My retirement story

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2moryrs

2moryrs

Member
Maybe this story will help others planning to retire in the near future.

1. Turned in SF-2801 Application for Immediate Retirement on 11/5/2008.
2. Received letter dated 1/20/2009 from National Finance Center that file had been sent to OPM for processing.
3. Received mailing dated 1/22/2009 from OPM that they had started to process my application.
4. Received word from former HR staff that my lump sum would be processed with PP#3 February 23, 2009.

That is the story to date. Will continue when I get the next mailing from OPM concerning my regular annuity payments.

2moryrs - not!
 
2moryrs said:
Maybe this story will help others planning to retire in the near future.

1. Turned in SF-2801 Application for Immediate Retirement on 11/5/2008.
2. Received letter dated 1/20/2009 from National Finance Center that file had been sent to OPM for processing.
3. Received mailing dated 1/22/2009 from OPM that they had started to process my application.
4. Received word from former HR staff that my lump sum would be processed with PP#3 February 23, 2009.

That is the story to date. Will continue when I get the next mailing from OPM concerning my regular annuity payments.

2moryrs - not!
Click to expand...

Are you getting paid (since Nov thru working or retirement)?
 
Hey, thanks! Yes I am getting paid, at least that is what the next letter indicated. It will be interim payments until they get finished with retirement application.

5. Got letter from OPM with amount of interim payment amount for 1/4/2009 thru 1/30/2009. Have not checked with the Credit Union to see if they received it yet. Will check on Monday, March 2nd. (A side note: I am getting ready for a trip to Washington, DC to attend NARFE Legislative Training conference March 7-10, 2009. A lot of current employees don't realize that they pay their HC costs with pre-tax dollars. Just another reason to become a member; to protect what you already have before you retire)

More later
 
6. Got second letter from OPM: interim payment for 2/01/09 through 2/30/09. I swear that is what the letter said! Did anyone else hear that February now has 30 days?!? ;^>

Payments from 1/4/09 thru 2/30/09 have indeed arrived! So, I only had to borrow from my savings account one time. And, I am very thankful for what I have been given considering the economic times we are dealing with at the moment.

Stay safe and cautious out there my savvy TSP friends.
 
Greg,
To correctly answer your question: I actually retired on the 3rd of January. I turned in my application in November of 2008 as I did not want to wait until the last moment. USDA was a great place to work up until these last few years. So it was a good time to get out. I received my last actual paycheck on January 12th.
Feels good to be retired and out of debt!
Colleen
 
2moryrs said:
6. Got second letter from OPM: interim payment for 2/01/09 through 2/30/09. I swear that is what the letter said! Did anyone else hear that February now has 30 days?!? ;^>

Payments from 1/4/09 thru 2/30/09 have indeed arrived! So, I only had to borrow from my savings account one time. And, I am very thankful for what I have been given considering the economic times we are dealing with at the moment.

Stay safe and cautious out there my savvy TSP friends.
Click to expand...

Thanks 2M, I'm watching your progress as it give me answers for the
future. Its deeply appreciated and I'm sure its helping many of us. ;)
 
Guchi,

Thank you! I am really getting used to the idea that my schedule is now my own doing. I don't have to march to anyone else's drum! I worked for USDA Rural Development. Used to be USDA Farmers Home Administration until Al Gore decided he was going to reinvent Gov't and start with USDA. Took one agency and basically turned it into three ?!? The agency has been trying to undo the damage ever since.

Now on to the "story":

7. Got my complete retirement "package" calculated as of March 9, 2009. This package explained in not-so-easy to understand jargon what my Gross amount due was; what the additions and deductions were; and there was a small adjustment due to me; I did not have to pay them back anything. Yippee!

8. When I received the pin code, I logged in to www.opm.gov/retire and set up where and how much to go into each account. So far it appears I don't have to put so much in the household account to live on. The good Lord has indeed been good to us and we are very greatful in these rough times.

9. My best pearl(s) of wisdom for anyone contemplating retirement any time soon would be to start collecting employment histry if you worked for more than one gov't agency, then make an appointment with an HR person who is responsible for retirement applications for your agency, and then exercise a lot of patience during the process. See if your agency has subscribed to an online retirement calculator and ask them to upload your records so you can start calculating if you can afford to retire.

Someone posted a link to an FAA CSRS course (for lack of a better description) and I found it to be quite good.

My best wishes to all who have the good fortune to be able to retire. For those of you who think you can't, consider a Dave Ramsy course. If nothing else, it will give you a clear picture of where your money is going and how to start keeping more of it for your retirement as well as other fun things.

thanks for reading!
 
Suppose one planned to retire precisely at the end of the leave year to get the max payout -- how far in advance should the application go in? You put in during November and actually left in January?
 
Yes, Elgallo is correct. HR prefers 90 days. I was working closely with my HR and they knew my application was coming in. I had to find a few papers that went missing.
 
I have not submited before to i hope this is were I ask the questions?
I am out on OWCP right now but I will be comeing off soon. I plan to retire ASAP. I am LEO and I meet the retirement out at 55 the year I retire so I am planing to take my TSP out since I will not have to pay the extra 10%. I will use it to buy a house so my morgage is a lot lower as it will make my retirment easyer on my income. My big question is that I am in 100% G, but should I take the risk and jump into the C & S to try to make up a little extra before I go out, or shoud I not take the risk. I could use the extra as I was to late in moving my money out of the C & S and into the G before I lost a good amount of it. I am asking for some advise on what to do. Any info will be will be a great help. So should I stay G of take the risk and jump into the C & S, and hope I can make alittle more before I go out.
 
You have missed the recent 30% rally so I would stay put. You lost money going to G too late, and if you re-enter now you could get caught up in another downdraft and loose even more. I do hope you have been buying C,S, and I with your biweekly contributions because all of those funds are on sale at 1/2 price!

I would think twice about pulling out all your $$$ to pay off the house. The tax implications are enormous, and you have no mortgage interest deductions. Our taxes will be going up so it would be nice if you had schedule A deductions to shelter some of your income to some extent.
 
Thanks for your input Elgallo, but my thought was with the reduced retirement income wouldn't it be better to have little to no mortgage so my limited income will work better for me. With what I have in TSP I will only be getting $400 to $500 extra a month. I am LEO and will be going out on retirement using my 55 rule for year you go out so at least I will not have to pay the extra 10%. I know I will still have the 20% tax withholding. I will have over 33 years Gov time. I am out on OWCP because of a bad back and kne injury and I believe my angency will not allow me to come back because I will have to many restrictions to do the job, so maybe I will be able to get SS Disability on top of my retirement with would help. So do you still think I should just leave it and wait and try to make more with the market. I am open to any thoughts on this issue i just can not make up my mind. I do not want to screw it up. i have done to much of that in the past by not taking care of my account as I should of maybe I could change my name to Ostrich.
 
I have been renting because I didn't think I would be here so long So the new house I am thinking about buying in new but it is about 80,000 less that people paid just 6 months ago. I will pay 178,000 new but that work out to about $84 a square foot So my thought is if I pay 130,00 down with VA at 4.78% and the turn around get a pay off loan for the differance which would make be payment to between 200 to 300 a month.
 
One problem would be the taxes on that much. If you withdrawal 130,000 and add your salary or pension to that, you would be in a very high tax bracket. So you would need to keep back enough to pay the taxes (probably over 30%).

You should consider taking out equal payments from TSP that you could use toward the house payment so that you only have 200-300 a month to pay out of your pension. You will have a very low interest rate plus the tax write off. I say run those numbers and see what you get. If you used the equal monthly payments to get down to the $300 how long will your TSP last?

Just a thought.
 
Thank? You are right if I do use the TSP to pay down my monthly payment it would work and make my payment not as low but low enough to make it work. I was not think that way in the begning but maybe that is a better way to look at it. I will run the numbers. Thanks, it's nice to have other ideas because it is easy to get locked into tunnel vision idea.
 
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