Retire at age 55?

**Brett** · 10-25-2006, 11:28 AM

Ah…. To retire at 55 (if you are one of the lucky ones with CSRS). But wait; there are choices to make here. In my particular situation, when I’m 55 (I’m 48 now.), I will have 35 years with darn near a year of sick leave to boot. This should give me about 68% of my high three.

Choices:

1.) Retire and don’t look back, take your 68% and run!
2.) I’m way too young to retire and should stay to get my 80% at age 60. This would also allow me to grow my TSP with more contributions.

There’s got to be several of you out there in the same situation, I would be interested in hearing what some of you are deciding to do.

**SkyPilot** · 10-25-2006, 11:51 AM

Depends what you want.

Many people choose a seperate career, and build a second retirement. Those individuals not only collect FED retirement but also add a second stream of income, thus far exceeding the income if they stay (even with greater percentage hi-3).

If you do stay, calculate how much you would be drawing in retirement vs how much you make on the job. Sometimes the difference is pennies per hour. Hardly worth investing your limited hours (we all are limited on how many hours we will have in life) at work, unless is it your dream job.

These are just a couple of many considerations.

Peace and Blessings!

**vic** · 10-25-2006, 12:14 PM

Brett, I juat retired in July with 37 years service and 1 1/2 years of sick leave. I am 59 years old. As long as you are enjoying your job stay put. When you get up in the morning and dread going to work, it's time to go. I miss the people I worked with, but not the job. You can always start a second career. Enjoy what ever you decide to do you can't go wrong.

**atcsat64** · 10-25-2006, 01:11 PM

I'll be the outsider in this post, but still throw in my 2 cents. Mandatory retirement is 56, min age 48 with 25 years of service. I am 42 - six years from min age. Work conditions have deteriorated so bad recently that I (and most of my co-workers) plan to leave ASAP. FERS at min age is 39%, so the rest of what we need is obviously up to me. Over the past few years my wife and I have slowly been adjusting our budget towards this big change, meaning reducing expenditures, increasing investing/savings, and credit cards paid off every month (we only have two left). My goal now is to be ABLE TO RETIRE when I am eligible, but hope that I can stay with my job long enough to be comfortable in retirement WITHOUT having to work another job.

My backup plan is learning Spanish so I can afford retirement to another country where no one can pronounce my name... (no joking).

**Pilgrim** · 10-25-2006, 02:08 PM

If your are in FERS, your accrued sick leave simply evaporates. As a result, older FERS people are starting to use lots of it, a fact that has been noticed by OPM. I hear that there is no chance of changing the law to allow it to count as service time (as it does for CSRS) but that there are proposals to do something so it doesn't just count for nothing.

Anyone got any up-to-date info on what is likely to happen?

**EW_ret** · 10-25-2006, 02:15 PM

The same issues that I went through in deciding when to retire apply today. I retired September 30, 2005 at age of 56 1/2. I wanted to retire at 55 but delayed for 18 months.

I hated my job because of all the reorganizations at the Navy base I worked. I could not get the final pay 3% increase of payband under Demonstration pay system (started in 1999). The job was not satisfying and there were no challenges.

However, I hung in until age 56 to get a greater yearly amount of non-taxable annuity and contribute as much as I could to TSP and Roth IRA. The non-taxable portion of my CSRS annuity is the return of all the money (7%) I deposited into CSRS. They prorate the total money based upon life expectancy and return it over the years in retirement. By waiting until age 56 it increased by 18% compared to age 55.

If I had liked what I was doing, I would have stayed a few years longer. Since I hated the job I decided to retire at 56 and collect 70% of my high three. Almost seven percent of my annuity is non-taxable because it's a return of my contributions to CSRS.

My net CSRS annuity is 76% of my pre-retirement salary net pay because of lower the tax brackets, 7% is non-taxable, and I am not contributing to CSRS (7%) or Medicare (1.45%). When I factor in not contributing to TSP or Roth in retirement, the net retirement annuity jumps to 99% of pre-retirement salary net. So the money to live on is not a problem.

I have considered coming back as a contractor, but the stigma and resentment I have still lingers. I'd rather do something different, or volunteer. I don't need the money.

**Brett** · 10-25-2006, 02:36 PM

Thanks guys for your input. I'm leaning toward retiring at 55 because my wife is older and will be able to retire before me, but also because I figured that each additional year will give me roughly $100 a month extra or, only $3.30 a day. That can add up over time, of course, but like SkyPilot mentioned, we only have a limited number of hours to live. EWGuy, I hadn’t even considered that the retirement amount we have paid in over the years was tax free income. That’s good to know.

**mlk_man** · 10-25-2006, 02:38 PM

I'm retiring at 45. Works over rated.

**Griffin** · 10-25-2006, 03:29 PM

Originally Posted by EWGuy

When I factor in not contributing to TSP or Roth in retirement, the net retirement annuity jumps to 99% of pre-retirement salary net. So the money to live on is not a problem.

That is awesome.................20 years from now I hope to follow in your foot steps.

**ChemEng** · 10-25-2006, 08:20 PM

Agreed. Hopefully by making that max TSP contributions for my next 30 years of service (*sigh*) will let me get out in a similar situation.

There will not be a question about when to get out for me. Its MRA and out. You only live once, and I want to enjoy as much of it as I can. Right now Im tying too much of it up with little things like work...