A Man Who Works For Civil Service

I met a man by accident at the tire shop when I was having my tires rotated. His name was Frank. He drove a Monte Carlo and was at the tire shop getting a plug for a tire that had picked up a nail. I told him about my military service and that I was a veteran and he told me he had worked in Civil Service for 9 years. We got along pretty well and we swapped phone information, etc. and vowed to get back together at some point in the future.

Retiring Before Age 60

I came across his information in my billfold two years later. I called the number he gave me and after a brief introduction, we agreed to get together for a coffee at a local coffee shop. He was finishing up his college degree and was thinking about leaving Civil Service for a job in corporate America. I told him of my plan to retire when I was 57. I discussed my retirement investment plan and we laughed about retiring early before age 60. He said he did not know anything about investing and was in the Civil Service FERS retirement program. We seemed to have a lot in common, but we were both really different from each other. We parted company and once more agreed to touch base sometime.

Research About FERS

When I got home, I did some research about the Civil Service FERS retirement program to learn more about it. It was established in 1987 for people joining Federal service for the first time and was designed to take the place of the defined benefit retirement plan employees who were hired before January 1, 1987 had in place. You can read more about CSRS and FERS in the articles I posted here and here.

Frank called me, this time, about a year later. He had gotten his college degree and had accepted a job with a large company. Since he was leaving Civil Service he remembered our conversation about early retirement and wanted to get together and discuss his FERS account. Could we meet again? I said yes, but it was going to cost him a latte’. We agreed to get together on the next long weekend at the coffee shop. I told him I would do some more research about the FERS retirement plan.

Take Your FERS!

The bottom line was that when we got together, I told Frank he should transfer his retirement account away from FERS and move it to a qualified IRA with a well diversified financial company like Fidelity. I’ll discuss the reasons why I gave him this advice in a future article.

Jeremiah John

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