Retirement

[SR-25]

Can you tansfer years of military service and years at a different FLE agency over to the one you are currently employed with?

[Bearcat06]

Can you tansfer years of military service and years at a different FLE agency over to the one you are currently employed with?

I would suspect that you could with your prior FLEO experience.

I know that I just got a form to fillout and send to away to DA....so they (DOJ) can calculate how much I have to pay back to get into the system....

[BP348]

The simple answer is yes you can buy back your military time. It's pretty easy and I recommend it to all federal LEO's who served. Why waste that time?

It requires that you send a form to your prior service (addresses are provided on the form) then after receiving the form back with all necessary information, basically the total amount of $$$ you made while in the Military, your personal office will figure out a total amount you need to pay in order to buy back your time.

Example: I spent 7 years with A.F. got out as an E-4. I made a total of around 70K on my 7 years, pretty impressive isn't it anyway, my total to buy back my time was around 2k.

Here is the important stuff. Whatever your buy back amount is must be paid back by the time you reach 2 years of service or they start charging you interest. But, you can pay off the amount or set up payments, as low as $25 a pay period. As long as you understand that you will be paying interest. Like I said my buyback amount was around 2K but by the time I paid it off I paid about $2700. Still not a bad investment to add 7 years to my retirement.

Also as far as your annual leave is concerned you will get the higher rate weather you buy back your time or not. But, you still have to do your time in service. Like me I can't do 13 years with BP and then say I have 7 years military so I now have 20 years time in service I want to retire. Doesn’t work that way. But if I choose to retire at 20 years time in service then I will get paid for 27 years.

Due to my age when I was hired I have to do 23 years time in service before I'm eligible to retire. I believe the program states that with 25 years time in service you can retire at any age. But you must be at least 50 YOA to retire with 20 years time in service. So since I was 27 YOA when I went to the academy I won’t be able to retire until I'm 50 YOA and then I'll have 23 years in service.

By the way I know this has been covered but you want to put as much into your TSP as you can afford. That's where the money your going to live off of during you retirement is going to come from.

But it was just suggested to my by my Tax guy that instead of putting 15 % into my TSP I only put 10% and take that other 5% and put it into a ROTH IRA which will give me a better return on my money. I'm going to check it out and I'll let you guys know what I find out.

Hope this helps. Any other questions please let me know.