As posted above, I wish this group was around when I was applying and working for the State of Minnesota. It would have helped me understand things a bit more.

My story is I performed city/county work until my first retirement at the end of 2010. I retired at age 50 when the county offered a buy out. I took advantage of that and started annuity payments under MN PERA.

I worked a couple of private sector jobs until snagging a job with a second defined pension plan in about September 2011. I worked there for over 6 years and took a second retirement in 2018.

I left when I took a job at the State of Minnesota. I worked for a few different organizations that contribute to MSRS. I retired about a year and a half ago.

Many of the posts that I read here I can relate to.

While you certainly won't get rich performing most of the jobs at the State of Minnesota, there really aren't that many places that still have Defined Benefit pension plans. I thank my stars everyday that I get a monthly annuity from PERA, the Fed and MSRS. I haven't started drawing from Social Security, yet, but in about 4 years I will start drawing that. I haven't started drawing from my IRA, yet, but I am watching it grow.

I recently learned that it's possible to go to part time as a fed without extenuating circumstances. This is very appealing as I'm at the point where my investments growth outpaces my contributions but still 5-8 years out from pulling the trigger. I would be either taking a big hit on the FERS supplement by retiring before 50 and pension doing that (unless I re entered service for a few years before MRA).

Alternatively, I could work 48 hours a pay period at GS-13 and have 20 equivalent/prorated years by age 60 if I choose to. Working 3 days a week would be lovely and cover just about all my living expenses. Plus I could do Roth conversions at a much lower tax bracket.

I couldn't find any discussions on this so it makes me think I'm missing something?

https://preview.redd.it/3yf5mcunygah1.png?width=2160&format=png&auto=webp&s=4a49ce30b25ce825bc0df12ea65eb934342291ef

Here's my discussion scenario for the week. I'll call him Dave. ATC, 50 years old, 25 years of 6(c) service, married, Virginia. He can retire today. He keeps asking himself: is two more years worth it?

So I ran it. Both paths, same starting point. The only thing that changes: does he walk out at 50 or 52?

A few things move when retirement age shifts, and they're all linked to the same decision (not separate choices):

• Two more years of pension service: goes from 25 to 27 years under the 6(c) formula
• Two more years of SRS credit: same service-year count drives the supplement
• Two more years of TSP contributions at his current rate ($8,100/year) plus the agency match
• Two more years of growth on the existing $720,000 balance

Here's what that package adds up to:

Pension:

• Retire at 50: $4,592/month (net, after survivor benefit)
• Retire at 52: $4,824/month

That's $232/month more, for life. From 2 more years of service.

TSP at retirement:

• Retire at 50: $720,000
• Retire at 52: $857,862

The extra $137,000 comes from two years of 7% growth on $720K plus two years of contributions and match.

SRS (the supplement that bridges to Social Security):

• Retire at 50: $1,425/month for 12 years (to age 62)
• Retire at 52: $1,539/month for 10 years (to age 62)

This one's a tradeoff inside the SRS: higher monthly rate from more service years, but two fewer years to collect it. Net: Dave gets $20,520 less total SRS by waiting. Worth noting.

Average monthly take-home in retirement:

• Path A (retire at 50): $10,727/month
• Path B (retire at 52): $11,836/month

That's $1,109/month more for the rest of his life.

Total lifetime income to age 88:

• Path A: $5,020,015
• Path B: $5,255,078

Waiting adds $235,000 in total income across his retirement.

Now the honest catch.

Dave doesn't break even in cumulative income until age 75. He gives up two full years of retirement at 50 and 51 -- that's income he'll never get back. On a raw dollars-collected basis, he's behind until 75, then ahead for every year after.

So the real question isn't "does B win?" -- it does, if he reaches 75. The question is how he values 50 and 51 specifically. Being 50 and out of the tower isn't the same as being 52 and out of the tower. No calculation touches that.

One thing the break-even doesn't capture: Dave in path B isn't sitting idle at 50 and 51 -- he's still working, still earning his $162K salary. After federal and Virginia taxes, that's about $136K/year in take-home. Path A over the same two years is collecting about $84K/year in net retirement income. Count working income on both sides and path B is already ahead at the start of retirement -- the break-even at 75 is a retirement-income-only number, and a conservative one.

If Dave is healthy and reasonably expects to reach his mid-70s or beyond, the math makes a pretty clear case. An extra $232/month pension, a bigger TSP, and $235,000 more over a lifetime is hard to walk away from. But if there's a reason to go now, the numbers don't favor him until 75, and two retirement years at 50 have real value that doesn't show up in any spreadsheet.

Did others in 6(c) positions run this same calculation? Did the math change your decision, or did something else win? And if I've got a flaw in the setup, call it out. What should I run next Tuesday?

Hi, I work at a federal agency and have about 15 years of federal experience. Trying to retire at 50. Is it possible with the State Department? My question is whether the 20 years creditable service has to be with State Department? Or else could I just apply to work there at 49 and then retire in like a year at 50 from State Department with 20 years total government experience? Trying to see if I could game the system or if the 20 years must be in the Foreign Service? TIA!

Many of you are new here since the change in administration and likely won't recognize me. I was previously very active in the sub.

My last effective day working was on my last day of being 46 back in 2023. I didn't technically stop working until January 1, 2024 as I was burning leave. Since terminal leave isn't (or wasn't) legal in the federal government, I came in on Friday the 29th to turn in my equipment, out process, etc.

I have written previously about what went well and what didn't.

The 3 biggest things I didn't expect:

• Getting VA disability and screwing up ACA subsidies
• Being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
• The budget impact of a small amount of tax free disability

Cancer Situation

I was diagnosed in July of 2025 despite having symptoms I attributed to IBS for at least 6 months prior. Underwent 6 rounds of Folfrinox (extremely potent chemo cocktail), had surgery in November (on my birthday) and had 6 more rounds. Rang the bell in early March of this year. While I am extremely grateful to be alive and hopefully see my 50th birthday this year, I am not who I was. I'm now a type 2 diabetic as I don't produce enough insulin with only half a pancreas. I can't eat without taking medication (Creon) as my pancreas doesn't produce digestive enzymes. I have pretty bad neuropathy in my hands and feet from the chemo. Etc.

ACA Situation

I became eligible to use the VA for medical care around the middle of 2024 but as it was all new to me and I already had marketplace insurance, I kept things as they were. What I discovered when I went to pay taxes was that I stopped being eligible for ACA subsidies and had to pay back about a half a year's worth. Ouch. Since January 1 2025, I have been using the VA while my family continues to use marketplace insurance. The cost with subsidies is probably the same or even less than what I was paying with the government and the coverage has been just as good.

Budget Situation

The original plan had been to execute a ROTH ladder and draw down the retirement savings until the pension kicked in at 60 and SS at 62. With the small amount of tax free disability income from the VA which I hadn't planned on, the amount needed to draw down was reduced below a critical threshold (the amount we are spending is less than the amount it is growing). In other words, we have more money now than when we stopped working. In fact, I switched from a ROTH ladder to a 72T just to be able to pull out more money sooner and it's still outpacing us. I know a lot of that has to do with how the market has been (ignoring world events) and it's a good problem to have (yay for eventual RMDs). Still, it makes me think that I should have pulled the trigger even earlier.

Life Situation

I'm extremely grateful to be alive and cancer free but we are not taking anything for granted. The statistics are disheartening to say the least. I put basically everything on hold for a year and now things are in high gear. We are traveling, visiting friends and family. My youngest graduated from HS and will be moving away to college in August making us empty nesters. We are planning 3 months in Europe this fall and 6 months in SE Asia next year.

Questions And Advice

Let me know if you have any questions. I'm busier now than I ever was when I was working 40+ hours a week but I want to continue to support this community however I can for as long as I can.

My advice - if you can, do. Tomorrow is not promised and life is able to be enjoyed the younger and healthier you are. Hold those you love close, drive fast and take chances (try not to get caught).

My job is saying that we won't pay into social security anymore after going through an org change. Curious if this is a good thing from a Govfire perspective. I have a hunch that this might be a good thing, just not sure. Already put into a pension, so covered in that regard. This change would up my take-home. Thanks in advance.

I’m a federal employee and should be able to retire at 57. A little over a year from now. It would be better to work until 60 but if I’m careful I should be fine at 57. I have talked to a Shlanski & Associates and they quoted a modest annual fee that was about 1/2 percent of my portfolio the time it was quoted. Would you recommend working with someone or not and why or why not?

This is a long read, but my ask is that if you are a 100% P&T Veteran, a Veteran in general, a non veteran or spouse of a veteran who supports veterans….read and comment if you are willing to do something, comment if you have connections that can assist. Let’s come together and take action.

If you are a 100% P&T veteran in federal service fighting to keep remote work, here is the gut punch. The spouse of a 100% disabled veteran is categorically exempt from the return-to-office mandate. The disabled veteran is not. This post is NOT a bash on spouses. I support you, I am happy you got your exemption!

However….same household. Same disability. The non-disabled spouse keeps remote work automatically. The veteran has to document it, fight for it, and can still lose it all which will exasperate their disabilities. Not to mention the RA process alone is exasperating their disabilities because it’s a burdensome fight.

And this is the part people get wrong: the agencies are mostly not breaking the law. They are operating inside the rules. The problem is the rules were never built for us. Here is how the gap actually works.

When OPM rolled out RTO, it created categorical exemptions for military and Foreign Service spouses. That carve-out covers the spouse of a member who, on the date that member retired or was discharged, had a 100% VA disability rating. So the non-disabled spouse keeps remote work by category. No documentation fight. No interactive process. No counterproposals. Automatic.

That benefit attaches through the marriage and the military family-readiness policy behind it. Spouses, MOAA, and military family groups organized for years to win it. I am glad they have it. They earned it. This is not me coming for the spouses. This is an attempt for a call to action to fight for legislation for the actual Veteran with the disability who wants to continue being gainfully employed in service to this country. It’s an ask for legislation for equal treatment for the actual veteran, that spouses already receive.

But it is a spouse benefit rooted in family policy. It is not a disability protections. And there is no parallel anywhere that gives the disabled veteran that same categorical treatment as a class. That is the gap.
So when a 100% P&T veteran wants to keep working remotely, there are two doors and both are bad.
Door one is reasonable accommodation under the Rehabilitation Act. People hear “you have RA rights” and think that settles it. It does not, and here is what they do not tell you:

1.	**RA is blind to your VA rating.** The process is built around generic functional limitations and essential job functions, not service connection or a disability percentage. They will not accept your VA P&T rating letter as documentation. At all. You have to get an agency medical form filled out by a provider describing limitations in general terms. Your 100% means nothing in that room.  
2.	**Even if you win it, you do not keep it.** Agencies are requiring annual re-justification, so you re-prove a permanent, VA-adjudicated disability to a supervisor every single year.  
3.	**They can take it back.** OPM and EEOC guidance from February 2026 lets agencies reassess accommodations they already granted and swap your telework for an “effective alternative.” Agencies across government are revoking telework agreements right now. That is documented fact, not a rumor. DOJ is being sued by employees with disabilities who say the department is categorically denying telework accommodations. Defense employees have had approved accommodations rescinded weeks after they were granted.  
4.	**The trap inside the trap:** if they offer an in-office alternative, they can make you try it for weeks before you are allowed to call it ineffective. If you are forced into a trial, document everything, every symptom flare and every essential function you could not perform, because that record is the only thing that ends it.

And the part almost too absurd to type: we have veterans the VA itself rated housebound, meaning the government formally determined they are substantially confined to their home by service-connected disability, being ordered to commute and sit in an office five days a week. One arm of the government pays them a housebound benefit. Another orders them in. Sit with that.

Door two is a discretionary agency-head exemption for a “compelling reason.” Leadership could grant these tomorrow. They will not. Goodwill from the top is not a plan.

One more thing. Even the spouse version ties eligibility to the member being 100% on the date of discharge. That is nonsense. 100% P&T is 100% P&T no matter when the rating landed. You catch a bad C&P examiner. You get a rater who does not apply every law on the books. The condition progresses over years. Or you carry that combat stigma and white-knuckle it for a decade out of pride before you ever file. The date the rating posted says nothing about how disabled you are today.

Here is the ask, and where I need you.
The spouse exemption did not appear by magic. People organized, a veterans organization carried it, lawmakers pushed, and OPM acted. Nobody has ever run that play for disabled veterans in federal employment. So let us run it.

The first win does not have to be huge. The cleanest one: accept a VA permanent and total rating as sufficient documentation, and stop forcing 100% P&T vets to re-justify a permanent disability every year. From there, the real goal is a categorical exemption for 100% P&T vets regardless of rating date, the same as spouses already have, with the difference of the rating date not being included as when you were rated does not change the fact that you are rated and it does not make it any different than someone rated on the day of discharge. 100% P&T is 100% P&T, regardless of the date of rating.

The way this moves is through a VSO. DAV, PVA, VFW, and MOAA all have legislative shops, and they set priorities through resolutions that start at the local chapter level. One adopted resolution puts this on a national organization’s agenda. That beats a thousand solo emails.

So:
1. Are you a 100% P&T fed dealing with this? Comment. The people who can help need to see how many of us there are.
2. Which VSO are you a member of, and would you push a resolution through your chapter? I have model language ready.
3. Has anyone already started something like this? Point me to it so we join forces instead of splitting up.
4. Anyone with legislative advocacy experience, I will take all the guidance I can get.

I think I’ve figured out why this is happening and what we’d need to ask for. What I don’t have is the people, the resources. That’s the part I can’t do alone, and it’s why I’m posting this.

Is anyone willing to come together to take action, do something, and make a difference?

EDIT (corrected math): A sharp commenter caught two real mistakes in my original numbers, and they were right on both. First, I wasn't accounting for the income tax you pay up front on Roth contributions (Roth is after-tax, so a dollar going in costs more than a dollar of traditional). Second, my model was quietly relabeling part of her existing balance as Roth when I flipped the split, a second change I never meant to make. I fixed both and re-ran. The corrected writeup is below.

Important: the image on this post is from the original version and the numbers on the card are WRONG. Please ignore the figures on the image. I can't swap an image without deleting the whole post, and I'd rather leave this up with the correction out in the open than scrub it and pretend it didn't happen. The right numbers are all in the text below (bolded). Short version: Roth still comes out ahead, but by a lot less than the card claims ($87,800 less lifetime tax and about $652,926 more left at 90, not the six-figure-pot blowout on the card), and it's a genuine tradeoff, not a slam dunk.

---

Every Tuesday I take a realistic FERS case and change exactly one variable, then run the numbers. This week: traditional vs Roth TSP for someone with a long runway.

The setup: an ATC I'll call Priya. Age 34, married, retiring at 53 under 6(c). $190K in the TSP today, putting in $6,750 a year, 19 years to go. Same person, same return, same everything. The only change: 100% traditional versus a 50/50 traditional/Roth split. To keep it fair I held her take-home cost equal, because Roth is after-tax, so the 50/50 version actually puts a bit less into the account: $1,158,452 at retirement versus $1,191,756 all-traditional.

Here's what the split buys her. By retirement she has $92,849 sitting in Roth, tax-free to pull and exempt from RMDs (the all-traditional version has $0 in Roth). Over the full retirement, the 50/50 path pays $87,800 less in lifetime income tax (federal and state combined). And at 90 she still has $3,170,799 in the TSP versus $2,517,872 all-traditional, about $652,926 more, a good chunk of it tax-free.

Now the honest catch, and it's a real one. If you look at monthly take-home, the all-traditional path is actually HIGHER, by about $982 a month on average across retirement. Why? RMDs. Starting at 73, the all-traditional saver gets force-fed required withdrawals that climb into the six figures, all taxable, needed or not. That pumps up her "income" line, but it's really the IRS prying money out of the account and taxing it on the way out. The Roth saver pulls less, keeps more sheltered, and hands less to the IRS.

So this isn't a slam dunk for Roth. It's a tradeoff. Roth here means a smaller lifetime tax bill, more money left at the end, and freedom from RMDs on that chunk, in exchange for a slightly smaller monthly check. If your goal is max monthly spending, all-traditional edges it. If it's paying less tax and keeping more, with more control over when you pull it, Roth wins.

One caveat worth stating: this assumes her tax rates and today's RMD rules hold. Change those and the math shifts.

Curious how others think about this one, especially the RMD angle. Did dodging the RMD tax bomb factor into your Roth/traditional call, or did you just go by your current bracket? And if there's a FERS decision you want me to run next Tuesday (retire age, SS claim age, survivor election, high-tax vs no-tax state), drop it below.

I have a Health Savings Account with HSA Bank through my GEHA insurance. I also have an HSA I opened with Fidelity. I've been contributing directly to my Fidelity HSA through MyEPP. I skip funding the HSA at HSA Bank, and it is only used to collect the $1000 passthrough, which I then transfer over to Fidelity.

I was doing some research and read this on the Boglehead HSA wiki:

"Most HSAs have modest fees in the 0.3%/year range, and may also require a certain balance to be kept in cash rather than invested. Investors can choose their own HSA custodian, and at least one offers fee-free HSAs (Fidelity), but if it is not the custodian chosen by your employer, you will lose the payroll tax deduction by contributing directly."

Being that the contributions are made to my Fidelity HSA through MyEPP, does that mean I am still getting the payroll tax deductions?