Retirement pension computation

Greetings... It's been a long while since I last visited the site. Hope everybody is doing well over the last 7 months since Trump got in the office. I collected 75,000 new coins myself and glad it panned out that way.

I'm now 56, nearly 1 year past my Minimum Retirement Age, 32 years of federal service. I used to contribute about 15% into my TSP until 5 years ago, when I borrowed $50,000 to buy an investment property. Then I scaled down to the usual 5% so I could have money to pay pack into TSP. It is almost over now. I want to play some catch up with my TSP but also realize that any extra money putting into TSP now is not going to make a big splash in the total, unless I want to stick around for another 10 years... or more. Which I don't plan to. Then, I started doing to calculation of my pension using the calculator in EBIS and found that the "basic pay" amount has been lower than my actual salary.

I'm wondering if this "basic pay" is the effective amount after deducting the TSP contribution. If that is the case, then TSP contribution actually "hurts" the pension pay. Do you notice the same? I'd rather hear you telling me wrong.

Thanks,

Your pension is not reduced by what you contribute to TSP. It should be based on your annual salary + locality pay. It doesn't include any extra pay like bonuses or night time differential.

EBIS may not have your actual annual salary correct. I think the last time I checked they estimated mine to be 97% of my last year since they didn't know what my high three was. I thought EBIS let you enter what your actual high three was but I could be wrong there.

Use Fedcalc.com for a more accurate computation of your high three.

You can calculate your high three yourself and multiply by your years of service at expected retirement to get a better estimate.. Cactus is correct in that EBIS reduces your current salary by 3 percent as a simple way to account for high 3 years. It actually comes out pretty close if you are at top of the pay grade and only get COLA and it doesn't account for additional time for sick leave that may apply. Depending on what the annual pay increases are, it may vary but it should be slightly lower than what you should actually end up at. Another way to get a closer estimate is to ask CPOL at Ft Riley https://www.abc.army.mil/directory.htm for a retirement estimate that will give you a more detail estimate.

Interesting...