🎖️ Should you buy back your military time?

1. Do you get military retired pay?

This decides the whole question, so it comes first. VA disability compensation by itself is not retired pay.

2. Military basic pay you earned

The deposit is a percentage of basic pay only (no housing, subsistence, or special pays). The official number comes from the military pay center: request an estimated earnings statement (DFAS, form RI 20-97 for Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines; your own branch's pay center for the Coast Guard, NOAA and USPHS).

3. Your federal career

The answer

What it costs

What it buys

Your planned retirement, with and without the military years. Today's dollars, before tax.

When you can leave

What it does not do

• No FERS supplement. The supplement that bridges an early retirement to 62 counts civilian years only (5 U.S.C. 8421(b)(4)(C)).
• No help with the 5-year civilian minimum. You need 5 years of civilian service before any FERS annuity, and military time cannot fill it (5 U.S.C. 8410).
• No special-provisions eligibility. Air traffic controllers, law enforcement officers and firefighters retire early on 20 or 25 years of service as a controller, officer or firefighter. Military time is not that service, so it cannot get you to the 20 or 25 (5 U.S.C. 8412(d), (e); OPM CSRS/FERS Handbook ch. 46). It still counts at the regular 1% rate in the pension, and toward the regular MRA+30 or 60+20 retirements.
• Nothing for leave. Military time already counts toward your annual-leave accrual rate without a deposit (5 U.S.C. 6303(a); for retirees, only combat or wartime service).
• Deadline: the deposit must be paid in full before you separate (5 CFR 842.307(a)(3)). Most agencies take payroll deductions. A deposit for a period only counts once that period is paid in full.

Send it to your plan

Puts the military years into the FERS block of the retirement calculator, so the full plan (taxes, Social Security, savings, survivor) reflects them.

How this is worked out

• Deposit: 3% of military basic pay; 3.25% of pay earned in 1999 and 3.4% of pay earned in 2000 (5 U.S.C. 8422(e)(1), (e)(6); 5 CFR 842.307(b)(1)).
• Interest: starts on the 2nd anniversary of the later of 1 January 1987 or the day you started FERS work after the service, and is posted once a year on the 3rd anniversary and each one after it, so paying in full before the first posting costs nothing extra (5 U.S.C. 8422(e)(2); 5 CFR 842.307(b)(4)). Each posting charges the balance the day before at a composite rate, the blend of the two calendar years in the 12 months before it, weighted 30 days a month (OPM CSRS/FERS Handbook ch. 23, 23A3.1-5; each year's Benefits Administration Letter).
• Pension: the same FERS rules as the retirement calculator, shared code, not a copy: 1% of high-3 per year, 1.1% when you retire at 62 or later with 20 years, MRA by birth year, the 5%-a-year MRA+10 reduction, and 1.7% for the first 20 years of a special-provisions retirement. The survivor election costs 10% (50%) or 5% (25%) of the annuity, and the survivor annuity is that percentage of the unreduced annuity.
• Special-provisions positions: all your civilian service is treated as service in that position.
• Not covered: CSRS (including the CSRS rules for service before 1 October 1982), reserve technicians, and partial deposits by period. Rates after 2026 use the rate you enter.