All About FERS- What is OPM?

Hi, my name is Mike Lanway, I'm a financial planner. I'm an expert in federal employee benefits, and I'm here to help you decide what you need to do to make best use of those benefits to your advantage. 

The federal government loves to throw acronyms into everything they do, and so when we talk about federal benefits or when someone tells you or talks to you about federal benefits, acronyms start flying everywhere. What we did is we made a little glossary and so I'm going to take you through the glossary and just give you a little bit of an idea of what these little things mean and see if you have any interest in them. The first is OPM. 

OPM is the Office of Personnel and Management. It's the chief Human Resources office for the entire federal government. Every agency reports back to OPM; OPM makes rules and regulations; they make sure that everyone is following those rules and regulations; they categorize employees; they decide when they have to do what; they decide when they get what. All these things come through OPM. 

Then when you retire, you actually make an application for retirement and OPM is the one who adjudicates, or completes, your application and make sure everything is right, everything is in order, and now we know exactly what you've earned for your retirement. OPM is like the chief actuary, the chief accountant, of what you can get out of your career as a FERS employee. That's the way to think about them. They have a lot of power, they make a lot of decisions, and we ought to know a little bit more about who they are. OPM- Office of Personnel and Management, your human resources office. 

We hope you enjoyed our video series on the different components of your retirement and your benefits. If you want to see more, learn more at your own pace, use our annual benefit statement. You'll see the link at the bottom and within the description. Go there, take a look at it, we think you'll be happy with what you see and and that it's going to help you.