The high-3 average pay is a basic component of an employee’s retirement contribution that federal employees often find confusing. The author offers some detailed explanation to take the mystery out of it.
How is your federal employee annuity calculated? It is based on two numbers. Here is how it works.
What can federal employees expect in 2012? While no one can know for sure, the author offers some considerations you can take into account to help you be prepared for whatever the future brings.
Winning the lottery just may be the key to a successful retirement, depending on how you define “lottery.”
The author poses the question, with all the noise around shrinking government and making federal employees out to be the “bad” guys, what would the real effects of some of the current proposals be?
The deficit commission has proposed changing federal retirement to use the highest five years of earnings to calculate civil service pension benefits for new retirees (CSRS and FERS) rather than the highest three years. How much of a difference would this make in a retirement annuity? It depends. Here are several scenarios.
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has issued its report on ways to reduce the deficit and federal spending. Here are some of the key points in the report that are likely to be of most interest to readers.
Your annuity is what is known as a “defined benefit” annuity. This means it is based, essentially, on just two numbers: length of creditable service, and high-three average salary. Here is how that is calculated.
Everybody knows what the high-three is for your future retirement – right? But who knows how to calculate the high-three?
Government spending to recover from Hurricane Katrina means spending cuts will probably be necessary in other government programs. One possibility is changing the formula for calculating federal employee pension benefits.
