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In my last two articles, I described the first two steps in the retirement process. First was your filing a retirement application. Second was your agency’s processing that application and sending it to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Ideally, your retirement application should make its way through your agency’s personnel and payroll offices within 30 days of the day you filed it. However, because the 2022 leave year ends on December 31 – a perfect time to retire – your agency and OPM will likely be both overwhelmed with applications and short-staffed because of COVID-19. As a result, that goal may not be met. Nevertheless, your agency payroll office will notify you when your retirement application has been sent to OPM. If it doesn’t, you’ll have to follow up with them.
When your application finally arrives at OPM, they’ll send you a written acknowledgment and give you a retirement claim number, preceded by the letters CSA (Civil Service Annuitant).
When OPM verifies that you meet the requirements to retire, it will authorize an interim annuity payment, which is a percentage of what your final annuity will be. OPM does this for two reasons. First, to provide you with some income while your application is being processed. Second, to avoid overpaying you and having to reclaim the excess when your annuity is finally approved.
Now here’s the bad news. While OPM’s goal is to finish processing retirements in an average of 60 days, in practice the average is more like 90 days. And remember, that is an average; the wait in many cases it can be much longer. That’s especially true for those retiring around year’s end because there always is a spike in applications at that time.
After OPM finishes processing your application, your regular annuity amount will be determined and your first regular annuity payment will be authorized and paid by the Treasury Department. Any money you are owed from being in interim pay status will be included in that first payment.
OPM will also send you an Annuity Statement and other information about your retirement benefits. You’ll need to keep this statement in a safe place. If you ever apply for a home mortgage or some other large loan, you’ll be asked to provide a copy to the lender as proof of your entitlement to an annuity.
Over the last three weeks, I’ve spelled out what you, your agency and OPM have to do to get you on the annuity roll. But what happens if you want to change a survivor annuity election? Or, more significantly, change your mind about retiring? I’ll answer those questions next week.
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