Many agencies, maybe most by now, have installed benefits calculators on an agency intranet system. These calculators typically gives you the means to do your own retirement annuity estimates for FERS and CSRS, Social Security estimates, and TSP projections. Your salary data is generally loaded in these systems for personalized retirement planning.

If your agency does not have one of these calculators, you can visit for FERS and CSRS estimates, for Social Security estimates, and tsp.gov and for TSP projections. Yet surprisingly, majorities of participants in our seminars have never used these calculators. These are invaluable tools in retirement planning, and they are easy to use. If you don’t know how much you’re going to have to live on in retirement, how do you know when you can afford to retire?

Any federal employee and retiree can be a member and it is almost free. Dues average about $3 per month. For that you get their monthly magazine, which is chock full of information about your FERS and CSRS pensions, the TSP, health and life insurance, Social Security, and Medicare. In the May issue, for example, there is an excellent article on the pros and cons of transferring your TSP account to a Roth IRA. Where else would you get that information outside of a retirement seminar? Not only is NARFE a great source of information on federal benefits, it lobbies Congress on your behalf to protect your benefits. Members of Congress have called NARFE the most effective political action committee they deal with. Yet most federal employees have never heard of NARFE, and only about 400,000 federal retirees are members. If you care about 1. your benefits join NARFE.

John Elliott does retirement planning seminars for the National Institute of Transition Planning. Visit www.nitpinc.com.

For a link to part one, click here.

Nearly Useless Factoid
by Emily Jarvis

Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com