Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: a federal retirement pays from three places on three different schedules. The annuity starts when you retire and never stops. The supplement starts only if you left through an unreduced door and dies at 62. Social Security starts when you claim it. Only the TSP is genuinely yours to time — which makes it the lever for everything else.
The three clocks
| Source | When it starts | How much control you have |
|---|---|---|
| FERS annuity | Your retirement date | Only through the date you leave |
| FERS supplement | With the annuity; ends at 62 | None, and earnings can cut it |
| Social Security | 62 at the earliest | Substantial, and permanent once chosen |
| TSP | Whenever you say, subject to the penalty rules | Almost total |
The cliff at 62 that nobody budgets for
If you retired at your MRA with 30 years, your income is annuity plus supplement until the month you turn 62 — and then the supplement stops, in a single step, whether or not you claim Social Security. People plan around the retirement date and forget the second date, which is where the income actually changes shape.
Two ways through it. Claim Social Security at 62 and accept a permanently reduced benefit to keep the income flat. Or bridge the gap from the TSP and let Social Security grow. The second is usually stronger and always feels worse, because it means spending your own money while a government cheque sits unclaimed. 62 against 67 and what the breakeven looks like once you charge the money a return are where that argument is actually settled.
Why the order matters more than the amounts
The annuity and the supplement are ordinary income and arrive whether you want them or not. That means your taxable base is set before you make a single decision, and every TSP dollar stacks on top of it. Withdraw carelessly and you push yourself through a bracket, and two years later through an IRMAA threshold you did not know existed.
The years between retiring and RMDs are the only window in which you control your own taxable income, and for a federal retiree that window is narrower than most because the annuity fills part of it from day one. What to do with it: which account to draw first, what it does to Medicare premiums, and why the Roth balance is spent last.
Federal law enforcement officers, firefighters and customs and border protection officers sit under a different early-distribution rule again: the statute substitutes age 50 or 25 years of service for age 55. It applies to distributions from the plan itself, which makes the rollover decision an order-of-operations question rather than a formality.
The one federal-specific trap in the sequence
If you separated in or after the year you turned 55, the TSP is available to you without the 10% penalty — and that is the single most useful bridging tool a federal retiree has. Roll it to an IRA and the exception does not come with it. Sequencing plans that assume IRA-like flexibility get this backwards: for someone retiring at 56, the TSP is the more flexible account, not the less.
Start with whether the three legs add up at all: the gap between what you need and what you have. Then size the pieces: the annuity and the supplement.
Supplement end date from the OPM CSRS and FERS Handbook, Chapter 51; the TSP separation-year exception from 26 U.S.C. § 72(t)(2)(A)(v) and the IRA carve-out from § 72(t)(3)(A). Read August 2026. General information, not advice.
If a government pension is in the picture: the Government Pension Offset stopped reducing benefits for months after December 2023, which opened two decisions that were previously closed — the spousal benefit, and the rule that still decides whether one exists, and the survivor benefit, which can be claimed on its own schedule.
If the pension is a military one: retired pay is 2.5% or 2.0% a year of your high-3, and Guard service divides points by 360 — and the survivor election has a statutory price rather than an insurer’s: what SBP costs and what it buys.
Getting help with the sequence. The five questions that separate an advisor who knows FERS from one who will roll your TSP out and charge you for it: financial advisor for federal employees.
Two pieces of the sequence are one-way and belong early in it rather than late: annuitising is irreversible once processed, and a spouse’s waiver is irrevocable once the record keeper has it. Everything else on this page can be revisited; those two cannot.