u/JieSpree

My retirement was recently finalized, to my relief, and then a letter came yesterday from BCBS with an odd combination of initials and part of my last name on it. The message was something about a name/social security number mismatch. I called BCBS, and apparently OPM sent them a wrongly formatted name for me when they informed BCBS that I had retired, and BCBS changed my name to the new wrong name in their system. So now I have to jump through some paperwork hoops to get my name corrected at BCBS. (Who still owns an actual fax machine??) It's a bit of icing on a (frankly) crappy cake. I'm tired.

Another of many who are finally getting some good news. Retired 9/30, package went to specialist at OPM on 12/29, finalized 5/12. My monthly annuity is ~30% higher than I had estimated. I was on the financial ropes before; I'll survive now. Best wishes to all of you who are still waiting!

Update: Finalized with booklet available this morning. Hallelujah!

This evening I received an email from OPM saying the status of my retirement package had changed. I logged in, and it says "Case Finalized", but the right-hand column still says "Incomplete". Any insights into what that likely means? Did I jump onto OPM.gov too soon? Thanks!

I turned 65 last month. I'm still waiting for my annuity to be finalized. I elected to keep my federal health insurance into retirement because I have dependent family members covered under my plan. So not only am I paying for BENEFEDS insurance out of my very-slim interim annuity payments, I'm also going to be paying Medicare premiums now, which will be high for a couple of years due to pulling money out of my IRA last year so I could pay off a couple of loans and--wait for it--be able to make ends meet while I wait for my full annuity to kick in. The two sets of insurance premiums together are just shy of 100% of my total interim annuity. I have a solid financial plan in place for the longer term future, but I had hoped to avoid getting pinched like this right now.

Up front: I DRP'd from another agency, not IRS. Regardless, it super bugged me to see a flyer from them in my mailbox, advertising that they're hiring for a processing center in a city near where I live. Seems pretty offensive given what they've been putting their workforce and new retirees through for the past year+.