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“401k” Federal Savings Plan Modernization Act Goes Into Effect September 15 2019

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We have had a lot of Federal Employees asking about the “401k” Federal Savings Plan Modernization Act of 2017 and when it would be come available for the employees.  For the longest time, we only knew that the “401k” Federal Savings Plan would be allowed to have up to two years to be ready, or so wanting to know when the changes implemented by the “401k” Federal Savings Plan Modernization Act would take effect. Until today, we only knew a general time frame: September 2019; however, the “401k” Federal Savings Plan has now provided a specific date as to when you can expect the changes to go into effect.

According to a recent bulletin posted by the “401k” Federal Savings Plan , the changes under the new law will go into effect on September 15, 2019.

Change to Eliminate Financial Hardship In-Service Withdrawal Six-Month Suspension Rule

The bulletin contains information for federal agency payroll and HR staff about changes to the rules governing hardship withdrawals from the “401k” Federal Savings Plan while in service.

The bulletin notes that as of September 15, any “401k” Federal Savings Plan participant who received a financial hardship in-service withdrawal and is suspended from contributing to the “401k” Federal Savings Plan will be able to re-start “401k” Federal Savings Plan contributions even though the participant may not have completed the six-month suspension period.

Key Points to Note:

  • Any participant who received a financial hardship in-service withdrawal and is suspended from contributing to the “401k” Federal Savings Plan will be able to re-start “401k” Federal Savings Plan contributions effective September 15, 2019, even though the participant may not have completed the six-month suspension period.
  • Participants whose “401k” Federal Savings Plan contributions were suspended as a result of a financial hardship in-service withdrawal will receive a “401k” Federal Savings Plan notice alerting them that they can resume contributions as of September 15, 2019. Restarting “401k” Federal Savings Plan contributions is the participant’s responsibility.
  • Participants and agencies will still need to follow current procedures to resume contributions by having the participant access their employer pay system, or by completing Form “401k” Federal Savings Plan -1, Election Form.
  • Report 5501 (Financial Hardship In-Service Withdrawal Report) will be generated through September 13, 2019.
  • As of September 15, 2019, Report 5501 (Financial Hardship In-service Withdrawal Report) will be obsolete as any financial hardship in-service withdrawals taken on or after that day will not require a six-month suspension of contributions.

The “401k” Federal Savings Plan will publish a separate bulletin in the third quarter of 2019 with more details providing guidance for agency HR and payroll offices to implement these changes in conjunction with changes from the “401k” Federal Savings Plan Modernization Act of 2017.

For more information or immediate assistance, please reach out to us so we can help you plan for your retirement. Visit our Contact Us Page or call us Toll Free (877) 733-3877 x 1

Pension Annuities, Withdrawals and More Questions Answered

By | Benefits, Federal Pay, Retirement, TSP | No Comments

This week, we’re back with a few more questions and comments from readers, covering everything from Civil Service Retirement System and Federal Employees Retirement System coverage to “401k” Federal Savings Plan withdrawals.

I was CSRS back in 1977 thru 1982. I received a refund of the retirement funds. I went back into the service in 1983, did my remaining years and retired. In 2000, I returned to civil service and I am now FERS. I am paying back the five years for CSRS. How will they calculate the five years? 

First of all, if you had at least five years of prior CSRS coverage (whether or not you took a refund of retirement contributions), you should have been rehired under CSRS Offset retirement coverage and given a six-month opportunity to choose FERS coverage. If this is not what happened, you should contact your human resources office to find out if you were misclassified under FERS. If so, there’s a remedy under the Federal Erroneous Retirement Coverage Corrections Act, which allows you to go back to CSRS Offset coverage instead of FERS if you choose to.

If you remain under FERS and have more than five years of coverage under CSRS, then you will have a “CSRS component” to your retirement computation. That portion of your benefit will be computed under CSRS rules.

Keep in mind that since you received your refund of contributions prior to March 1, 1991, you can receive credit for this service without paying the redeposit. Your annuity will be subject to a permanent actuarial reduction based on the amount of the redeposit, interest due and your age at retirement. The actuarial reduction will not be applied to an annuity due your surviving spouse. You can avoid the reduction by repaying the refund.

I will have 24 years total at retirement at age 63. I have Federal Employees Group Life Insurance Coverage [at a level of] my salary times one. Lately, everyone is saying to keep it and eventually the government will pay for it. That’s a new one on me.

You can continue basic FEGLI into retirement as long as you were covered for the five years immediately preceding your retirement. The premium is $.325 per $1,000 of coverage per month until you’re 65 and retired. Then, if you elect the 75 percent reduction option at retirement, the premium ends and the coverage begins to reduce by 2 percent per month until you’re left with 25 percent of your original coverage at no further premium. You can also choose no reduction or a 50 percent reduction if you’re willing to pay an additional premium. And you can continue optional FEGLI into retirement if you have been covered for five years and retire on an immediate retirement.

Annuities begin on the first [of the month]. But if you retire on the fourth of any month, you will not start the annuity until the next month, and actually receive it the following month, so you will be out about seven weeks with no pay. 

The start date of your retirement is the first day of the month after your last day on the job. (You’re paid your salary through close of business of the date you indicate for your separation on your retirement application.) There’s an exception for employees who retire under CSRS or CSRS Offset that allows retirement to start on the day after the retirement date if the date of final separation is the first, second or third day of the month. Regardless of whether you are retiring under CSRS or FERS, if you select June 15 as your retirement date, for example, this is the day your salary will stop accruing. Your first retirement benefit will be for the month of July, payable on Aug. 1. So you’ll get no compensation for June 16-30. This is why most employees try to retire on the last day of the month—or the first three days of the month in some cases under CSRS or CSRS Offset.

On the “401k” Federal Savings Plan issue of required minimum distributions, folks should notify the “401k” Federal Savings Plan to send your RMD distribution in mid-December so you can maximize those funds. If your RMD is 4 percent, and those funds gained 4 percent during the year, your “401k” Federal Savings Plan would not run out, because it would replenish itself. The RMD is based on the balance of “401k” Federal Savings Plan on Dec. 31 of the prior year, so you get another year of earnings on that RMD.

Here is an example of one of the loyal readers of this column who consistently provide supplemental information and insight that’s very helpful. I’d add this note: According to the “401k” Federal Savings Plan , if you’re already receiving a series of monthly payments from your account when you turn 70½, your monthly payments will be used to satisfy the IRS minimum distributions requirement. If the total amount of your monthly payments does not satisfy the requirement, the “401k” Federal Savings Plan will issue a supplemental payment for the remaining amount in December. This is automatic if your monthly payments are not high enough to satisfy your annual RMD. Your monthly payments can be as low as $25.

I don’t understand why the federal government can’t come up with an annual statement, like the “401k” Federal Savings Plan gives you an estimate. Why can’t you just go to the Office of Personnel Management website and get the info? I would think that would keep your information up-to-date and it wouldn’t take so long to finally get your first retirement check.

The problem is that OPM doesn’t have access to your current information, since your personnel and payroll data is not transferred from your agency to OPM until you have separated for retirement. In many cases, agency payroll offices do provide an annual benefits statement so you can get a snapshot of your retirement and insurance benefits. For example, some USDA federal employees who have their payroll processed through the USDA National Finance Center will receive an annual benefits statement. It describes the estimated value of your retirement benefit, your “401k” Federal Savings Plan account value, and when you’ll be eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Now for others or anyone who wants to receive their annuity estimate in a free Federal Retirement Review and go over all of your benefits can request one from one of our Chartered Federal Employee Benefits Consultants. So Request and Schedule your review today!

“401k” Federal Savings Plan Proposes New Shutdown Loan Rules, OPM Considers Health Care Portal, and More

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Officials with the agency that administers the federal government’s 401(k)-style retirement savings program published an interim rule Tuesday that would ensure federal employees impacted by a government shutdown can take out loans on their “401k” Federal Savings Plan accounts regardless of how long the lapse in appropriations is expected to last.

Posted in the Federal Register by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which governs the “401k” Federal Savings Plan , the rule narrowly applies to federal workers who are either furloughed or forced to work without pay during a lapse in appropriations. Before this week, any employee in a “non-pay status” was eligible to take out a loan, so long as that status was expected to last less than 30 days.

As a result, there was uncertainty regarding whether employees at unfunded agencies could apply for “401k” Federal Savings Plan loans during the 35-day partial government shutdown, especially as it stretched into the third and fourth week. Earlier this month, “401k” Federal Savings Plan officials reported that they saw a 5 percent increase in the issuance of “401k” Federal Savings Plan loans during the lapse in appropriations, compared to a 26 percent increase in withdrawals, a more onerous process that forces participants to incur a 10 percent tax penalty and stop contributing to their accounts for six months.

In the rule filing, officials said they took great pains in order to come up with a way to implement the rule immediately.

“This interim rule applies only to participants who are furloughed or excepted from furlough (i.e., continuing to work and earn pay, but their pay is delayed until appropriations are authorized) due to a government shutdown,” the rule stated. “The FRTIB’s staff and contractors have designed manual workarounds to highly automated business processes in order to make this interim rule effective immediately so these participants will have access [to] “401k” Federal Savings Plan loans in the event of another government shutdown.”

Additionally, the rule allows “401k” Federal Savings Plan participants to request a suspension of their loan payments in the event of a shutdown to avoid the potential that they could default. And the agency is reexamining how it handles “401k” Federal Savings Plan loan applications from federal employees in other forms of non-pay status.

“Participants who are not receiving pay for other reasons (e.g., administrative furlough, voluntary leave of absence, seasonal work, sabbatical, disciplinary suspension) remain ineligible to request a loan,” the rule stated. “The FRTIB is considering whether to allow these participants to request loans in non-pay status and will address this subject in the final rule.”

Meanwhile, the Office of Personnel Management is thinking about a new way to help federal workers decide which insurance plan to enroll in as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Meritalk reported Monday that the agency has issued a Request for Information seeking vendors to develop a “one-stop shop” portal for employees to compare and then enroll in health care plans.

Although OPM currently offers the ability to compare different FEHB plans on its website, the enrollment process and other customer service functions are largely decentralized across a multitude of agencies’ HR departments.

Among the functions OPM hopes to include in the portal are enrollment and decision-making support, enrollment processing, as well as enrollment and premium reconciliation and data collection and reporting. Responses to the request are due March 11.

On Tuesday, OPM announced that it is extending the deadline for the Combined Federal Campaign, the federal government’s annual charity giving effort, until Feb. 22.

The campaign was disrupted by the partial government shutdown, as donations are primarily made by way of payroll deductions. As a result, many payroll offices at unfunded agencies were not open to receive or process CFC pledges. Additionally, federal workers impacted by the shutdown would have been unlikely to make charity donations without knowing when they would next receive a pay check.

Although the deadline for making donations through the campaign was delayed, OPM said in a press release that money still will begin being disbursed to charities on April 1 as originally scheduled.

We also have other alternatives to where you don’t need to take a loan from your “401k” Federal Savings Plan to consider. Going six months without contributions is a tough penalty. Learn more by contacting us soon.

Plan to Pay Excepted Feds Immediately Gains Momentum

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With just days remaining until federal employees at unfunded agencies miss their second straight pay check, an idea to compensate at least some of them promptly appears to be gaining traction on Capitol Hill.

Two weeks ago, Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced the Shutdown Fairness Act (S. 113), which would make sure federal workers at unfunded agencies who are currently working without pay will get their pay checks on time, instead of after the government reopens. The measure would not compensate furloughed employees, although last week President Trump signed legislation to provide them with back pay after agencies reopen.

“All employees required to work during the shutdown to perform national security and other critical functions should receive paychecks on a current basis,” Collins said in a statement. “It is not fair to force employees to work and not pay them. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and their families are being harmed by the partial government shutdown, and I am continuing to work with my colleagues and the White House to bring it to an end as quickly as possible.”

Jan. 18 marked the end of the second full pay period of the government shutdown. If Congress cannot reach an agreement on how to fund the government this week, roughly 800,000 employees, of which at least 420,000 are working without pay, will miss their second straight pay check.

Although the bill was introduced with four other Republican cosponsors, that tally had grown to 20 by Tuesday. And although he is not yet an official sponsor, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., threw his support behind the idea in multiple news interviews.

“The fact is, since we have already agreed to pay them when we reopen, why shouldn’t we at least go ahead and, even if we are shut down, pay these federal workers come Thursday, so they don’t have to incur additional pain and suffering?” Warner said Friday.

Warner repeated that sentiment on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. And on Tuesday, Warner introduced the Stop Shutdowns Transferring Unnecessary Pain and Inflicting Damage in the Coming Years Act, an effort to prevent future government shutdowns, similar to legislation introduced by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and others last week.

Lankford’s bill would institute an automatic continuing resolution at existing spending levels in the event that Congress fails to approve an appropriations package, although the approved spending would decrease by 1 percent after 90 days, and an extra 1 percent for each 30 days thereafter. But Warner’s bill would maintain existing spending levels for all unfunded agencies, and end appropriations for Congress, its associated agencies and offices, and for the Executive Office of the President.

“The Stop STUPIDITY Act takes the aggressive but necessary step of forcing the president and Congress to do the jobs they were elected to do,” Warner said in a statement. “It is disturbing that the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of workers are at the mercy of dysfunction in Washington.”

Why Retirement Processing Takes So Long

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The busiest time of the year for retirement claims processing at the Office of Personnel Management is fast approaching. At the end of November, OPM had an inventory of 19,162 unprocessed retirement applications. This will most likely significantly increase over the next few months, because many federal employees plan their retirements at the end of the year in order to maximize their lump sum payout of unused annual leave.

The spike in end-of-leave-year retirements presents a number of challenges for retirement processing. According to a recent OPM inspector general report, the timely processing of initial retirement payments remains a challenge for the agency. OPM’s 2018-2022 strategic plan sets a target of achieving an average case processing time of 60 days or less. The agency’s Retirement Services unit appears to have met that goal in fiscal 2018, with an average of 59 days. But its claims backlog as of September was 17,628, more than 4.5 percent higher than at the same time a year ago.

According to the IG report, the steps Retirement Services is taking to address delays in processing include:

  • Continue to integrate improvements for correspondence and claims processing.
  • Enhance reporting tools to monitor and address Retirement Services workloads.
  • Use overtime to assist with timely processing.
  • Work with the agency’s chief information officer to explore new uses of technology to help improve processing and reduce wait times.
  • Provide monthly feedback to agencies and payroll offices and alert them of trends and improvement opportunities.
  • Identify training needs for agencies and conduct workshops on the retirement application process.

Once your retirement application is in the hands of OPM, there’s not much you can do but wait. But there are steps you can take beforehand to help ensure the process runs as smoothly as possible:

  • Double-check your application to make sure you’ve answered all of the questions on it. Complete your application electronically, if possible. OPM will not accept corrections in certain sections of the application form.  We will assist or completely fill this paperwork out and mail or email it to you.
  • Keep a copy of your completed application.
  • Be sure to complete the Marital Information and Annuity Election sections of the application. That applies whether you’re married, single, widowed or divorced. If you’re married, be sure to include a copy of your marriage certificate with your  application. If you’re divorced, you only need to include a copy of your court order or divorce decree if there was a portion of your retirement or survivor annuity awarded to your former spouse.
  • If you’re married and your spouse is waiving their right to the maximum spousal survivor annuity, be sure to have their signature notarized on the Spouse’s Consent to Survivor Election portion of the application.
  • If you’ve performed active duty military service, be sure you’ve included the documentation of your service and information related to military retired pay in Schedules A and B of the application.
  • Be sure to document that you’ve had five years of coverage under Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, especially if you were covered under your spouse’s FEHBP plan or you’re using coverage under TRICARE within five years of your retirement. According to an OPM training video, 20 percent of all retirement errors involve not documenting five years of FEHBP coverage.

For those of you who will be retiring from federal service in the next few weeks, let us be among the first to congratulate you and wish you a wonderful and rewarding life after government.

If you need any assistance on reviewing prior to separating, we do complete Federal Retirement Reviews, all the way from planning and preparing for your retirement, filling out retirement form packages, “401k” Federal Savings Plan rollovers, Pension Maximization, talk FEHP vs Medicare.  Contact Us to request your Retirement Review and Assistance today. 

How To Deal With Market Volatility with “401k” Federal Savings Plan When Close to Retirement

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This season’s market volatility can give any investor vertigo. But for those looking to retire in the next three to five years, the fluctuations are even more unsettling. CPA, author and retirement expert Ed Slott has some advice about what investors should be doing to protect themselves in these tumultuous times.

“As you get closer to retirement, income is more important than savings because savings — especially if they’re in the market — are not guaranteed, and savings can run out,” Slott tells Yahoo Finance.

“Short-term money has to be more secure. If you need the money on Thursday, you shouldn’t be in the market,” he says. “But if you need it in five or 10 years, then you can ride out a market correction like this.”

For investors close to retirement who do have money in the market, Slott urges caution. Overreacting to a declining market can put investors into situation known as a sequence-of-returns risk.

“If you’re pulling out money while the market is declining, you need to make a lot more money just to get back to even at double the rate and double the risk,” he says. “You can’t have dramatic reactions to something. It’s too much of a shock to the system,” Slott adds.

The best way for soon-to-be retirees to approach market volatility is with older conventional wisdom and walk away as soon as things have bounced back — even if it feels wrong to do so.

“When the market comes back, nobody wants to pull money out because it’s riding high,” Slott says. “That’s the time you might want to lock in some of those gains and pull it off the table and put it into a guaranteed income source,” such as annuities.

Last-minute retirement tips for the rest of 2018

With the year quickly winding down, there are still a few moves you can make to maximize your savings. Chief among them, according to Slott, is a Roth conversion, the process of moving money out of a conventional IRA into a Roth IRA and paying taxes now on the amount you convert.

“The last thing you want to think about is a tax maneuver while the market is declining, but there are three things happening now that make Roth conversions at year-end very favorable,” Slott says. “Number one, the market is declining so the values are lower. Tax rates are lower after the new tax law — they’re lower for most people — and you’re at the end of the year,” so you have a clear picture of your income and tax bracket.

“The benefit of paying tax now is that once it’s in a Roth IRA, it’s tax-free forever,” he says. You pay tax on today’s value, but if values are down, now is the time to strike. It’s like buying the taxes on sale.”

One key to keep in mind is that Roth conversions are not the same as IRA contributions — and they each have their own deadlines. While you have until April to make 2018 contributions to an IRA, Roth conversions for 2018 have to be completed in 2018 — meaning by Dec. 31.

Additionally, recent changes to the law have made Roth conversions permanent, so you have to be sure you want to move the money over since there are no do-overs.

To learn more on ways to safeguard your “401k” Federal Savings Plan account and for your free Fedeal Retirement Review to help you maximize all of your benefits, please contact us today. 

Some Secrets To A Financially Secure Retirement

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What is the best way to ensure a comfortable and enjoyable retirement? This week, I thought I’d share some observations I’ve made over the years about employees who end up with the same (and sometimes even greater) income during their retirement years than while they were employed.

These folks have been planning for retirement throughout the beginning, middle and pre-retirement stages of the federal careers. I sometimes meet employees who tell me they remember me from a retirement planning class they attended 20 years ago.

For those covered under the Federal Employees Retirement System, the “401k” Federal Savings Plan has played an important role. These people have learned how to invest for the long term and what it means to diversify their investments among the G, C, F, S, and I Funds—or used the L Funds to automatically shift their investments as their careers progress. They have learned to tolerate a certain level of risk in order to obtain maximum results by not reacting emotionally to swings in market conditions.

FERS employees who have successfully leveraged their “401k” Federal Savings Plan accounts tend to have several things in common:

  • Those in higher income brackets are saving the maximum in their “401k” Federal Savings Plan accounts. The maximum employee contribution for 2019 is $19,000 plus an additional $6,000 in catch-up contributions if you’re turning 50 or are already older than 50.
  • Those in lower income brackets are living with little or no consumer debt and have saved a minimum of 5 percent of their salary in the “401k” Federal Savings Plan .
  • In general, they haven’t borrowed from their “401k” Federal Savings Plan account—or if they have, they didn’t stop contributing while repaying their loan balance.

The “401k” Federal Savings Plan was designed to be an integral part of FERS, but many employees under the Civil Service Retirement System also have taken advantage of participating in the plan and putting away savings on a pre-tax basis. They now have a significant nest egg for retirement.

Successful planners who are married have considered the “what-if” situations about the future. For example:

  • They weigh the value and cost of the spousal survivor benefit election. This causes a reduction in your CSRS or FERS retirement of about 10 percent, but it can mean the difference between financial security and uncertainty for a surviving spouse.
  • They consider that a delay in claiming Social Security may be more important to a future surviving spouse than to a couple’s short-term need for income. You may have other options than taking Social Security as soon as you can: delaying retirement, taking larger “401k” Federal Savings Plan distributions while waiting to claim Social Security, or embarking on a second career for a few years after your retirement from government. The difference between claiming at age 62 and waiting until age 70 is a benefit that is about 75 percent larger for the rest of your life and possibly later to the life of your surviving spouse.
  • They’re wary of using life insurance as a substitute for a survivor benefit. Life insurance is very expensive to continue as a substitute for a survivor’s annuity. Life insurance also doesn’t carry a cost of living adjustment or a guaranteed lifetime payment stream. And life insurance is not protected under the spouse equity provisions of the law, so it can be canceled without spousal consent.

Single people who have successfully planned for retirement have considered the amount of income they will need for a retirement that could potentially last longer than their career. This means both adequate retirement savings and thinking about such considerations as the potential need for long-term care.

If you’re a single woman, you may have a longer life expectancy than your male counterparts, and you also may have had lower lifetime earnings. This could translate into a need to save diligently for retirement and become a savvy investor. You need to put yourself first to ensure your financial independence before helping others.

Those who have successfully managed the retirement preparation process have another thing in common: They’re realistic. They, may, for example, limit the financial assistance they provide to their children in retirement to protect their savings. And some of them find that working a little longer than they anticipated eases the future financial strain. Sometimes following the path to a comfortable retirement involves some hard choices.

Which ever category you may fall in, its always best to ask a Federal Benefits Consultant how you are doing and let us help guide you to make sure you are maximizing all of your resources properly. Request your Free Consultation today. 

“401k” Federal Savings Plan Finally Unveils Plans for Expanding “401k” Federal Savings Plan Withdrawal Options

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The “401k” Federal Savings Plan has until November to implement the 2017 “401k” Federal Savings Plan Modernization Act. That law will allow federal employees and retirees to make multiple age-based withdrawals from their “401k” Federal Savings Plan accounts and remain eligible for partial withdrawals after they leave government. Additionally, those who have left government would be able to make multiple partial post-separation withdrawals, and retirees will be able to change the amount and frequency of their annuity at any time, instead of only once per year.

Tanner Nohe, a project manager for the “401k” Federal Savings Plan , said the agency plans to have the law fully implemented by mid-September 2019. The project has caused officials to go beyond simply adding the functionality needed to implement the new law and instead “make some fundamental changes” to how withdrawals work, he said.

Under the new system, participants will no longer be forced to make a full withdrawal election—a choice between setting up annuity payments, taking a partial lump sum withdrawal, or a full lump sum payment—when they reach 70 and a half years old. That change will be retroactive, officials said.

“People on installment payments now, and [next year] they can come back and say, ‘I want to stop taking installments for a while,’” said Tee Ramos, director of participant services.

Nohe said his team is coming up with three new forms to help participants make use of the new flexibilities, including one that allows participants to change the amount and frequency of their annuity payments at any time. The agency is also doing away with a policy that suspends a participants’ contributions to their “401k” Federal Savings Plan accounts for six months if they take a hardship withdrawal.

“You can change your monthly installment payments currently only during [a fall open season period],” Nohe said. “But in the future, you can choose between monthly, quarterly and annual installment payments, and changes can be made to that at any time during the year.”

“401k” Federal Savings Plan officials said they plan not only to provide new flexibilities to participants, but make it easier to make use of those flexibilities. Nohe touted the fact that there will be four new “wizards” on the “401k” Federal Savings Plan website to help federal employees and retirees go through the various new processes.

“Right now, our wizards are just form fillers, but [next year], they will be more dynamic,” he said. “It can tell what’s in your account, and ask if you want to take [withdrawals] out of your Roth distribution or your traditional account. It’ll understand what you have so it can suggest what distribution you can take . . . It will take you from start to finish in your withdrawal.”

The first phase of implementation, focused on installment payment maintenance and removal of the withdrawal selection deadline, is slated to go into testing within the next two weeks, Nohe said. The public rollout of the new features is slated to occur on Sept. 15, although “401k” Federal Savings Plan officials will begin communicating with participants about the coming changes next February.

»To get the best federal retirement assistance and ideas about your benefits, request your free Federal Retirement Review.

“401k” Federal Savings Plan Funds Took a Nosedive in October

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Nearly all of the funds in the federal government’s 401(k)-style retirement savings program tumbled last month, mirroring a month of volatility in the financial markets.

The “401k” Federal Savings Plan ’s G Fund, which is made up of government securities, was the only portfolio in the black in October, gaining 0.26 percent. That brings its total 2018 earnings to 2.38 percent.

The S Fund, composed of small- and mid-size businesses, lost the most value last month, falling 10.06 percent. That brought the portfolio 0.30 percent into the negative since January. The international stocks of the I Fund fell 7.94 percent in October, bringing its 2018 losses to 8.92 percent.

The common stocks of the C Fund lost 6.84 percent last month, although the fund remains 2.98 percent in the black for 2018. And the fixed income (F) Fund fell 0.78 percent in October, bringing its losses so far this year to 2.26 percent.

All of the lifecycle (L) funds, which shift investments into more stable portfolios as participants get closer to retirement, lost value last month. The L Income Fund, for those who have already started withdrawing money, lost 1.40 percent; L 2020, 2.24 percent; L 2030, 4.60 percent; L 2040, 5.54 percent; and L 2050, 6.35 percent.

Since January, the L Income Fund has grown 1.52 percent; L 2020, 1.21 percent; and L 2030, 0.12 percent. The L 2040 Fund has fallen 0.35 percent this year, and the L 2050 is down 0.74 percent.

Get your Free Federal Retirement and “401k” Federal Savings Plan Review Today.  Sign up here.

Not The Best Day in the Markets Today

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Stocks sank today, Wednesday as a steep decline in tech shares and worries of rapidly rising rates sent Wall Street through its worst day in months.

The Dow closed 831 points lower as Intel and Microsoft fell more than 3.5 percent each. The Nasdaq plummeted more than 4 percent.

The S&P 500 dropped 3.3 percent, with the tech sector underperforming. The broad index also posted a five-day losing streak — its longest since November 2016 — and fell below its 50-day and 100-day moving averages, widely followed technical levels.

Both the Dow and S&P 500 posted their biggest one-day drops since early February, while the Nasdaq notched its largest single day sell-off since June 24, 2016.

Stocks have fallen sharply this month. For October, the S&P 500 and the Dow are down more than 4.4 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. The Nasdaq has lost more than 7.5 percent.

Rising rate fears and a pivot out of technology stocks have made it a rough last few days. The Dow has dropped in four of the past five sessions, losing nearly 900 points over that span.

Why is this important?  Some are saying that the Bull run could be ending.  So should you keep your “401k” Federal Savings Plan in the Risky investments, or move it over to the G Fund.  Better yet, let us help explain

alternative to the “401k” Federal Savings Plan s.  We know it would put your mind at ease knowing you could still have safety of principal, but still with upside potential.  If that is something you would like

to learn more about, please request your Free Retirement Review today.