Your 12-month pre-retirement runway

Because a few federal deadlines close for good on your last day. Most retirement decisions stay open: you can rebalance the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), change your mind about a withdrawal, or adjust your budget. A short list cannot be reopened once you separate, and that list is what this lesson schedules.

This is a different question from whether you are ready. The readiness checklist asks whether your income, savings, and debt support retiring at all. This lesson assumes you have answered that and picked a date, then works backward from it.

Three things drive the ordering. Some fixes require moving your retirement date, so they need the most warning. Some can only be done in a window that opens once a year. Some just need more lead time than people expect, because another office has to act.

The table below is the whole lesson in one view. Each row is covered in its own slide, with a link to the lesson that owns the underlying rule.

Two things, and both are counted backward from the day you separate. That is what makes them different from everything else on this list. If you come up short, no form fixes it. You either retire later or you lose the benefit.

The first is the health insurance five-year rule. To carry Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) into retirement you generally need five years of continuous enrollment immediately before you separate. The FEHB lesson covers the rule and its exceptions. The scheduling point is what it implies: if you are four years and eight months in, your only remedy is a later date.

The second is a service deposit. Military service and some civilian service count toward your annuity only if you pay a deposit, and interest compounds while it sits unpaid. The two deadlines are not the same. A military deposit must be paid before you separate, which is why it belongs on this list. A civilian deposit can be paid any time before OPM finalizes your claim, months after your last day. The military buyback lesson covers the calculation, and civilian service deposits covers the later window.

Both are worth checking even if you are confident. An enrollment gap from a decade ago, or a deposit you thought your agency had processed, is the kind of thing that surfaces late and cannot be corrected on your last day.

Your health enrollment tier is the one that catches people, and it matters most if you are electing a survivor annuity. Outside a qualifying life event, the annual Open Season is the only routine chance to change it.

The rule behind it is easy to miss. For your spouse to keep FEHB after your death, two conditions have to hold together: they must receive a monthly survivor annuity, and your enrollment at retirement must be Self Plus One or Self and Family. A Self Only enrollment ends your spouse’s coverage when you die, no matter what survivor annuity you elected.

That makes it a scheduling problem. The survivor election is made on your retirement application, but the enrollment tier that makes it useful can generally only be changed during Open Season. If your Open Season passes while you are enrolled Self Only, you may reach your retirement date unable to fix the mismatch.

The survivor election lesson covers how the election itself works and what it costs. Check your enrollment tier against it while an Open Season is still ahead of you.

More than most people assume, and the number is specific. OPM says an agency needs a minimum of 60 days to process a retirement application before it reaches OPM at all. That splits into about 30 days for the human resources office and 30 days for payroll.

OPM gives a second 60-day marker. Meet your benefits office at least 60 days before your separation date to go through your benefits and your annuity estimate. That meeting is also where service-record problems tend to surface, which is one reason the earlier slides matter.

Those 60 days are not your waiting time. They are your agency’s share of the work, and OPM’s own processing starts only after the packet arrives. The OPM processing lesson covers what happens once it does, including interim payments.

If you have already separated, submit as soon as you can. OPM advises filing at least 30 days ahead of a separation date in that situation, and personnel offices often want it sooner. Filing early costs nothing and is the cheapest delay insurance available.

The final weeks are about balances rather than decisions. Two of them follow you out the door if you leave them unresolved.

Your leave account is the first. Confirm your annual leave balance and whether you are carrying advanced annual leave, which you generally have to refund at separation. The final paycheck lesson covers how each is settled and the exceptions to the refund.

An outstanding TSP loan is the second, and it carries the tighter clock. You have 90 days from separation to repay it before the balance is declared a taxable distribution. The decision is easier to make while you are still drawing a salary, which is the argument for handling it now rather than after.

This is also the last comfortable moment to check your insurance enrollments read the way you expect. Correcting an enrollment record is a different task once you are no longer on your agency’s rolls.

Less than people expect, and the one meaningful exception is time-boxed. Your survivor election has two short windows after your annuity starts, and then it is fixed for life.

The first window is brief. You can cancel or reduce the survivor election within 30 days of your first regular monthly payment, which OPM defines as the first recurring payment at your finalized rate. An interim payment or an adjustment payment does not start that clock.

The second window runs longer and moves only one direction. Within 18 months of retirement you may elect a survivor annuity or increase a partial one, but you may not reduce what you chose at retirement. The survivor election lesson covers both windows, the deposit an increase requires, and the permanent reduction that comes with it.

Everything else on this list has already closed. That asymmetry is the reason to run a schedule at all: the decisions with the longest consequences are the ones with the shortest windows. To see how the whole picture holds together before you commit, run your free readiness score.