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AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Tammy Flanagan
Tammy Flanagan is the senior benefits director for the National Institute of Transition Planning Inc., which conducts federal retirement planning workshops and seminars. She has spent 25 years helping federal employees take charge of their retirement by understanding their benefits.
For more retirement planning help, tune in to "For Your Benefit," presented by the National Institute of Transition Planning Inc. live on Mondays at 10 a.m. EDT on Federalnewsradio.com, or on WFED AM 1500 in the Washington-metro area.
What You Don’t Know
February 27, 2009 One thing I can say about conducting retirement planning seminars is that I have both job security and a lot of job satisfaction. I think my job will be safe as long as retirement processing is not fully automated, because the current manual system leaves plenty of room for discrepancies ...
Questions and Answers
February 20, 2009 How about a little Q&A this week? I am always impressed by the number and variety questions I receive. Retirement is obviously on the minds of many people in government right now. But before I get to your questions and comments, I need to clarify something from my recent column ...
Deposit Directions
February 13, 2009 As I've noted before, service credit deposits -- payments that employees make into the federal retirement fund in order to receive credit later on for past service -- are often a subject that leads to unpleasant surprises for federal employees. It's often in an employee's interest to pay such a ...
Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late
February 6, 2009 At a seminar this week, an employee told me that she was doing some research on Medicare for herself and came across the information regarding late enrollment. She called a former co-worker, but it was too late. Her friend had retired more than a year ago and had not enrolled ...
The Check Isn’t in the Mail
January 30, 2009 Since we're in the early part of the year, many people have recently retired and are waiting for their final lump sum annual leave payments and first retirement checks from the Office of Personnel Management. (By the way, these payments will most likely be direct deposits, so if you're one ...
It Pays to Know
January 23, 2009 In these tough economic times, wouldn't it be nice to have some "found" money? In my weekly seminars, I try to teach people things that will boost their current income, or provide more retirement income later. Isn't that why you read this column, too? This week, I'll provide some examples ...
Changes You Can Believe In
January 16, 2009 Every year, there are changes in the way Social Security, Medicare and federal retirement benefits are calculated. Likewise, there are changes affecting federal salaries, the Thrift Savings Plan and other programs. All of these will factor into your long-term retirement planning efforts. Let's take a look at some of the ...
The Index: 2009 Edition
January 9, 2009 Last year, my index to previous columns was a hit with readers, so I thought I'd provide an update with the best columns of 2008 added and a few outdated columns deleted. Looking back over the year, I spent a fair amount of time on service credit issues and specific ...
Holiday Wishes
December 19, 2008 I will be taking a break from my weekly column until after New Year's. So for my final column of 2008, I thought I'd create a wish list of changes that, if enacted, would improve retirement prospects for federal employees. Some items on this list would require the cooperation of ...
Part B, Part Three
December 12, 2008 In the past two columns, I've looked at Medicare and retirement, especially issues surrounding Medicare Part B. While yet another week of Medicare information might be testing my audience, there were enough questions and comments during the past couple of weeks that I'd like to go back to the well ...
