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)

· Have you tried to figure out how much money you (and your spouse) will need to have saved by the time you retire to live comfortably in retirement?

· How much are you saving for retirement, and how often do you review investments to adjust allocations among stocks, bonds and other investment options?

Once the retirement decision is made, employees should give 90 days' notice to their agencies and should ask for estimated annuity computations, Tammy Flanagan , a retirement specialist at the National Institute of Transition Planning Inc. of Rockville, recommended.

Flanagan, who joined Kirk at yesterday's session, also urged employees to keep copies of their personnel records, in case agency files are incomplete, and to hang onto annual leave and earnings statements, which can be useful in sorting out tax obligations in retirement.

Federal agencies face a wave of retirements, primarily because the baby boom generation is preparing to leave the workforce. Many federal employees become eligible to retire at age 55 with 30 years of service, and the average retirement age was 60.4 in 2004, according to OPM data.

The OPM projects a retirement surge to start in fiscal 2008 and run through fiscal 2011. In those years, more than 60,000 full-time civil service employees will be retiring each year, up from the 41,000 who retired in 2001 and from the 50,000 who retired in 2003.

The Waterlogged IRS

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The headquarters building of the Internal Revenue Service will be closed for up to six more months because of the torrential downpour that flooded parts of Constitution Avenue on June 25, according to agency employees.

IRS spokesman Terry L. Lemons declined to comment on the employee accounts yesterday but said, "I anticipate an update this week on the building closure."

After a preliminary assessment of damage, IRS officials said the headquarters would be closed at least 30 days. But employees said they have been told by their managers that the building could be shut down for an additional six months or longer.

About 2,400 IRS employees worked in the headquarters building and all were displaced because of the heavy rains. Some have been reassigned to 12 IRS offices and Treasury Department offices elsewhere in the metro area, and some have been asked to work from home.

The displacement has even created a parking problem for the IRS. At the agency's New Carrollton building, contractors have been directed to use a parking lot across the street to ensure sufficient parking spaces are available for IRS employees.

Lemons said the headquarters building suffered extensive damage. "The area basically has all of our electrical equipment and all of our air-conditioning and heating equipment, which was destroyed or heavily damaged. We are assessing how much damage there was and how much time it will take to fix it," he said.

Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.