All About FERS- What is Additional Compensation?

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. 

There's something called additional compensation, right? You get paid your salary, and then you get paid other things. But you may not be thinking about that as real compensation, and I just want to assure you that these benefits that you are enrolled in, they determine how much more the agency pays on your behalf so that you and your family are financially secure. I just want to make sure I mention that. 

If you happen to be enrolled in FEHB, there's an amount of money that your agency pays for you to have that that health insurance. If you enrolled in FEGLI, there's an amount of money that your agency pays so that you can be enrolled in that life insurance plan. When you take a look at your pay statement, you'll see that your agency, just like any other employer, pays half of your Social Security taxes and pays half your Medicare taxes.

While that may not seem like a lot to you, it's still a significant thing that they have to think about, that they have to budget. Maybe it should be something that's important to you. They also help pay for the things that you decide you may want year by year. They negotiate things for you so that you get a fair rate things like dental insurance, vision insurance, and long term care insurance. 

These things are important benefits that you receive that actually make a big difference to your household income. These things you are not paying that they are means; again, you don't have to pay it, therefore you don't have to have taxes withheld on it, therefore you don't have to have a lower amount of money in your bank account, and therefore you don't have to think a lot harder about how are you going to use it.

You get to do more things with the money you actually take home because of these things they're doing for you. Make sure you get to a good idea of which are additional compensation is, and what it could be, based on the benefits that you choose to enroll in everyone season.  

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.