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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.
Ensuring a Healthy Retirement
June 16, 2006 Maintaining adequate health care coverage is a very important element in retirement planning. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program is designed to cover not just federal employees and their families, but retirees and their family members as well. Employees and survivor annuitants may continue FEHBP coverage through their CSRS or ...
Offsetting Penalty
June 9, 2006 If you receive a pension under the Civil Service Retirement System, based on income from which Social Security taxes were not withheld, the Social Security benefits that you may be entitled to receive from your spouse (or former spouse) may be reduced due to the effects of what's known as ...
The Early Way Out
May 26, 2006 In last week's column, we looked at benefits for employees who resign before being eligible to retire. This week's topic is early retirement. Voluntary early retirement goes by various names. Informally, it's called taking an "early out." Officially, it's sometimes called VERA (Voluntary Early Retirement Authority), often coupled with VSIP ...
Leaving Early
May 19, 2006 According to the Office of Personnel Management, more than 5,000 federal employees resign every month. If you've considered leaving your job before you're eligible to retire, have you considered what benefits you will take along? Retirement Federal employees contribute to their retirement plans at the rate of 7 percent of ...
Who’s Your Beneficiary?
May 12, 2006 One important tasks in retirement planning is thinking about how you want to designate who will get lump-sum benefits related to your federal service. Beneficiary forms are among the most litigated pieces of paperwork in the federal government. Designations of beneficiaries must be in writing, signed by the designator, witnessed ...
Voluntary Benefits
May 5, 2006 Do you want a safe place for your savings that will provide a 4.125 percent rate of return this year with tax-deferred growth? Are you looking for a way to invest more than the annual limit on Individual Retirement Arrangement contributions? Would you want to buy yourself an increase to ...
More on Medicare
April 28, 2006 In last week's column, we looked at the basics of Medicare A, B and C. This week, we'll address the military health benefit known as TRICARE for Life, which coordinates with Medicare A and B. And we'll finish up by looking at the new Medicare Part D program, covering prescription ...
Medicare ABCs
April 21, 2006 Medicare is nothing more than health insurance, primarily for people 65 or older. But the program remains a mystery to many federal employees, beyond the 1.45 percent hospital insurance tax deducted from their salaries. The relationship between Medicare and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) can be especially puzzling. ...
Best of Both Worlds
April 14, 2006 My horoscope said I'm in a position to lead a confused person by the hand today. So that's just what I intend to do -- at least if it's the retirement coverage plan called Civil Service Retirement System Offset that's confusing you. CSRS Offset is a version of CSRS established ...
CSRS vs. FERS: The Reaction
April 7, 2006 Last week's column comparing CSRS to FERS certainly attracted a lot of feedback. I expected some skepticism, but not the level of hostility in some of the responses. I was trying to make FERS employees feel better about their future; it seems that some of them think I need to ...
