Federal Employees Retirement System.

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.

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?