FERS hired between 1984 and 1987

[alevin]

Sorry to hear your HR people are messed up. whoever is assigned your retirement computation file when you decide to pull the plug, will have to go over every single SF-50 you ever got. Hardcopies should have been in your permanent personnel folder and been converted to electronic at some point. You should be able to look at your electronic records history also and see if there is something missing. Never throw away a hardcopy anything til you know its in the official file.

Whoever is assigned to handle your retirement paperwork will have to get all the discrepancies ironed out before you can officially be retired. I had a date discrepancy for awhile also, between SCD and RCD, but I decided to get it squared away before it got to crunch time, so I started rattling cages on that one last year and got HR to get it straightened out way ahead of time, to where the dates are now the same, as they should be. I assure all my time in 86 counts towards FERS retirement. no question in anyone's minds, including the system's. If your HR people are that unaware of the craziness during those transition years that they don't understand how it worked, I'd start looking for some outside help from a retired HR who's working as a consultant on those kinds of cases at this point. lot of corporate HR retirement expertise went through early retirement about 10 years ago in my agency due to national reorganization and downsizing.

 

[kb9nvh]

What did the OPM person assigned to you say about it? When I went to use the web tools to determine mine it said I would need to call and have it calculated due to the unusual circumstance. Are you saying your opm person doesn't know what to do either?

 

[alevin]

What did the OPM person assigned to you say about it? When I went to use the web tools to determine mine it said I would need to call and have it calculated due to the unusual circumstance. Are you saying your opm person doesn't know what to do either?

No. OPM doesn't look at your records until your agency finalizes your retirement records, which isn't until after you submit retirement papers. sorry I wasn't clear. It's your own agency HR who keep track of your personnel records in the meantime. My agency has a retirement (estimate) calculator I review on a regular basis, I can play various retirement scenarios to help me decide when to pull the plug, but it's still based on what HR has entered into the program for SCD/RCD dates. error in/error out. I spotted a discrepancy, figured there had been a miscalc due to my Leave Without Pay times off during the 1984-1987 period when I was in grad school and working intermittently after getting picked up in mid-1986. So I decided to get the miscalc cleared up last year for my own peace of mind-well before I get to the point of submitting retirement papers. The cleaner the recordkeeping is beforehand, the smoother the paperwork will go at actual retirement time.

When I submitted a ticket to get the records cleaned up and get RCD/SCD consistent with each other, an HR person was assigned to my "case". Once someone was assigned to focus on the issue, it was cleaned up, no problem. I don't enter the RCD/SCD dates in the retirement calculator program myself, they do.

I can look at the same official records that HR has, and can verify that everything is there that should be there. that's the basis for the RCD/SCD, doesn't eliminate human HR errors in calculating complicated records from that error. Not all HR people understood the transition era. Your HR people are technically correct that FERS didn't officially start until 1987. However. CSRS officially ended in 1984. You had to have 5 years in already to be allowed to stay CSRS before that date. They had to have a plan for people picked up between 1984 and 1987, but they already intended for those people to be covered (eventually) by FERS and SS. CSRS-Offset was the solution. Read up on CSRS-Offset. People who came in during 1984-1987 were placed in CSRS-Offset for the interim. They paid a smaller portion into CSRS but also paid into SS at the same time. Your HR people need to talk to you about CSRS-Offset and how they are handling your time under that transition system back then. Your HR may or may not understand how to handle those records. HR people during that time sort-of did, but not entirely. My records show one month of CSRS-Offset from 1986, but it really makes no difference to my RCD/SCD dates discrepancies.

They had me sign a form in Dec 1986 where I was officially asked to choose between CSRS or FERS. It's in my electronic HR file, and I do remember signing it. I "chose" FERS, but back then was told technically I never really had that choice in the first place because I didn't have 5 years in prior to 1984 and all my time would end up ultimately in FERS system regardless. The one month of CSRS-Offset that still shows up is probably a minor error, but not one that especially concerns me.

 

[wheeble]

Unfortunately, most HR dept's these days are not fully versed in the rules and laws as they pertain to upcoming retirees who started thier career between 1984 and 1987. That said, as stated in the replies to this thread, the time does indeed count for FERS retirement credit. If a person was hired in a status other than Career-conditional or Excepted Civil service such as Temp Indefinate, part time, or temporary etc. and then was transferred to one of the first two categories, there may be a buy-back requirement for the time. These questions and others like it can cause ulcers, but with this and other sites, answers can be found and stress relieved. Good luck to all.

 

[kb9nvh]

Humm, I've been kicking myself in the butt for 25 years for not starting work 2 weeks earlier so I could have been on CSRS. They offered to let us co-ops come in either Dec 20 something 1983 or Jan something 1984. We chose after the holidays but I often wondered if that was a mistake I would regret later. Are you saying that even if I had started Dec 1983 I would have ended up on FERS? Makes me feel better It guess....hahaa
BTW...I tried to call OPM and and get someone assigned to me and calculate my retirement and sat on hold for 45 minutes before I gave up.

 

[alevin]

Humm, I've been kicking myself in the butt for 25 years for not starting work 2 weeks earlier so I could have been on CSRS. They offered to let us co-ops come in either Dec 20 something 1983 or Jan something 1984. We chose after the holidays but I often wondered if that was a mistake I would regret later. Are you saying that even if I had started Dec 1983 I would have ended up on FERS? Makes me feel better It guess....hahaa
BTW...I tried to call OPM and and get someone assigned to me and calculate my retirement and sat on hold for 45 minutes before I gave up.

If you didn't have 5 years in under your belt before 1984, you couldn't keep the csrs, no. So no it didn't matter about 2 weeks in 83. No need to kick yourself, no. And OPM doesn't take requests from individuals for retirement calcs. They rely on your agency HR, who transmits your retirement info to OPM after you've submitted your retirement paperwork and after your agency has done all the checking and rechecking of your personnel history at that point. OPM does the final final, but they won't talk to you directly ahead of time to give you a retirement estimate. that's your agency personnel's job. to give you an estimate, after you've submitted your retirement papers.

Check and see if your agency has an online retirement calculator somewhere that you can use to run your own estimates in the meantime.