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Greetings all! please allow me to send out this feeler. I am a Federal Gs 12 employee and would like to know from other federal GS 12 who have retired IF THEY HAVE RETIRED comfortably on the CSRS pension?
Greetings all! please allow me to send out this feeler. I am a Federal Gs 12 employee and would like to know from other federal GS 12 who have retired IF THEY HAVE RETIRED comfortably on the CSRS pension?
What was most difficult?
THANKS!
You need to provide more information for any response to be helpful. Most importantly, how many years service will you have? There's quite a difference between having 30 years of service (56.25% of high-3) and having 42 years of service (80%). Also, how long have you been a GS-12? Are you retiring at step 1 or at step 10? Do you have a spouse and will you be taking an approximate 10% reduction in your annuity to provide a full spousal benefit? How much is in your TSP account?
All of the above will factor into how "comfortably" one lives in retirement. That said, I'm sure that there are hundreds of thousands of CSRS annuitants who retired comfortably as a GS-12 or below.
Way back in the Dark Ages, I was hired as a GS-4 technician, replacing a person who was retiring ... as a GS-4! Even then, in my foolish youth, I remember thinking, how is he going to make it?
MadMan's right - you need to provide more information to get answers that are worth anything.
But I can say that I retired in March '08 - middle step of a GS-13 with 35 years of service - and I'm finding my retirement quite comfortable. :-)
Well, a GS 12/step 10 means a very decent high three, and 36 years of federal service means 68% of your high three. Does that include unused sick leave? The only reason I got to 35 years of service at age 55 was 9 months of unused sick leave.
You're retiring to Florida, and there's no state income tax, so that's nice ... although it seems to me that such states find ways to make up for the lack of state income tax revenue.
I'm assuming you were in FEHB for the last five years, so that you can carry that over into retirement. You should be in very good shape in terms of health insurance.
You had time, and hopefully took advantage of the time, to invest some serious money in TSP and/or the Voluntary Contributions Program. If so, that should do a nice job in supplementing your CSRS annuity at age 70 1/2 or sooner, whenever you want/need.
There are other unknowns here - housing costs, whether you hope/plan on perhaps a part-time job after you retire from federal service, what kinds of plans you have for your retirement (travel, hobbies, etc.).
But in terms of your monthly income from just your federal annuity, you should be in good shape - much better shape, in fact, than many retirees who would probably describe themselves as doing ok or even fine in retirement.
You asked in your first post "What was most difficult?" So far, there hasn't been anything difficult for me financially in retirement. But I'll tell you what took me by surprise. I always figured on getting a part-time job after I retired from the government, for reasons that included but were not limited to having a source of some "extra" cash. I even applied for a couple of jobs, and was interviewed for one (but that institution's budget took a hit and they canceled the posting).
However, I find that with each passing week and month of thoroughly enjoying my full-time retirement, thoughts of getting a part-time job are fading from my mind. And that's been the biggest surprise for me in retirement ... so far.
You should have no problem at all, especially since you will be moving to a fairly low cost-of-living area such as Pensacola. One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that you will probably get many more responses to your questions if you post them on FederalSoup.com. It is a community of federal employees and annuitants with several individual boards and threads covering various topics of interest to the federal community. Here is a direct link to the board pertaining to retirement planning:
Sorry Gang, I didn't realize the information I left out, but it breaks down to this:
GS 12 - Step 10
36 years of service
Retiring to Pensacola Florida.
Again. Thanks for any advice.
Well, we don't know anything about your wild and crazy planned retirement lifestyle, either...
You could plan to spend your retirement on your yacht, gambling in Monte Carlo with, you know, other rich and famous CSRS federal employees, taking your private jet to your summer cottage in Paris, skiing in Switzerland for the winter or going on a three month African safari. For all we know, you may still owe $50,000 on your Lamborghini...
But seriously, you should be fine.
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