One factor is how many hours of actual service you worked beyond your last full month. Image: Ilnaz Bagautdinov/Shutterstock.com
By: Reg JonesWhile the original purpose of sick leave was to allow you to take off from work when you weren’t well, its use has been expanded to cover such things as childbirth, adoption, absence for funerals, family care, and bereavement.
But there’s one other purpose that hasn’t changed. When you retire any hours of sick leave that you haven’t used will increase the amount of your annuity. Note: Unused sick leave can’t be added to your actual service to make you eligible to retire. It can only be used to increase your annuity once you have met the eligibility requirements.
Here’s how that’s done. When you retire, your unused sick leave hours will be converted into retirement months. By law, 2,087 hours equals one year of service. If you are a FERS retiree, each year of sick leave will increase your annuity by 1 percent, each month by .0833 percent. If you retire at age 62 or later with at least 20 years of service, the multiplier will be increased from 1 percent to 1.1 percent.
If you are a CSRS retiree, each month of unused sick leave will increase your annuity by 1/6th of 1 percent. For example, if you have six months of sick leave, it will be increased by 1 percent. If you have a full year it will be increased by 2 percent.
For retirement purposes, all days are 5.797 hours long. That number is derived by dividing 2,087 – the total hours of work in a year – by 360. (That last number is used because annuity payments are based on 12 30-day months.) The result is that each 174 hours (about) of unused sick leave translates into one month of service credit.
Another factor is hours of actual service you worked beyond your last full month. If there are any hours left over, and there likely will be, they’ll be converted into retirement hours under that same formula and added to the hours of unused sick leave you had on the day you retired. After this adjustment any days that don’t add up to a full month are dropped.
Note: If you are a FERS employee who will have a CSRS component in your annuity, any unused sick leave hours up to the maximum number you had when you transferred to FERS will be credited to your CSRS annuity. Any unused sick leave hours you earned while a FERS employee will be credited to your FERS annuity.
To be eligible to retire, you have to meet the age and service requirements. For most FERS employees, that’s age 62 with 5 years of service, age 60 with 20, and at tour minimum retirement age with 30 (MRAs range from 55 to 57, depending on your year of birth.) I you are a FERS employees, you can also retire under the MRA+10 provision, but with a 5 percent reduction for every year you are under age 62. For most CSRS employees, the minimum retire age is 62 with 5 years of service, age 60 with 20, and age 55 with 30.
Whether you are covered by CSRS or FERS, you can postpone the receipt of your annuity to a later date. However, if you leave government before you are eligible to retire and later apply for a deferred annuity, you won’t get any credit for your unused sick leave. However, if you are rehired by the government, you can have your sick leave balance restored.
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