Minimum Retirement Age and eligibility paths

Your Minimum Retirement Age (MRA) is the earliest age you can retire under FERS. It falls between 55 and 57, set entirely by the year you were born. Reaching your MRA is a threshold, not an automatic green light, because eligibility also depends on your years of service.

Think of the MRA as the first door, not the finish line. OPM ties FERS eligibility to a combination of your age and your service. Hitting your MRA opens some paths, but each path also has a service requirement.

The MRA matters most for early retirement, since the other two milestone ages, 60 and 62, have their own service rules. Your MRA is the only one of the three that changes from person to person, because your birth year sets it.

In simple terms, your MRA tells you when the earliest door opens, and your service tells you what’s behind it. With 30 years it’s a full pension, and with 10 to 29 it’s the reduced MRA+10 route.

Your MRA is fixed by your year of birth, on a schedule that rises from 55 to 57. Anyone born in 1970 or later has an MRA of 57. Earlier birth years have a lower MRA, stepping up two months at a time through two transition windows.

The table shows the full schedule, which matches the one OPM publishes. Find your birth year to read your exact MRA.

For most employees still working toward retirement, the MRA is 56 or 57. The two-month steps only affect people born in the 1948 to 1952 and 1965 to 1969 windows. If you’re unsure, your exact MRA appears on the retirement estimate from your agency.

• Born before 1948: MRA is 55.
• Born 1948 to 1952: MRA is 55 plus two months for each year after 1947.
• Born 1953 to 1964: MRA is 56.
• Born 1965 to 1969: MRA is 56 plus two months for each year after 1964.
• Born 1970 or later: MRA is 57.

FERS gives you three main ways to retire with an immediate, unreduced pension. You can retire at age 62 with 5 years of service, at age 60 with 20 years, or at your MRA with 30 years. A fourth route, MRA+10, lets you leave earlier but reduces the pension.

Each unreduced path pairs an age with a years-of-service requirement. Federal law sets the combinations, so you qualify the moment you meet both halves of any one path. Meeting more than one doesn’t change the result; you only need one.

The earliest unreduced path is usually the MRA with 30 years. A long-career employee who started young can reach 30 years of service in their late fifties (start at 27, and year 30 arrives at 57), right around their MRA. That combination earns a full pension years before 62.

The three unreduced paths trade age for service. The youngest, MRA with 30 years, also qualifies you for the Special Retirement Supplement that bridges you to 62. The age-60 and age-62 paths require fewer years but start later.

Start with MRA + 30, the path most career employees aim for. Retiring this way gives you a full, unreduced pension plus the Special Retirement Supplement, which approximates Social Security until age 62.

Age 60 with 20 years is the middle path. It also pays an unreduced pension and the supplement, but it requires waiting until 60. Age 62 with 5 years is the minimum: just five years of service vests an immediate pension, though with no supplement, because you’re already 62.

All three pay the standard pension formula. Retiring at 62 or later with at least 20 years earns a slightly richer 1.1% multiplier instead of 1.0%. (Pension amounts depend on your salary and service; see our assumptions.)

MRA+10 lets you retire at your MRA with as few as 10 years of service. The trade-off is a permanent reduction: your pension drops 5% for every year you’re under 62. Retiring at an MRA of 57 means a 25% cut.

The reduction is 5% per year under 62, or 5/12 of 1% per month (about 0.42%). The closer you retire to 62, the smaller the cut, and there’s no reduction at all once you reach 62.

One exception softens the rule. If you have at least 20 years of service and wait until age 60, the reduction disappears. That’s really the age-60 path, but it shows the reduction is tied to age, not a penalty for leaving.

You can also avoid the reduction by postponing. Our dedicated MRA+10 lesson covers the full mechanics of postponed MRA+10 retirement, including what happens to your FEHB coverage. The short version: leaving at your MRA with 10 to 29 years is possible, but the early reduction is steep.

The right path depends on one question: how many years of service you’ll have at your MRA. With 30 or more, you retire unreduced and early. With 10 to 29, you can still leave at your MRA, but the pension is reduced unless you wait.

Your age and service together decide everything. A long-career employee usually targets MRA with 30 years for the earliest full pension. A later-career entrant often waits for age 60 with 20 years, or age 62 with 5, to avoid the MRA+10 reduction. For all four doors priced on one example employee, read When can I retire under FERS?.

The choice also ripples into your other income. Retiring at your MRA with an unreduced pension starts the Special Retirement Supplement until 62. Waiting until 62 skips the bridge and waiting until 60 shortens it, but either gives your TSP and Social Security more time to grow.

To see which path you qualify for, run your free readiness score. It checks your age and service against every path and prices the pension and income for the date you enter. To weigh the paths against each other, the What-If Scenarios tool on the Pro plan reprices the pension for any date you pick.