Fedsteer – All About Federal Employee Retirement, Thrift Savings Plan, & United States Postal Service

Want to stay updated with recent and updated federal employee Retirement, thrift savings plan, & united states postal service (USPS)? Looking for a site that keeps tabs on the latest trends and also keeps up with a fiery story, is it a controversial story or an alarming storyline from the Federal policy?

Then, Fedsteer is the site to visit. It is a one-stop news archive to keep up with stories, which are updated in real time so you never have to worry about missing out on the biggest happenings in the federal realm.

What do we cover?

We mainly emphasize on covering stories based on the federal news today, be it regarding the federal employees or the current news from the government with the most detailed insights. Our main regions of concern are retirement news revolving around federal employee retirement, thrift savings plan, & united states postal services (USPS), blue cross blue shield federal articles to help you build your career and become an alpha in the workplace.

Federal Employee Retirement

The Federal Employee Retirement Service was made effective as of January 1, 1987. It indicates that, every Federal civilian employee hired onwards is covered under FERS. The FERS retirement eligibility works on the basis of years of service and minimum requirement age (MRA). This retirement plan is going to provide civil service retirement benefit combining the Basic Benefit Plan, Social Security and The Thrift Saving Plan. If you leave the federal service before you retire Social Security and TSP will be able to go with you to your new job. The Basic Benefit Plan as well as the Social Security requires you to pay into this system on every payday.

Every agency attempts to suppress the cost for these plans as payroll deduction. Even your agency has to pay its share. Once retired, you will be granted annuity for life. However, if you chose to leave federal services before you are of full retirement age while having minimum 5 years FERS service, you can opt for a deferred retirement. The benefits from FERS are quite generous, far exceeding the limits of most private companies today.

So what is deferred retirement? Well, on a general scale, it refers to the delayed payment of benefits until criteria are fulfilled. The criteria are:

As you leave the Federal services before meeting the age and service requirement to get the immediate retirement benefit, you will be eligible for a deferred retirement benefit. For gaining eligibility, you need to complete minimum 5 years of credible civilian services. Suppose, you retire at the MRA with minimum 10, but fewer than 30 years of service, your benefit will be decreased by 5 percent on a yearly basis as long as you are under 62 years of age. However, if you have 20 years of age, your benefit will start when you are age 60 or more.

Thrift Savings Plan:

This is a retirement savings program for civilians and every member of the armed force, employed by the United States Federal Government. It is quite similar to a 401 (k) plan in some ways. The similarity is there mainly because of being employee sponsored and both of them being defined contribution plan and tax deferred retirement plan. In addition to that, both of them have a similar annual contribution limit. If you still confused about where these two differ, let’s have a look:

Defined Contribution Plan

The TSP can be termed as a Defined Contribution Plan meaning that, all the TSP participants have an individual account. The amount in their account is what they have invested as well as the matching contribution that their employer has made. Any increase or decrease in the holdings’ value alongside expenses and fees determines the account’s value. A lot of civilians who are government employees are eligible for receiving matching funds for 5% of their total pay. Majority of the people in military are not eligible for receiving matching funds of any sort.

Automatic TSP contribution for New Employees

Any Federal employee who is a part of the FERS and was hired after July 31, 2010 is going to be an automatic choice for enrolling into TSP. There will be an automatic contribution of 3% of the basic pay and will be deducted in an automatic way from the employee’s pay per period and that amount will get deposited into the Thrift Savings Plan. Employees will get the chance to opt out of the automatic plan participation if they simply opt out at the time of being hired. To add to that, TSP members get to start, stop or change contribution at any time if they use their agency’s or service’s electronic system.

United States Postal Services:

It works as an independent agency of an executive branch of the United States Federal Government. They are liable to provide postal services within the United States and that includes the insular areas as well as associated states. The USPS is part of the select few government agencies that is directly authorized by the United States Constitution. As of 2017, the USPS had 644,124 active employees. According to reports, they operated with 211,264 vehicles back in 2014. It operates the biggest civilian vehicle fleet worldwide. It also has the legal obligation of serving all the Americans, without regards for geography, at the uniform price and quantity.

It is highly involved with retirement funding as well payment defaults. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (2006) puts the obligation on the USPS four funding the present value of earned retirement obligation inside the ten-year time span. On the contrary, private businesses within the US, are not legally obliged to pay for retirement cost at promise-time as compared to retirement-time with one-quarter do.

Reform packages, delivery change and alcohol delivery

Comprehensive reform package considered in the 113th Congress includes S.1486 and H.R.2478. It all includes the efficiency measure receiving support from the Postmaster General of ending door-to-door delivering of mail for a few or majority of the 35 million addresses which are currently receiving it. That would be replaced by either curbside boxes or nearby cluster boxes. This move could save $4.5 billion on a yearly basis out of the $30 billion delivery budget as well as door-to-door delivery costs yearly on an average $353 per stop, curbside $224, and cluster box $160.

The S.1486 being supported by the Postmaster is going to allow the USPS the opportunity of shipping alcohol complying with the state law from the manufacturer to the recipient with ID showing they are over 21 years of age.