Military Retirement Questions
Military retirement planning is important as your years of service accumulate. However, many aspects of the military's retirement policies are complex and can confuse personnel who are nearing retirement., You, as a member of the military, have rights as well as duties concerning your retirement pay--and you need to understand them clearly before the time you choose to retire.
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Calculating Retirement Pay
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Retirement for the Army or Air Force is 20 years or more of active service. For the Navy, it is 30 years or more for full pay, 20 for half pay. If you have served 30 years or more, you multiply your current pay at the time of retirement by .75. However, if you entered the service after 1980, you must average 36 months of your highest pay period, then multiply by .75. If you have served fewer than 30 years, you do not multiply your earnings by .75, you multiply 2.5 percent by your years of service, and that figure is multiplied by your base pay.
"Buying Back" Time
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If you are a civil service employee who has some military experience, then your military years can be considered as time towards your government job retirement. Normal government jobs do not consider military service as going towards your retirement, but you can request that your military service be counted. You can write the relevant branch of the service and get a estimated earnings report as well as a verification of your service time.
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Military Recoupment Process
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This means that the branch of the service you served in can take back retirement benefits paid after your death. Retirement pay stops on the first day of the month in which a retiree dies. For example, if you die on April 20 and received a check on April 15, the government will then go into your back account, audit it, and take back any payments made after April 1.
Types of Disability Retirement
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The U.S. military uses a percentage system to determine disability. One hundred percent is total immobility, almost a vegetative state. There are two types of disability retirement: the first is temporary, which requires regular medical checkups to see if you are recovering. The minimum percentage of disability to qualify for this is 50 percent. Temporary disability assumes you will eventually go back into the service. If you have served more than 20 years, you are automatically considered retired no matter how little disability you have. Permanent retirement for disability is a steady disabled state of 30 percent or more, or more than 20 years of service regardless of your disability percentage.
Allotment
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Allotment is a way to divide your retirement pay according to the specific destination. If you owe taxes or have some other substantial debt, this is called a "non-discretionary" allotment, meaning that you have no choice but to consent to it. There are discretionary allotments such as to college funds for children, car payments or different insurance plans.
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References
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service: Recoupment Process
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service: Allotments
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service: How Your Pay Is Calculated
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service: Buying Back Time
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service: Disability Retirement
- Navy Times: Retirement
- Photo Credit army image by Katrina Miller from Fotolia.com
