Retirement Age (MRA)?
Your MRA is what FERS uses to determine when a person is eligible to receive their annuity, or as we like to call it, their pension. A person can work and retire earlier than their MRA, but they have to at least wait until their MRA to receive their pension, and sometimes they have to wait longer depending on how many years of creditable service they have. The chart below shows what a person’s MRA is depending on when they were born:
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Is my MRA the same as my FRA for Social Security?
It works in a similar way, but it is not. The Full Retirement Age (FRA) for Social Security is also based on when someone is born, but it is between ages 66 and 67. At FRA, a person is eligible to receive 100% of their Social Security amount before any deductions, taxes, or reductions (if applicable). Social Security also has an early retirement, which is age 62 for everyone. An early Social Security retirement reduces the amount a person would receive by 25-30% depending on when they were born. It is also worth noting that a person can choose to delay their Social Security benefit to Age 70, and increase their Social Security benefit by 8% every year by doing so.
If my MRA is not the same as my FRA, does that mean I am eligible for the FERS Supplement?
In order to be eligible for the FERS Supplement, you have to retire by meeting the requirements needed for an Immediate Retirement. This would mean retiring at your MRA or older with at least 30 years of creditable service, or retiring at age 60 or older with at least 20 years of creditable service. Since the FERS Supplement stops paying out at age 62, the 3rd qualifier for an immediate retirement of being at least 62 with 5 years or more of service does not apply.