Retirement

  • Your new employees start in the Thrift Savings Plan automatically now and they contribute to an account that's invested in the G Fund. But that may change soon. Kim Weaver is director of external affairs at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. She said on In Depth with Francis Rose the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is ready to look at legislation that will start off new federal employees with a different investing strategy.

    June 24, 2014
  • Boosted by a recovering economy and a booming Wall Street, assets in the Thrift Savings Plan have continued to climb. Since reaching $400 billion in February — the highest amount ever recorded — assets under TSP management grew to more than $412 billion by the end of last month. But as total assets have increased, so have calls to tweak the program that's provided federal employees with 401(k)-style retirement accounts since 1987. Still, the TSP has consistently resisted calls to modify its simplified, tried-and-true structure.

    June 23, 2014
  • On this week's Your Turn radio show, an encore presentation of host Mike Causey's interview with OPM Director Katherine Archuleta. She discusses the status of phased retirement, the retirement-claims backlog and other civil service issues. Andy Medici from the Federal Times joins the show live to discuss President Obama's executive order banning discrimination among LGBT employees of contractors. June 18, 2014

    June 18, 2014
  • What's one area where federal retirees are financially better off than feds who are still working? If you said cost-of-living adjustments, you are a winner, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says. The January COLA for retirees will be bigger than the planned pay raise for active-duty feds.

    June 18, 2014
  • The Office of Personnel Management says it will not finalize regulations on phased retirement for a few more months. But what happens when it does? Federal News Radio's Web Manager Julia Ziegler joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss federal employees' questions about phased retirement.

    June 13, 2014
  • NARFE's Jessica Klement and Andy Medici from the Federal Times discuss a number of issues affecting feds, including proposed changes to the federal retirement program and the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs. June 11, 2014

    June 11, 2014
  • How do you find the handful of feds interested in leaving federal service in a large, bored, lookalike crowd? Answer: Shout out the words "buyout" and/or "phased retirement" and stand back, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

    June 11, 2014
  • The Office of Personnel Management now says it hopes to have regulations governing phased retirement finalized by October. That can't come soon enough for many federal employees on the cusp of retirement who are caught in the regulatory limbo.

    June 09, 2014
  • The Office of Personnel Management cut the longstanding backlog of pending retirement claims by more than a third in the first half of 2014. By the end of May, the inventory of claims had fallen to about 14,500, according to new OPM data released Thursday. That's down 38 percent from a peak of more than 23,500 claims in February.

    June 05, 2014
  • The way to make money in the stock market is to buy when share prices are down and sell when they go up. Yet most people do just the opposite, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says. Are you a closet market-timer?

    May 30, 2014
  • The Postal Service Inspector General recommended that USPS make changes to its decades-old benefit programs that cost the agency millions.

    May 29, 2014
  • Debra Roth, partner at Shaw Bransford and Roth will discuss what's happening at the VA and OPM Director Katherine Archuleta will talk about the status of phased retirement, the retirement-claims backlog and other civil service issues. May 28, 2014

    May 28, 2014
  • A bipartisan House bill would reform federal tax law so that federal law-enforcement officers and firefighters can access funds from their 401(k)-style Thrift Savings Plans when they're eligible to retire without facing a penalty. Jon Adler, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, called the current situation "one of those glaring inequities that needed to be addressed and fixed."

    May 27, 2014
  • Remember when you were a kid driving to or from vacation, and you kept asking are we there yet? Now you're an adult civil servant and the question du jour is: Where are the buyouts? Check out Senior Correspondent Mike Causey's column for more.

    May 23, 2014