OPM Focusing on Retirement Planning

Flood waters are pumped onto 12th Street from the basement of the main IRS building, which suffered extensive damage and may be closed for six months. (By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

Are you ready for retirement? That's a question on the minds of many employees today, as a graying workforce considers life after a federal career.

More than a third of federal employees responding to a survey said they planned to work for pay after leaving the government, probably for five to 14 years but perhaps longer.

A quarter said they would not take paying jobs in retirement.

The remainder checked "don't know" on the survey, sponsored by the Office of Personnel Management, when asked about their retirement plans.

Retirement planning, however, is more than figuring out whether you have to work for pay after leaving the civil service. It's also about finding ways to keep up with friends and to stay healthy, Raymond J. Kirk , a benefits expert at the Office of Personnel Management, told a roomful of employees yesterday at the 2006 Excellence in Government conference.

To help employees, the OPM is developing a "retirement readiness" program that will be available on the Web in late autumn. The program will allow employees to create a profile that shows where they are in their retirement planning, how they compare against averages, and what other steps they should consider taking to meet retirement goals, Kirk said.

The program will split federal employees into three groups -- early career, mid-career and late career -- and give them a retirement readiness score. Early career employees, for example, need to grasp the difference between stocks and bonds and focus on saving for retirement, while late-career employees should have a detailed spending plan for their savings while focusing on their overall well-being, Kirk said.

A prototype questionnaire, for example, asks late-career employees such questions as:

· How much thought have you given to where you would like to live in retirement?

· To what extent are you currently building new friendships and associations outside of work?