FERS employees
FERS pays from three places — your annuity, Social Security, and whatever you built in the TSP. You can decide when you would like to start taking income from any of the three.
Find yourself below
Federal benefits are not one system. What applies to you depends on which retirement you are under and how close you are. Start with the door that has your name on it.
CSRS employees
Fewer and fewer advisers still understand CSRS properly. If you have been told your situation is unusual, it is not — it is just that most people you speak to have never had to work with it.
Special provisions
Most of this group retires in their fifties, and most of them go straight into a second career. The planning question is rarely “can I afford to stop”. It is how these two incomes interact — and almost nobody in this market writes to that.
Already retired
The decisions do not stop at the retirement date. Most of the advice written for federal employees stops the day the paperwork is filed, which leaves the people who are actually living the decisions with nowhere to go.
Not sure which applies to you?
Most people are not, and it is not a silly question — transferees, breaks in service and time in covered positions all move people between categories. Book the review and we will work it out from your record.