Thread: Tsunami's Account Talk

Originally Posted by weatherweenie

I never heard of the Windfall Elimination Provision before. I looked it up, and found this: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf

If I'm reading the provision correctly, this doesn't affect those of us who are paying into Social Security, and always have?

weatherweenie.

The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) applies to CSRS employees/retiree's only. So if you are under the FERS system, it will not apply to you. Also, the CSRS employee/retiree must have had to work another job for 40 quarters (10 years) where social security was deducted from their pay. This qualifies them for the social security benefit, but at the reduced rate.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the clarification.

Originally Posted by ravensfan

weatherweenie.

The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) applies to CSRS employees/retiree's only. So if you are under the FERS system, it will not apply to you. Also, the CSRS employee/retiree must have had to work another job for 40 quarters (10 years) where social security was deducted from their pay. This qualifies them for the social security benefit, but at the reduced rate.

Hope this helps.

I paid SSA for 18 years and they cut my SSA by 60%. Those with 20 years or greater are prorated, when you reach 30 years of paid SSA there is no penalty. Lucky me!!!!

I'm in the same boat Norm. I've been holding off filing for SS because there was a chance WEP might pass; but the politicians decided to screw that up for us at the last minute. So, it looks like we're back at square one until the amount of WEP can be agreed upon. NARFE has worked for a 50% penalty elimination for CSRS folks, but at the last minute some craphead wrote 14% into the bill and everything was tabled. My guess, nothing will happen. Oh well, the good news is my existing benefit just continues to go up.

FS

Originally Posted by FogSailing

I'm in the same boat Norm. I've been holding off filing for SS because there was a chance WEP might pass; but the politicians decided to screw that up for us at the last minute. So, it looks like we're back at square one until the amount of WEP can be agreed upon. NARFE has worked for a 50% penalty elimination for CSRS folks, but at the last minute some craphead wrote 14% into the bill and everything was tabled. My guess, nothing will happen. Oh well, the good news is my existing benefit just continues to go up.

FS

I agree with you! When I signed on to work Civil Service the agreement was that If I qualified for SSA I could draw retirement from it and the CSRS they broke that contract when they INVENTED FERS to save money!

Originally Posted by ravensfan

weatherweenie.

The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) applies to CSRS employees/retiree's only. So if you are under the FERS system, it will not apply to you. Also, the CSRS employee/retiree must have had to work another job for 40 quarters (10 years) where social security was deducted from their pay. This qualifies them for the social security benefit, but at the reduced rate.

Hope this helps.

Not true RF...I had about 8 years under CSRS, left the government for about 18 months, then came back in 1991...I had a choice of CSRS offset or FERS, chose FERS (which I've regretted ever since turning 55 last year)...So I'm FERS (or more formally "FERS with a CSRS component") and in my situation I fall under the WEP rules, and so I have to have 30 years of "substantial earnings" (currently $22,050, but it goes up with inflation) while paying SS taxes before the WEP no longer permanently cuts my SS (and my wife's too since she'll get half of mine). I will reach that point in early 2019 unless Congress changes the formula and kicks me out of this purgatory. So at this point I'm probably stuck working until early 2019 unless I decided that a 5% or 10% cut in my SS (and my wife's) is small enough to not matter. The cut is currently only $43/month (see weathweenie's link, it's 5% of $856) for each year I have under the 30 years...so if I retired now my SS would be cut 15% off the first part of the SS formula ($856)...or $128/month...if I hang on until next March then the cut drops to $86/month, then in March 2018 it will drop to just $43. I think by early 2018 I'll reach my TSP savings goal, so at that point I might decide to just take the 5% hit in SS for only having 29 years of "substantial earnings" and retire...I've got 3/31/18 on my calendar as the day.

This sideways grind in the S&P is maddening....but today's AAII sentiment survey results still show a very low percentage of bulls (31%), so I think it will break out higher soon.

http://www.aaii.com/sentimentsurvey/sent_results < very bullish!

"I'm in the same boat Norm. I've been holding off filing for SS because there was a chance WEP might pass; but the politicians decided to screw that up for us at the last minute. So, it looks like we're back at square one until the amount of WEP can be agreed upon. NARFE has worked for a 50% penalty elimination for CSRS folks, but at the last minute some craphead wrote 14% into the bill and everything was tabled. My guess, nothing will happen. Oh well, the good news is my existing benefit just continues to go up.

FS"

What actually happened was that the "rest of the public service folks" ie: State and County employee unions took exception to the idea that they should be covered by the WEP and talked to their congressional people about it and the elected representatives had to go back and revisit how they were going to consider voting on this WEP change.

WEP affects anyone who pays into Social Security and gets another kind of public pension.

With 50% I would get around $250 a month and the wife's would go up around $115 a month, she gets 50% of what I get - a penalty for drawing it at 62. that would give me some MAD MONEY!!!

Instead of the pullback Gunner expected, we've just been getting sideways chop for two weeks. With a close above 2160 tomorrow I think we'll hit his 2215 target (and maybe higher) by next Friday, 8/5, then comes a small pullback back down to these levels later in August...then on up to 2350...then the new President gets greeted with a recession next year (just like Obama in '08).

17072016

Man, somebody get the defibrillator, looks like an irregular heartbeat the last 5 days...
http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/%5EGSPC?ltr=1

If you hired on in this era or earlier and think your CSRS, better double check because some have found that they are "CSRS OFFSET" which I think but not sure is a catagory of its own. Good Luck!

Recession coming, but not quite yet....
https://www.thefelderreport.com/2016...a-bear-market/

I think I'm guilty of #33 right now, getting greedy and changing my QQQ target for a pile of Aug 5th calls I'm holding from $116 to $117...
https://medium.com/the-mission/50-th...ef0#.mg67sdsap

Looks like the S&P is finally breaking free of the what's been the longest sideways consolidation since at least 1970. 2200 by Friday?

Northman unplugs from Twitter. I'll miss his great (free) charts but am glad to see him doing well...
https://northmantrader.com/2016/07/31/unplugging/