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Retirement income is generally drawn from accounts with differing tax character: pre-tax accounts taxed as ordinary income upon withdrawal, after-tax accounts with tax-free qualified distributions, and taxable accounts subject to capital gains treatment. The sequence and proportion of withdrawals across these determines your effective tax rate each year.

This is the single biggest lever most retirees never touch. Not because it's hard, but because nobody ever showed them the buckets.

Once you reach a certain age, currently 73, the IRS requires you to start withdrawing from your pre-tax accounts every year whether you need the money or not. Each withdrawal is taxed as ordinary income, and missing one comes with a penalty.

People dread them because a lifetime of diligent saving can turn into forced income that pushes you into higher brackets in your late seventies and eighties. The good news: with a decade or so of runway, there's a lot you can do to soften that landing. The earlier the conversation happens, the more options stay on the table.

It can be. Depending on your total income, a portion of your Social Security benefit may be taxable. What surprises people is that withdrawals from pre-tax accounts count toward that calculation, so a big IRA withdrawal in December can quietly raise the tax on your benefits too.

It's one more reason the order and size of your withdrawals matter so much. Everything is connected to everything.

Nothing, automatically. And that's the trap. The money sits there until you make a choice: leave it in the TSP, set up installment payments, withdraw some or all of it, or roll it over to an IRA. Each path has different flexibility and a different tax bill attached.

There's no universal right answer. The TSP's low costs are genuinely hard to beat, and its withdrawal rules are genuinely more rigid than most retirees expect. Which side of that trade matters more depends on your situation.

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Yes, and it's one of the most pleasant surprises in the federal system. Under FERS, unused sick leave converts into extra service time when your pension is calculated, which can raise your monthly check for life.

The catch: it counts toward the size of your pension, not toward your eligibility to retire. Mixing those up leads people to pick the wrong retirement date. Bring us your balance and we'll show you what it's actually worth.

More on sick leave and survivor benefits

Fair question, and the fact that you're asking it means your instincts are working. Here's our honest take.

An annuity is a tool. For the right person, in the right amount, the right one can do something nothing else can: turn a pile of savings into a guaranteed check that shows up for life. For plenty of people, that certainty is exactly what lets them sleep at night.

But you've heard the horror stories for a reason. Some annuities carry heavy fees, long surrender periods, and features that sound better in the sales pitch than they work in real life. And yes, some get sold because the commission was good, not because the fit was.

Being pitched one right now? Bring it to us before you sign. We'll walk through it line by line, what it guarantees, what it costs, what you give up, and tell you plainly whether it fits your plan. If it doesn't, we'll say so. We're not here to push products, so a "no" costs us nothing and can save you plenty.

Not necessarily, and please don't panic-cancel anything. Surrendering an annuity at the wrong time can trigger charges and taxes that turn a mediocre decision into a genuinely bad one.

The right move is a calm review: what you own, what it actually guarantees, what it costs each year, and how it fits with the rest of your income plan. Sometimes the answer is keep it. Sometimes it's a change. Either way, you'll finally understand what you have, which is more than the person who sold it may have offered.