Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: a federal retirement is three benefits that have to be sequenced, not three accounts to be managed — the FERS annuity with its survivor election, the TSP, and Social Security, plus a supplement that exists only between retirement and 62 and is subject to an earnings test most people do not expect. An advisor whose first instinct is to roll the TSP out is charging you for the privilege of leaving the cheapest fund lineup in the country.
The five questions that decide whether they understand you
1. “In what order do these three start?” The annuity, the TSP and Social Security interact through taxes, the FERS supplement and IRMAA, and the order is a live decision rather than a formality — sequencing FERS, TSP and Social Security.
2. “What does the survivor election actually cost, and what does it buy her or him?” The FERS survivor election is permanent, priced as a reduction to your annuity, and tied to the surviving spouse’s health-insurance eligibility — which is the part that is usually missed. The election, in dollars.
3. “Should the TSP stay where it is?” Usually yes, and the burden of proof is on whoever wants it moved. Keeping the TSP versus rolling to an IRA lays out what you give up and the narrow cases where rolling wins. Two rules that catch people: the age-55 rule and how RMDs treat the Roth TSP.
4. “Am I taking the right kind of retirement?” Deferred and postponed are different things with different consequences for health insurance, and the names are almost interchangeable in ordinary English — deferred versus postponed. If health is the reason you are leaving, FERS disability retirement is a separate track with its own arithmetic.
5. “Is there military service to buy back?” If you served before your civilian career, the deposit is often the single highest-return purchase available to you, and there is a deadline structure worth knowing before you decide — military buyback into FERS.
What a good one looks like for this audience
They should be able to run your annuity and the supplement without asking you what FERS stands for, price the survivor election against term insurance rather than assuming one, and tell you plainly that the TSP’s expense ratios are lower than what they would charge to manage the same money.
Fee structure matters more here than almost anywhere, because so much of a federal retirement is an annuity nobody manages. Flat-fee or hourly is usually the honest structure; if someone proposes a percentage of the TSP, ask what they are doing that Lifecycle funds are not.
Know what you are prepared to pay before the first meeting.
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The rest of the federal wing
TSP withdrawal options · what happens to a TSP your heirs inherit · the general lump-sum break-even frame · the two-year IRMAA lookback, which is what makes retirement-year income decisions expensive two years later.
Before you hire anyone
Whoever you talk to, the same three checks apply: fee-only fiduciary status in writing, a written scope of what is and is not included, and fees quoted in dollars rather than percentages. Compare what the fee models actually cost, run your own number, and take the question list with you. See methodology and editorial policy.
See Read the adviser-hiring guide for more on this.