Ready, Really?

Sometimes retirement isn't really retirement -- especially when you're a federal employee. A new survey reveals that 75 percent of civil servants plan to do paid work after they leave government.

A quarter of respondents said they plan to work five to nine years and 20 percent said they want to work 10 to 14 years after leaving the federal workforce. Another 26 percent said they "want to work as long as possible."

The Office of Personnel Management produced the survey at the request of Congress, which passed a 2004 law requiring OPM to step up retirement-focused financial education for federal employees. The crux of the survey is whether employees are financially and psychologically ready for retirement - have they saved and scrimped and invested as they should have?

Employees think so. Eighty percent said they were "on track or ahead of schedule in planning and saving for their retirement years." It's probably easy to feel that way when retirement means receiving a monthly government pension on top of a private-sector paycheck. Even employees in lower income brackets, making less than $50,000 a year, felt that way.

Because most workers expect to move into the private sector after retirement, it's not surprising that only 10 percent plan to retire from the government after the age of 65. The most common age bracket for expected retirement is 55 to 59.

Still, there's the second stage of retirement to save for -- the one where employees actually stop working.

OPM's survey shows that half of employees think they will need less than $4,000 a month, or $48,000 a year, to maintain the same lifestyle they live now. While employees think they're on the right track for savings, and may be when they initially leave government, that may not be the case for the long term

That point is supported by another survey finding: Only half of workers have given either "a great deal of thought" or "a lot of thought" to the actual amount of money they will receive from government pensions.

How much do your peers have tucked away in savings outside the Thrift Savings Plan and their set pensions? For late career employees earning more than $50,000, it's spread fairly evenly.

Fifteen percent have between $10,000 and $49,000 in savings. Thirteen percent have between $50,000 and $99,000. Another 11 percent have between $100,000 and $149,000, 16 percent have between $150,000 and $249,000, 15 percent have $250,000 to $500,000 and 12 percent have $500,000 or more.

OPM plans to use the survey results to formulate its financial literacy project. The education will only help those who realize they need it.