Preparing for Retirement

Every year, we make New Year’s resolutions to plan for the future. One area to plan for is retirement. Whether your retirement is five, 10, or 30 years down the road, there are several questions you need to get answered: First, what is your retirement system? Is it the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) or Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) Offset? Are you one of the handful of employees in CSRS, meaning that you already have over 42 years of service and will receive a pension of 80 percent? Do you know how your federal pension will be calculated when you retire, or what role Social Security will play in your retirement income? What about the Thrift Savings Plans (TSPs)? Do you understand how the money is invested, or why management pays a share? How does your sick and annual leave figure into the retirement equation?

These questions can all be answered in the retirement planning seminars conducted online by the APWU Retirees Department at least once a quarter. For dates and times, visit apwu.org/events. In addition, we conduct in-person seminars at the local, state, and national levels. Contact us at RetireeQandA@apwu.org if you have questions. Our counselors are very knowledgeable and experienced in the matters related to your retirement.

Legislative and Executive Actions

Legislative or executive decisions made by Congress or the White House may affect your retirement. We must remain vigilant and ready to act on legislative issues that impact your retirement benefits. Congress enacted Social Security in 1935. Social Security is the only source of retirement income for many Americans. Postal workers and most postal retirees have paid into Social Security. Current postal workers pay into three retirement programs – the FERS pension, Social Security, and TSP. The retirement benefits you pay for as you work must be protected from the whims and plots of politicians. Think tanks, with the help of Congress, are looking at ways to reduce your benefits without your advice or consent. The APWU supports the following legislative priorities to protect and improve your retirement benefits.

• The Federal Retirement Fairness Act, if signed into law, would allow temporary postal and federal employees who are promoted to career status, the option of “buying back” the time that they worked as a noncareer employee to use toward their retirement. It would affect over 100,000 APWU members who have converted from temporary to career status.
• The Equal COLA Act would fi x the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) discrepancy created by Congress in the 1980s. Under the current system, all annual COLAs are based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W). CSRS retirees receive a COLA equal to the CPI-W increase, while FERS retirees only receive an equal COLA if the CPI-W increase is 2 percent or below. If CPI-W is over 3 percent, 1 percent is subtracted from the CPI-W for FERS.
• The Social Security Expansion Act would strengthen and enhance Social Security. Some features of the bill would subject income above $250,000 to Social Security taxes; calculate COLAs using the CPI for the Elderly (CPI-E), and make the Special Minimum Benefit 125 percent of the poverty line. It is estimated that this bill will make Social Security solvent for over 70 years, since the extremely wealthy would pay the same tax rate as the average employee.
• The Social Security Fairness Act would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which are parts of a Social Security law enacted in the 1980s, that unfairly reduce, or sometimes eliminate, Social Security benefits for millions of local, state, and federal annuitants.

What steps will you to take to ensure that your representatives on Capitol Hill are aware of your position on these issues? ■