Life (and your career) after coronavirus

The idea of an out-of-the-blue pandemic shutting down America and the rest of the world would be an April Fools Day prank of the worst kind. Unfortunately, this is not a drill. Unlike past major events, 9/11, the Great Recession, which hit all of us but in many different ways, we are all pretty much in the same boat here. It may be better to be young in Idaho than to be 75 in Brooklyn. But maybe not all that much better.

Hopefully you’ve got food. Toilet paper. You are taking every precaution. Now you wait. We all do.

Federal employees, unlike many other working Americans, will have an annuity, a pension, if they work long enough. Either from the Civil Service Retirement System or Federal Employee Retirement System. CSRS costs employees more but produces a more generous monthly benefit that is fully-indexed to inflation. FERS has a less generous annuity formula and its partial catchup-with-inflation feature doesn’t kick in until age 62, except for a limited group of workers. FERS workers are entitled to a generous matching contribution from the government toward their Thrift Savings Plan. Over time its impact is tremendous. Unfortunately the TSP is in the tank, temporarily we assume and hope, until we get out of the current mess. But for now most balances are down for most people to the point where many are rethinking their retirement date. And if not, should be. So where to start?

When in doubt, and in all things retirement, start with Tammy Flanagan. She’s been thinking and rethinking your career since the virus hit. And I’ll be talking with her today live, at 10 am EDT, on our Your Turn radio show. You can listen live at federalnewsnetwork.com or 1500 AM in the Washington metro area. The show will be archived on our home page so you can listen later, listen again or pass it along to a friend or coworker. If you have questions for her, send them to me before showtime at mcausey@federalnewsnetwork.com.