David Wolfel \u2013 a former civilian architect for the U.S. Navy \u2013 was among thousands of federal workers who opted to retire this year amid widespread cuts under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
So in May, before he left to spend his final months of employment on administrative leave, he submitted his retirement paperwork to his agency.\u00a0Six months later, however, he still doesn\u2019t know when he\u2019ll see his retirement benefits kick in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was anticipating probably late in 2025,\u201d Wolfel told the News4 I-Team. Asked if he still thinks that will happen, he said, \u201cI really don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
For months, the I-Team has been tracking concerns with processing retirement benefits for thousands of federal workers who left the federal government this year.Roughly 150,000 federal employees took the Deferred Resignation Program buyout this year, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), with about 100,000 of those leaving on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n
The exodus of workers resulted in widespread delays across the system, especially as processing federal retirement claims happens in two stages. After employees submit their paperwork, their agency completes their application and sends it to OPM to finalize and issue payments.<\/p>\n
In September, OPM Director Scott Kupor told the I-Team he expects most agencies will process retirement claims within 30 days. He also said he was optimistic OPM could process retirements within 60 days of receiving an agency’s paperwork.<\/p>\n
But OPM’s own metrics show the monthly average processing time shot up this summer, rising to an average of 79 days in October, when OPM saw more than 20,000 new retirement claims \u2013 almost triple the number of retirement applications it received the month before.<\/p>\n
\u201cOPM is processing an unprecedented number of retirements this fall and working around diligently to get benefits out quickly,\u201d Kupor told the I-Team in a statement this month. \u201cMore than 75 percent of new retirees are now receiving interim pay within 30 days of OPM receiving their completed application and our goal is that all retirees receive this pay to ensure no one goes without income during processing. We remain focused on returning to a 60-day average processing time, and our new Online Retirement Application is already helping us move faster. We urge retirees to confirm their agency HR and payroll offices have submitted complete applications, that\u2019s the one of the biggest factors in avoiding delays.\u201d<\/p>\n
But retirees like Wolfel say it\u2019s become too difficult to reach their HR departments for status updates.<\/p>\n
Wolfel showed the I-Team an automated email response from his HR department saying they\u2019re \u201cexperiencing an unprecedented high volume of retirement applications\u201d and therefore are \u201cunable\u201d to respond with status updates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to bad mouth or say Navy (Human Resources) is not doing their job. It\u2019s a challenged environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lori Sherdel blamed delays at her former agency for why it took months for her retirement benefits to process.<\/p>\n
“With the FDA, it was inefficiency,\u201d said Sherdel, a former management analyst with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Worried widespread cuts would affect her job, Sherdel retired in April after 44 years with the government, but she said records show OPM didn\u2019t receive her claim until June and she didn\u2019t start receiving interim partial pay \u2013 about 40% of what she believes she\u2019s owed \u2013 until July.<\/p>\n
She said OPM has since finalized her claim but she isn\u2019t yet receiving her full benefits and doesn\u2019t know when that will happen. Until then she and her soon-to-retire husband are faced with dipping into his 401K.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s frustrating because it holds off any savings that you might want to put away\u00a0\u2026 You’re basically living off of 40% of what you expected,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Both Sherdel and Wolfel said they loved working for the federal government and are deeply proud of their service, but the delays and uncertainty surrounding their retirement benefits have caused undue stress.<\/p>\n
“Not to say I’ll believe it when I see it, but I do believe it will eventually happen, I think,” Wolfel said.<\/p>\n
News4 reached out to the FDA and the Navy about Sherdel and Wolfel\u2019s cases, but they have not yet responded.<\/p>\n
Reported by Ted Oberg, produced by Katie Leslie, and shot and edited by Steve Jones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Wolfel \u2013 a former civilian architect for the U.S. Navy \u2013 was among thousands of federal workers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,129074,131,132,72890],"class_list":{"0":"post-284043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-news4-i-team","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-u-s-government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}