The Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) celebrated a big birthday last Friday, but there are few federal participants left in the government's once signature pension plan.
When in doubt, and in all things retirement, start with Tammy Flanagan. She’s been thinking and rethinking your career since the virus hit.
The virus-driven stock market crash has hammered the TSP accounts of hundreds of thousands of feds, many of whom had planned to retire this year.
While the short-term impact is obvious, the long-range impact of the coronavirus scare on the world economy, the stock market, and your Thrift Savings Plan nestegg is yet too be determined.
Even in the federal government where workers are supposed to be treated the same and be paid based on their grade level, there are differences. Take the two main retirement systems.
No one gets paid what they deserve. But everyone deserves a little stability.
If history repeats itself, the budget President Donald Trump sent to Congress Monday afternoon will again be a political bombshell
Somewhere out there, the person or persons who, in the late 1990s, predicted Uncle Sam was facing a massive wave of retirements may be happy at last. Or not!
Although the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) was launched in the 1980s, it is still considered the “new” plan by workers who remained in the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS).
The TSP option is a nice but not absolutely essential thing to have for those under the more generous CSRS retirement program with its higher benefit and full protection from inflation.
Have you asked yourself all the right questions about your retirement?
Is the government using the wrong measuring tool to track inflation and thus producing the wrong cost of living adjustments?
So what if the government gave current CSRS employees a choice: retire by a to be determined date and get full CSRS credit for their annuity, or continue in their jobs but with future benefits compiled under the less-generous FERS system. Which would you choose?
Who knows if there will be a pay raise... but one thing is for sure, health insurance premiums will be going up. The issue is, what will you pay them with?
Despite tough talk from Congress and the White House, the federal employee benefits package has so-far remained untouched.