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Lacie Harmon - Federal Benefits & Retirement Specialist

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Los Angeles, CA
Lacie Harmon - Federal Benefits & Retirement Specialist

I help with your retirement app, TSP, military buyback, federal health and life insurance, etc. FedWeek "Expert’s View" contributor.

Instructor for FAA, USDA, GAO branches & Postal Unions. Admin help is free of charge. The Federal Benefits Group is family owned and is completely independent of any government agency.

09/07/2026

Happy Labor Day, federal employees! Thank you for your dedication and service all year round. We at The Federal Benefits Group deeply appreciate you.

Here's hoping your day includes plenty of relaxation, love, laughter, and maybe even some sweet, sweet barbecue.

09/03/2026

What a wonderful time we had with The Federal Benefits Group team in Las Vegas last week!

As we approach our 10th year in business, I’m deeply grateful for the wonderful, decent people I somehow had the good luck of getting involved with all those years ago.

There are other companies out there offering federal retirement advice, but I don't know of a single one that serves as deeply as we do, helping with everything from retirement income estimates and online retirement apps to health and life, dental and vision insurances, and questions about RIFs, VERAs, and a thousand other areas, all at no cost to our clients.

I’m so proud of what we have been able to offer and so gratified that so many in the federal workforce have entrusted us with helping plan their futures.

Here’s to a great run so far, and many more impactful years to come. 🎉

P.S. Pic is of our senior team at the famous million dollar display at Binion's Casino. I first saw this over a decade ago, and it never fails to fascinate me.

09/01/2026

Clients ask me all the time:

“What happens to my health insurance when I retire?”

The short answer is, "Nothing. It just keeps going automatically."

In other words, generally speaking, if you’ve had FEHB (or PSHB) coverage for the last 5 years, there's no form to fill out and no re-enrollment needed. The coverage you already have continues on into retirement, with premiums being paid continuously by OPM, even while you're awaiting your first pension check.

Better yet, the plan is still subsidized by the government to the tune of 72ish%... for life (or lives, if your spouse is on your plan).

This benefit is one of the most important parts of your federal retirement package.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let me know. Happy Tuesday!

P.S. Pic is of me at an exhibit at the Broad Museum in L.A. in June 2025. This enormous dining room table was fantastic. I felt like I was in an "Incredible Shrinking Woman" movie.

08/25/2026

Q: What should I do if I turned in my retirement application but haven't heard back and my retirement date is coming up soon?

A: So this is very common. In other words, you almost never hear anything back from your supervisor until quite close to retirement time. When you turn in your online retirement application, your agency doesn't even look at it until 30 to 60 days before the date that you want to retire. It's not whoever turns it in first gets looked at first. It's when is the retirement date we're looking for here? And based on that is when we're going to look at your application.

So if you haven't heard anything back, that doesn't mean anything's wrong. And you should probably hear something by generally two-ish to four-ish weeks before retirement from your direct supervisor, letting you know, hey, we heard from HR that you're retiring soon.

If somehow they don't come to you and tell you that, I'll recommend you tell them that, all right? And you don't have to do it more than a couple of weeks before retirement, but two weeks or so before retirement, I'll recommend if you haven't heard from your supervisor that you let them know because we don't want them coding you as leave without pay because they don't know where you are. And then you have to get that fixed in retirement. It becomes a much bigger problem to fix those sorts of miscoding issues once retired than while employed. And even while employed, it's no picnic, as we all know.

08/20/2026

Q: Should I retire at the end of a month?

A: For those who are FERS, meaning those who are hired January 1st of 1984 or later, yes, you should generally think to retire at the end of a month. And that's because the way your federal employee retirement system is set up, you're gonna have the shortest wait for your first interim pension check, your first partial pension check, if you retire the final day of a month.

For those hired before 1984, those of us who are civil service, if you want the very shortest wait for your first pension check, you actually wanna retire the third of the month.

But, you know, and generally when you see articles about this, what you're going to see is civil service can retire at the end of a month or within the first three days of a month. And you're still going to only wait approximately 30 days for your first pension check.

All of these numbers, by the way - these wait time numbers, are longer than usual right now. Because of downsizing from the current administration, OPM has fired a bunch of their retirement processors. People are having to wait longer.

But the general answer is, for those of us who are FERS, end of the month is best because it's the shortest wait for the pension check. For those of us who are Civil Service, beginning of a month is best.

08/18/2026

Thinking about retiring from federal service or facing a potential Reduction in Force? Find out everything you need to know this Thursday, August 20th at 7 p.m. PST or Sunday, August 23rd at 11 a.m. PST at my FREE ONLINE WEBINAR. SIGN UP HERE: https://www.lacieharmon.com/webinar-registration

08/13/2026

How much do you need to retire comfortably?

You may have heard you’ll need about 85% of your pre-retirement income to keep a similar lifestyle.

Why not 100%?

In retirement, you stop contributing to TSP, your pension contributions drop out, work costs drop (commuting, uniforms, union dues), and Social Security and Medicare taxes go away.

If your house is paid off, you may need even less - closer to 70% of your working income.

The key: This is just a starting point. Some folks live frugally and are comfortable with 70%, others need closer to 100% for big goals. Finding out what works for you is as simple as taking a look at your estimated retirement income and expenses.

Here's a pic of some of the expenses that go away once you retire.

PLEASE NOTE TWO THINGS: In your later years of retirement, expenses can rise due to health issues. Also, allocations will drop away when you move from being paid by your federal agency, though you can set them up again at OPM online services.

08/11/2026

Q: What do I do once I'm ready to retire?

A: Nowadays, you're going to call your HR department and you're going to let them know you need your online retirement application. And then that's one of the free services that I and my team offer. We'll fill that in together. We'll go through line by line.

And there are really only two major decisions that you have to make on your online retirement application. The rest is pretty straightforward and simple. It's going to be name, address, date of birth over and over again.

But the two major decisions you must make are how much pension do I want to leave for my spouse should I pass away first?

And how much life insurance do I, if any, do I want to take into retirement with me? And if you choose to do that with myself or my team, we're going to give you the math of that. "Here's how much it's going to cost you. Here's how much coverage you can take." There are different levels you can opt for and so that you can make an intelligent decision about that.

08/10/2026

GOOD NEWS: OPM has announced a new online portal for eligible former federal employees to obtain their electronic personnel records by email.

So, if you need any of the documents your agency held during your career (i.e. W-4s or proof of health insurance), you now have fast, easy access to them.

It's hard to overstate just how huge this is. (It used to be that you had to contact the National Archives and wait months for them to access your records.)

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to let me know.

P.S. Pic is of me with my incredibly dapper client, Frank D., who retired from the Post Office in 2023.

08/06/2026

Q: How can I make my retirement savings last for the rest of my life?

A: This is the $10 million question. This has been opined upon forever by financial folks.

And there have been estimates of you can take anywhere from 4%. Now then it went down to 3% in recent years. Now I think it's at 3.2%. It's all over the place about how to withdraw your savings.

I want to get into something that is extremely important on this subject matter, because though you can attempt to draw down 3% of your savings each year and make it last your entire retirement, that's actually an extremely uncomfortable way to live.

And the reason I'm saying that is that studies have been done for many years, but in recent years, they're coming fast and furious from major companies that show that we don't want to withdraw down our savings. It's very uncomfortable. We're used to building them.

And so what happens is when it's time to withdraw them, we start getting afraid. What if I live until 105? And so we don't go on that vacation we want to take. We don't take our grandkids to Disneyland. We get a little afraid.

But if you use some of your retirement savings and an income-for-life annuity, all of a sudden that changes everything. If you roll over a portion of your retirement savings into an account that promises a monthly paycheck that you can't outlive, now you're simply spending your monthly fixed income.

And all of a sudden, it's not uncomfortable to spend on what you want to spend on.

Address

Los Angeles, CA
90042

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Telephone

+18183706490

Website

http://www.lacieharmon.com/

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