They did everything right and still haven’t been paid

I was planning to write about the number of TSP millionaires for this week’s column — until I started getting messages from former federal employees, all who retired on September 30, 2025, and are still waiting for their retirement benefit from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to be finalized.

It is not completely surprising that retirement processing has slowed down, and for some former employees, they continue to wait for their retirement benefits to be finalized. But for the employees who have reached out for assistance, many have not received any money since their last paycheck was received in October 2025.

It has been almost six months with very little or, in some cases, no money and little communication to help them understand how long they will have to continue to wait.

Here are the stories that I received this week:

Angie retired from the USDA Farm Service. Angie represents one of the thousands of federal employees who accepted the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and agreed to resign or retire at the end of the fiscal year in 2025.

Angie told me that she has been preparing for retirement by attending pre-retirement training, and she saved her annual leave so that she would have some money to hold her over while her retirement was being processed. She also saved extra money so that she could pay her bills for up to six months should her retirement be delayed. She considered herself as prepared as she could be.

After numerous calls to OPM, with many hours spent waiting on hold, she finally found out what appears to be the reason why she has not received any of her retirement benefits since her last day of work.

Angie was divorced 13 years ago. Her court order clearly stated that she and her ex-spouse would not share any of their retirement benefits. She answered “no” to the question on the retirement application regarding her former spouse having any entitlement to her retirement and/or survivor benefits.

She did not include a copy of her divorce agreement, as the application required that the document be included only if he were entitled to benefits. Unfortunately, a copy of her court order had been sent to OPM, presumably by her HR specialist. For some reason, a copy had been filed in her personnel file.

The first thing she was told by OPM was that the copy was emailed and was not a “certified copy” of the order. Unfortunately, Angie was not informed of this until months after her retirement date. She stated that she would have been happy to provide a certified copy had she known the reason for the delay.

She was also informed that there were “red flags” because she had a name change during her career and a change in health insurance from self plus one to self only. The OPM customer service representative told her that her retirement package was sent to the Court Ordered Benefits Branch, where it sat waiting for review.

Angie recently requested assistance from her congressional representative, and she thinks that this may have helped. She received promising news on her latest phone call to OPM earlier this week.

She was told that her case is now showing that it is “ready for payment!” Angie hopes that she will soon see a large deposit in her bank account, with her first regular payment on May 1. However, she said, “I will believe that when I see the money!”

Laura, who retired from the IRS, shared with me that she spoke with a benefits specialist at her former agency who told her that her paperwork wasn’t sent to the National Finance Center (NFC) until Feb. 1.

In addition, she was informed that, from that date, it would likely be an additional 90-day wait before her retirement package would be forwarded to OPM. The reason why her retirement wasn’t sent to NFC until February was unclear.

Other than that, she was told that it wasn’t assigned to a retirement specialist in her human resources office until Dec. 31. She received her lump-sum annual leave payout in early February from NFC, which was promising, but nothing else.

She has not yet received any communication from OPM. She has now submitted a request to her elected representatives in Congress in hopes that it will help her to receive her overdue benefits soon.

Shawn, who also retired on Sept. 30, has also been waiting for his retirement benefits since his last day on the job on Sept. 30, 2025.

He stated that he retired as a 37-year IRS revenue officer advisor, GS-13, one of the most senior in the country. He accepted the DRP 2.0 in response to the mandate in 2025 requiring him to return to his physical office. He had been working from home since 2021.

He stated that he consistently received outstanding performance ratings and did not want to change his remote work arrangement. As of this week, he has not received any annuity payments.

He understands that the IRS Human Capital Office (HCO) has a massive backlog, as does OPM. IRS HCO informed him that OPM has his retirement package now. However, when he contacted OPM, they told him that they had not received his retirement package.

Shawn, like many others, contacted his congressman’s office, but so far they could not get the package pushed through.

He informed me that he has had to take two large distributions from his Thrift Savings Plan to pay bills. He is now at the point where he may have to take another.

It appears that the delays may stem from the payroll provider, NFC. After HR completes work on the retirement application, it must go through payroll processing before OPM can begin work on the claim.

As Laura related above, there were extraordinary delays reported regarding the processing of the thousands of retirement cases that descended on NFC since Sept. 30, 2025.

Susan, another Sept. 30 retiree, related to me that her retirement application has been in NFC since Jan. 12 — no movement, no communication.

She made a request for assistance but only received a canned response that was not helpful in letting her know how long she will have to continue waiting.

“I planned for a long wait,” she said, “but it is now just short of eight months since my retirement date.”

She, like Shawn and Laura, retired from the IRS. Her career lasted more than 25 years. I mentioned some of the possible reasons for her case being delayed, such as being hung up in the Court Ordered Benefits Branch at OPM, but she stated that she has been married for more than 40 years and has never been divorced.

I mentioned that paper applications take longer to process. However, she applied using the new ORA. It appears that the hang-up, like the others, hasn’t been with OPM, but with her payroll provider, NFC.

She hasn’t received any interim retirement benefits or other communications from OPM. It is possible that her retirement package has not yet been submitted to OPM.

Stacy retired from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), where she worked for eight years after spending 18 years working for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

NFC does the payroll for USCIS under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She is more fortunate than some of the others, since her retirement landed at OPM much earlier. She received her Civil Service Active (CSA) number in November 2025, and she has been receiving interim retirement payments and still is in interim pay as of this week.

When she called OPM, she was told they were waiting on an NFR from June 1999 to December 2001. Stacy was not sure what they needed. They told her that OPM had asked her former employer to provide this information.

Her retirement has been assigned to a Legal Administrative Specialist (LAS) at OPM, but they won’t share the name or contact information.

Her former agency informed her everything was sent, including all her Individual Retirement Records (IRR). The Individual Retirement Record (SF 2806/SF 3100) is maintained by the agency for each employee subject to CSRS or FERS.

The Individual Retirement Record is used by OPM as the basic record for determining the retirement benefits payable to a separated employee or his or her survivors. It is, therefore, important that each SF 2806 and SF 3100 be correct, complete, clear in every detail, and properly certified so that, when the record is received in OPM, claims may be processed expeditiously.

Stacy is frustrated with the lack of transparency and seeing so many others who are receiving full retirement while she is stuck in a holding pattern. It appears that the holdup is with her payroll provider, which, as you may have guessed, is NFC.

Stacy learned that her HR office contacted NFC and sent the missing information on Nov. 3, 2025. They were told the information was sent along with a register number. A Register and Separations Report is sent to OPM by each payroll provider.

Payroll offices are required to send the register number and date to the separated employee, indicating that the payroll office has completed their separation from the former agency.

She sent a request for information to OPM’s general email, hoping they would get it. The generic response she received, however, is a “do not reply” email.

The last employee who contacted me recently only wants to be identified as a Sept. 30 retiree from the Department of State, where she has worked since 1999.

She previously served for nine and a half years in the military and “bought back” the military service, giving her a long career of more than 36 years, which would be a full career of federal service by any definition.

Initially, things went well, as she received her OPM CSA number and started to receive interim retirement payments within two months of her retirement. By February, she learned that her case had not been assigned to an LAS yet.

No one has reached out to her, and her help requests have not received a response. She calls OPM almost daily but rarely gets through.

She was divorced, but it was prior to her civilian federal service and does not believe that this could be the cause of the delay in processing. She submitted her retirement application last May using GRB software, not the new ORA system.

She submitted all the documentation required, proving she paid her military service credit deposit, along with her DD-214, her discharge certificate for her active duty.

She is without a clue as to when she will be made “whole” and said that this delay is causing her family a severe financial hardship.

She took the Voluntary Early Retirement at age 54 and did not turn 55 until 2026. This means that the withdrawals she has needed to take from her TSP account are subject to an early withdrawal penalty of 10%, in addition to the regular income tax she must pay in the year she receives the payments.

Legal Administrative Specialist 

According to an OPM job posting, an LAS employee at OPM is responsible for processing claims, reviews and program evaluations intended to maintain the integrity of retirement benefits arising under the federal retirement systems and enunciation of program policy.

They are the employees responsible for adjudicating and/or making determinations of eligibility and entitlement on cases of retirement annuities and survivor benefits.

They analyze records and imaged documents to make decisions that may involve any feature of eligibility for retirement benefits or for health and life insurance benefits related to retirement.

They may also act on allegations of fraud or impropriety concerning the receipt of payments or benefits under retirement programs.

They respond to inquiries from congressional sources, agency and union officials, retirees and survivors. They also assist employees with higher salary grades in the preparation of regulation packages, bill reports, drafting of instructional issuances or similar material.

Providing advisory and information services to agencies through formally established channels on legislative changes. The estimated salary range for this position is $39,226 to $50,492.

As I have shown in these examples, the delays may stem from the HR office or the payroll providers that were buried under mountains of separations and retirements that had to be processed at the same time.

When a federal employee resigns or retires, the payroll office is responsible for processing final pay, issuing lump-sum payments for unused annual leave and certifying retirement records for OPM. They calculate and pay out unused annual leave, often within four to six weeks, audit leave accounts and submit the Individual Retirement Records to OPM.

Why do some cases move quickly while others sit?

In my experience, retirement processing is less like flipping a switch and more like closing out a file with dozens of tabs. One missing document or unresolved question can stop forward progress.

Common culprits include late or incomplete payroll certifications, missing service history, unposted deposits or redeposits for prior service, unresolved military service credit, periods of leave without pay that need to be documented, name discrepancies, incomplete beneficiary or survivor elections, or court orders that require special handling.

None of these problems are rare, and when thousands of cases arrive at once, the odds go up that more people land in the exception pile.

According to OPM’s “Retirement Processing Quick Guide,” these are the factors that might delay your retirement processing. While most retirement cases will be straightforward, certain circumstances can significantly delay the process, including:

Court orders such as a divorce decree or property settlement. These require an additional step and are sent to the Court Order Benefits Branch for review.

Service as a law enforcement officer, firefighter, air traffic controller, Capitol Police, Supreme Court Police or nuclear materials courier, as these cases use a special annuity computation.

Past or active workers’ compensation claims.

Service as a part-time or intermittent federal employee.

Federal service at multiple federal agencies.

Missing documents and forms, or incomplete or incorrect information in your retirement application.

Moving without updating your address with OPM.

Even when everything is perfect on the employee’s side, the reality is that OPM and agency partners are balancing staffing, training and competing priorities — while retirees are balancing mortgages, insurance premiums and everyday life.

A delay of a few weeks can be irritating. A delay of several months can be destabilizing.

What makes this especially hard is the information gap. Retirees often don’t know whether their case is waiting in their former agency, sitting in a queue at OPM or stuck because of a specific missing item from the payroll provider that nobody has clearly explained.

What you can do while you wait

If you retired and you have not received payments, or you are receiving interim payments that don’t look right, here are a few practical steps that can help you diagnose where the delay is and, in some cases, speed up resolution:

Confirm that your separation was processed correctly. Ask your former HR or payroll office whether your retirement package was submitted to OPM and on what date.

Ask whether your Individual Retirement Record, SF 2806 for CSRS or SF 3100 for FERS, has been certified and forwarded. If it’s still at the agency, OPM can’t finalize what it doesn’t have.

Request the missing item list in plain language. If your case is pending because of military deposit documentation, a redeposit or a court order, you need to know exactly what is being requested and where to send it.

Keep a simple contact log: date, phone number or email, who you spoke with and what you were told. It helps when you follow up or request that your case be escalated.

If you’re in interim pay status, compare what you’re receiving to your estimated annuity. Interim pay is often lower, but if it is dramatically lower, it may signal that OPM is missing service or hasn’t credited key items.

If the delay is creating a cash flow crunch, think carefully about any bridge income you use while you wait. Many retirees tap the TSP, savings or part-time work to cover the gap.

That can be a reasonable short-term fix, but be mindful of withholding and taxes, and remember that pulling from the TSP earlier than planned can change the long-term trajectory of your retirement income. If you’re unsure, a tax professional or fee-only financial planner can help you run the numbers.

If you are getting nowhere, escalation is appropriate, but it works best when you bring specifics. Start with OPM’s Retirement Services and ask whether your case is received, in pay status or waiting on something from your former agency.

If OPM indicates the issue is on the agency side, go back to your HR or payroll office and ask for the status of the exact item OPM says is missing.

If weeks pass with no movement, a congressional inquiry can sometimes help surface where a case is stuck, especially when the problem is a missing document or an unanswered request between offices. It won’t guarantee instant processing, but it can improve visibility and accountability.

What I keep hearing from the 9/30/25 retirees is not just frustration, it is fatigue.

People did what they were supposed to do. They submitted paperwork, attended pre-retirement counseling, verified service history and planned budgets around an expected start date.

When the annuity doesn’t show up, retirees are forced into a holding pattern: delaying travel, postponing home repairs and rethinking health and family expenses.

And because the process is opaque, many begin to worry that they made a mistake, when the reality may be that their file is simply one of many thousands that are moving through a bottleneck.

Ultimately, this is why retirement processing delays are more than an administrative headache. They are a real-world test of whether the system can deliver a promise earned over a career of service.

OPM employees and agency payroll teams can’t solve a surge with good intentions alone. They need staffing stability, modernized processes and clear handoffs that reduce exception cases.

In case you were wondering, the number of TSP participants with account balances over $1 million is 184,532, and these participants have an average of close to 28 years of contributions.

The number of participants with less than $50,000 in their TSP accounts is 4,200,274, and these people only have an average of a little more than six years of contributions.