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.

Results 81-90 of 364

So Many Choices

November 4, 2011 With the 2011 Federal Employees Health Benefits Program open season (from Nov. 14 to Dec. 12) fast approaching and information available at the Office of Personnel Management's website, it's time to begin pondering the choices that lay ahead. The good news is there are a lot of choices. But that's ...

Long-Term Open Season

October 28, 2011 As employees and retirees begin to gather information for the upcoming Federal Employees Health Benefits Program open season (which runs from Nov. 14 to Dec. 12), it might be a good time to look back at another open season that occurred earlier this year, involving the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance ...

Targeting Early Retirement

October 21, 2011 Last week, Kellie Lunney wrote a story on GovExec.com about a proposal by Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., to curtail early retirement in government. "Working as a waiter or waitress is more physically demanding than most federal government positions for which we now grant early retirement," he said. The article sparked ...

Refreshing COLA

October 14, 2011 By now, you may have read the news about the impending cost-of-living adjustment in federal retirement benefits that will be announced next week. This will be the first increase in two years for those under the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System, along with Social Security ...

Complicating Factors

October 7, 2011 What happens when you cross a Civil Service Retirement System retiree with one covered under CSRS Offset? You can get a very confusing situation if the CSRS Offset spouse dies first. This is what happened to "Mr. Rogers" when his wife passed away several years ago. Mrs. Rogers retired under ...

Coming Back

September 30, 2011 Just when you thought everyone was leaving federal service, I've been hearing from a few former government employees who want to come back. I recently received a call from my friend Mary Ann's husband, Jim. He's thinking about returning to government. He was in the military for seven years during ...

Uncertain Times

September 22, 2011 Amid natural disasters, the threat of terrorism and financial instability in our world, it's hard to approach the retirement planning process with a sense of certainty these days. Last week, I wrote about a survey undertaken by the MetLife Mature Market Institute and the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University ...

Go or No Go

September 16, 2011 Earlier this year, the MetLife Mature Market Institute and the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University produced a report called Best-Case Strategies for a Flexible Retirement. Here are some of its key findings: More than a quarter of survey respondents reported retiring earlier or later than planned due to unexpected ...

Not Quite Right

September 9, 2011 Last week, I wrote about the importance of getting an estimate of your retirement annuity as you plan for life after government. But here's the problem: Some estimates are incomplete and some have errors. It's very important that you have some idea of how your service history should be used ...

Predicting the Future

September 2, 2011 One of the important things all employees should do before retirement is request an annuity estimate. This is a calculation of your Civil Service Retirement System or Federal Employees Retirement System benefit prepared by your human resources office for a specific retirement date. It's different from the do-it-yourself estimates that ...