How a Social Security and a Supplement Differ

November 15, 2015

There is a certain set of benefits that only the federal employees get; not all of them but the ones that come under the protective umbrella of the Federal Employees Retirement system. People with a history in government and a long career in such occupations that are covered by FERS get a benefit known as FERS supplement once they retire. In order to be considered eligible and receive the supplement, you need to be younger than 62 when you retire. You would thus be able to get a ready and a handsome sum of money through the basic Federal employment retirement system benefit.

There’s another thing known as a social security, which is the assistance provided by the government to people with lesser income or other issues. At 62, normally the payment that you received as a social security is a lot more than what you would receive as a FERS supplement for the same services.

There are many reasons for this to happen but we will not discuss all of them. A point that needs attention is that a supplement does not include the cost of living amount that gets adjusted normally to a social security. The FERS cost of living adjustment is only applicable to the retired officer’s basic annual benefit. This adjustment is made to some of the retired officers before they actually reach the age of 62.

Another reason for this to happen is that not all of the retired officials get their hands on their social security benefits. Because of the fact that you can qualify for a different and probably larger amount of benefit because of your partner’s work for the government, the supplement ends up being a fairly different amount than the social security.

There are many other factors that can be raised to differentiate the two entities but these are enough for the readers to be able to draw a line between the two.