Putting It Together: End-to-End Retirement Planning
Integration of FERS/CSRS/military + TSP + SS + VA + survivor benefits
Consider a 62-year-old retiring in 2025 who spent 6 years in the Army (enlisted 1985, legacy High-3 system), then 26 years as a GS-13 under FERS. She has a 40% VA disability rating (combat-related), a TSP balance of $520,000, and her husband is a retired CSRS employee. In any given month of her retirement, she could receive income from six different sources: a FERS annuity from OPM, Social Security from SSA, TSP withdrawals from the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, VA disability compensation from the VA, and — because she bought back her military time — four additional years of creditable service in her FERS formula.
Her husband's Social Security is now unreduced thanks to the 2025 Fairness Act. No single formula captures her retirement income. You need all of them, applied correctly, with the right year's law, to the right components, with the right tax treatment on each.
That is the opening. Finishing a lesson is where it stops being interesting and starts being useful: the full lesson runs to 7 sections and ends with 4 practice questions. A free account is what opens the rest, and the other 255 lessons in the Academy with it. No card.
What this lesson covers
- 1The three-legged stool (FERS retirement)
- 2Total monthly federal retirement income
- 3Worked example — Jane, a FERS retiree at 62 in 2025
- 4Worked example — mixed military/civilian retiree with VA disability
- 5Military time buyback for FERS credit
- 6Medicare and FEHB coordination
- 7The 2025 Fairness Act ripple effects on integrated planning