Retirement Planning should be done during the hiring orientation process of the new employee. At that time the employee's very important financial planning responsibilities should be presented/layed-out in detail. Telling an eligibible for retirement individual what to think about finacially at a retirement seminar is so too late. Though the new employee is hard pressed to think about retirement when they are being hired the National Institute for Transition Planning would better be better off developing a plan for new hires instead of wasting time telling people they forgot to plan properly. That would be a valuable challenge for the NITP and would be priceless to the new hire.

I'm under FERS, I plan on retiring 31 Dec 2006. Is that go date or should I wait till 5 Jan 2007. I will have my 240 plus about 140 loss or use.

What are the pros and cons of going from CSRS after 30 years to NAF (non-appropriated fund)? Haven't seen this topic addressed in any of your columns and thought maybe there might be somebody out there besides me who is contemplating jumping ship. Thanks.

I concur with Robert Slotnick's, July 11 comment, retirement planning should be initially addressed at orientation. I attended my first of 8 retirement seminars in my 48 years with DoD in the 10th year of my 21 year Air Force Career. That was none to soon. All in attendance, agreed the information should have been included in the initial recruit training. Each seminar I attended caused me to adjust fire based on changes in the "rules" and in my life. BTW, I heard Tammy present at a NITP retirement Seminar in Las Vegas a few years ago; extremely knowledgeable, well informed and a super speaker. It was the most comprehensive retirement seminar of the 8 I attended. Stay informed!!

December 31 is a good day for a FERS employee to retire from the stand point of being able to cash in lots of annual leave (the use or lose deadline is the following week so it is possible to have 200 hours of accrued leave on top of the balance carried over from the previous year). Another advantage to December 31 is that your retirement will begin on January 1 (you will get a FERS retirement benefit for january). If you choose to retire on January 5, you would gain 5 more days of salary, 1 more leave accrual, but you would forfeit the January retirement benefit... your first retirement benefit would be for the month of February. Is 8 hours of leave + 1 week's salary worth more than 1 month of FERS retirement?

I agree with Robert that retirement planning must begin early!! Agencies generally provide retirement information during orientation training and OPM is developing a retirement readiness and financial literacy evaluation for employees at entry level, midcareer and pre-retirement. It is never too early to begin planning for a financially secure future. My experience has been that it is sometimes difficult to get younger employees to have a lot of enthusiasm about preparng for retirement. Sometimes they have more pressing needs and can't imagine being at a stage of life where there is life after government. We do offer seminars for employees who are beginning their careers and we focus on the "what-if's" that can occur during a career and how to be prepared. Our most attentive audiences are those employees who can see their retirement (and feel it and taste it too!). I find that for the most part, pre-retirement level employees have a basic understanding of how retirement works, but they need assistance with what to do with the wealth they've accumulated and how to make their retirement dollars provide the smoothest transition to a long and healthy retirement.

I have retired from the Federal government. I did not expect my office to do financial planning for me, but I did expect the estimate to more accurate than it was. I was under the impression that I was eligible for the supplemental benefit. I was not. It made a difference in my annuity. It was stated to me "you may be eligible for more, but your total eligibility is determined by OPM." OPM makes this determination until after you leave the government. I think that estimates need to be realistic so that there are no surprises after one leaves work.