The federal retirement application: how to actually file

1. Why filing your retirement isn’t automatic

A common assumption among federal employees nearing retirement: my agency knows I’m leaving, my last day is set, surely the retirement pieces will move on their own.

They will not. The federal retirement application is something you initiate, sign, and shepherd. It is a multi-stage, multi-agency process that depends on your records being accurate, your paperwork being complete, and your timing being deliberate. Done well, it runs in the background and your first interim pay arrives within weeks of separation. Done poorly — or not at all — it can leave you without income for months while OPM tries to reconstruct a service history nobody documented.

What’s actually being decided when you file:

• Your pension amount — the high-3, the years of service, the multiplier, and any reductions
• Your survivor election — what your spouse will receive if you die, and how much it costs you
• Your FEHB and FEGLI continuation — whether the health and life insurance you carried as an employee follows you into retirement
• Your withholding — how much federal tax (and state, if applicable) comes out of each annuity check
• Your direct deposit — where the money lands

Each of those decisions has its own form, and all of them need to be filed together. The earlier you understand the pipeline, the smoother the transition. This article is the practical roadmap — what to do 6 to 12 months out, what to file, what to expect after submission, and where everyone else’s case gets stuck.

2. The pre-filing checklist — 6 to 12 months out

The single best predictor of a smooth retirement is preparation that happens long before the last day of work. Treat the 12 months before your planned retirement as a structured countdown, not a casual approach.

12 months out: pull your eOPF and verify your SCD. Your Electronic Official Personnel Folder is the source-of-truth for your federal service. Get a complete copy from your agency HR. Verify your Service Computation Date — this single date drives your retirement eligibility, your years of service in the pension formula, and your leave accrual. SCDs contain errors more often than employees expect. If a previous appointment is missing, a military service period is undocumented, or a break in service was misrecorded, you want that corrected now, not after your separation date.

12 months out: request a retirement estimate. Most agency HR offices will produce an annuity estimate on request — usually two scenarios at retirement dates of your choice. Use this to verify the math and to compare retirement dates. The estimate also flags missing service that needs to be documented.

9 months out: pay any outstanding deposits or buybacks. If you have a military service buyback, a redeposit for refunded FERS contributions, or a deposit for non-covered service, pay these before you retire. They cannot be paid after separation. Unpaid deposits either don’t count toward your pension or count at a reduced level. Check the status with your HR or your payroll provider.

6 months out: schedule formal retirement counseling. Your agency’s retirement counselor walks through your specific numbers, the forms, and the survivor election. This appointment is where most retirees first see the trade-offs in writing — the 10% survivor reduction, the FEHB premium, the W-4P withholding choice. Take notes.

3 months out: gather supporting documents. OPM needs originals or certified copies of:

• DD-214 for any military service
• Marriage certificate (current spouse)
• Divorce decrees from any prior marriages
• Death certificates for any deceased prior spouses
• Court orders for any apportioned annuities or QDROs
• Birth certificates for dependent children

60-90 days out: submit your retirement package to agency HR. This is the actual submission of SF-3107 and the rest. Submitting earlier is fine — most agencies prefer it. Submitting later compresses the pipeline.

Final 30 days: confirm transmission and prepare for the gap. A week or two after you submit, confirm with HR that your package is in motion. Set aside a cash bridge to cover the months between your last paycheck and your first full annuity — interim pay closes most of the gap but doesn’t include FEHB or FEGLI deductions, which can complicate budgeting.

The retirement application starts a year before you file it. The pre-filing work — verifying your SCD, paying buybacks, gathering documents — is what determines whether the actual submission moves cleanly or stalls in the pipeline.

3. The forms — the SF-3107 family decoded

The federal retirement application is not one form. It’s a small collection of forms, each handling a specific piece of the retirement transition.

SF-3107 is the headline form. It captures your identity, your retirement type, your survivor election, your FEHB election, and your withholding preferences. Section D is the survivor benefit election — the choice between full (10% / 50% to spouse), partial (5% / 25%), or none (0% / nothing). Section D is the most consequential single choice on the form; once 18 months pass after your annuity starts, this election cannot be increased.

SF-3107-2, the Spousal Consent form, is the one that trips people up. If you elect anything less than the maximum survivor benefit (full 10% reduction / 50% to spouse), your spouse must sign a notarized consent form. Two specific rules:

• The consent must exactly match Section D of SF-3107. If Section D says “5% partial” and the consent is for “no survivor,” OPM rejects the application.
• OPM does not accept forms with crossed-out or whited-out corrections. If the notary makes a mistake on the spousal consent, you start over with a clean form. Bring two copies to the notary just in case.

Don’t forget the separate filings. Your retirement application doesn’t process TSP withdrawals or Social Security benefits. Those are separate filings with separate agencies — TSP through your TSP account, Social Security through SSA. Filing for retirement at your agency does not file for either. Plan to do them in parallel.

4. ORA: what changed in 2026

In summer 2025, OPM launched the Online Retirement Application (ORA) — a fully digital retirement application platform that replaces the paper SF-3107 process. By 2026, ORA is the standard path for most agencies, with paper applications phased down.

How ORA works:

• Your agency HR creates your ORA account using your work email
• You log in via Login.gov
• The system walks you through SF-3107 electronically, validates fields as you go, and flags missing inputs
• Supporting documents upload directly to the platform
• Submission is electronic; you get immediate confirmation of receipt
• Your application then routes to agency HR for certification, then to payroll, then to OPM — all electronically

What ORA actually fixes:

• Confirmed receipt. No more wondering if the package arrived. The system confirms within seconds.
• Faster intake. OPM data indicates digital applications process in roughly 50 days at the OPM stage, versus 100 days for paper — about half the OPM-side processing time.
• Fewer document-loss delays. Paper packages historically got lost or split between HR and payroll; ORA keeps everything together.
• Field validation. The system catches obvious errors — wrong format, missing required fields — at entry rather than after submission.

What ORA does not fix:

• The upstream pipeline. Your application still spends ~60 days at HR and ~51 days at payroll before OPM even sees it. ORA speeds the OPM stage, not the pre-OPM stages.
• Document quality. A digitally-submitted application with a missing DD-214 still stalls. The system accepts your package; the case still waits for the document.
• Spousal consent. SF-3107-2 still requires a wet-ink notarized signature and is uploaded as a PDF. The notary requirement isn’t digital.
• The “submit and pray” gap. A FedSmith survey of recent retirees found 75% rated ORA easy to use — and satisfaction dropped sharply after submission. The system confirms receipt but provides limited visibility into what’s happening during processing.

ORA is a genuine improvement, not a complete fix. Treat it as the cleaner intake door it actually is — not a guarantee that everything past the door will be fast.

5. The pipeline: agency HR → payroll → OPM

Understanding the three-stage pipeline is the difference between a calm retirement transition and an anxious one. Here’s what your application is actually doing on each leg of the journey.

Stage 1: Agency HR (~60 days). Your HR office reviews your SF-3107 package, completes the Certified Summary of Federal Service (SF-3107-1), and certifies the entire package. This is where errors in your eOPF surface — every undocumented appointment or missing service period adds days.

Stage 2: Payroll (~51 days). Your payroll provider finalizes your salary records, your final SCD, your accumulated leave for the lump-sum payout, and the service history that OPM will use. Payroll’s job is to give OPM a clean, reconciled record of everything you earned and accrued.

Stage 3: OPM (~50 days digital / ~100 days paper). OPM places you on interim pay almost immediately upon receipt, then performs the full adjudication — verifying every figure, calculating your annuity, applying any reductions, processing your survivor election, and finalizing your FEHB and FEGLI. When done, OPM issues your CSA number and transitions you from interim pay to full pay.

6. Interim pay: what you get while you wait

The most important fact about the post-submission wait: you are not left with zero income. OPM places you on interim pay almost immediately upon receiving your case from payroll.

What interim pay is:

• A partial annuity payment, typically 60% to 80% of OPM’s estimate of your final annuity
• Begins within about 7 to 8 days of OPM receiving your file
• Paid monthly through the same direct deposit your final annuity will use
• Continues until OPM completes the full adjudication of your case

What interim pay does NOT include — and this catches people:

• FEHB premiums are not deducted. Your health insurance continues, but the premiums aren’t coming out of interim pay. They accumulate, and OPM reconciles them when your case is finalized.
• FEGLI premiums are not deducted. Same logic as FEHB.
• Dental and vision premiums are not deducted.
• Survivor reduction is not applied. Even if you elected the 10% reduction for a survivor benefit, interim pay is calculated as if you hadn’t.
• State tax withholding is not applied. Only federal income tax comes out.

The result: interim pay looks larger relative to your eventual net pay than the 60-80% percentage suggests. Don’t budget around the interim check. The premiums and reductions all start coming out when finalization happens, and your monthly net drops to the true final amount.

When OPM finalizes your case, two things happen simultaneously. You receive a retroactive back-payment covering every dollar between interim and full pay for every month you were underpaid. And your monthly check shifts to the final, fully-reconciled amount — smaller than the interim check looked, because all the deductions now apply.

The back-payment is a meaningful lump sum — sometimes thousands of dollars — but it lands in a single tax year. For a retiree who finalizes mid-year, this can push that year’s income into a higher bracket, especially when combined with the lump-sum annual leave payout your agency issued at separation. Anticipate it.

7. The mistakes that delay your case

After years of OPM case data and the FedSmith retiree surveys, the same handful of mistakes appear over and over. Each one is preventable.

Mistake 1: Submitting an inaccurate eOPF. The single most common cause of OPM holds. Missing DD-214, undocumented military service, gaps in appointment history, or an incorrect SCD all force OPM to write back asking for documentation — and your file effectively goes to the back of the line while you respond. Fix this in the pre-filing stage, not after submission.

Mistake 2: Spousal Consent that doesn’t match Section D. OPM cross-checks SF-3107-2 against the SF-3107 survivor election in Section D. They must be word-for-word consistent. A “partial” election on one form and a “no survivor” on the other triggers a rejection. Proofread before notarization.

Mistake 3: Corrections on the forms. OPM does not accept forms with crossed-out, whited-out, or initialed corrections — especially the spousal consent. A clean reprint is required. This is why agency retirement counselors recommend printing fresh copies of every form before signing.

Mistake 4: Forgetting separate TSP and Social Security applications. Your retirement application is OPM-only. It does not initiate TSP withdrawals, and it does not start Social Security. If you want TSP income on day one, you need to file with the TSP separately. If you’re 62 or older and want Social Security to begin with retirement, you need to file with SSA separately.

Mistake 5: Revisiting the survivor election after 18 months. Within 18 months of your annuity starting, you can increase your survivor election by paying a deposit. After 18 months, increases are not allowed. Decreases are even more restricted — generally requiring the spouse to consent in writing, and never on a path back to “no survivor.” Get the election right the first time.

Mistake 6: Not paying buybacks before separation. Military service buyback, FERS redeposits for refunded contributions, and other service-credit deposits must be paid before you separate. Discovering an unpaid deposit after separation generally means losing the associated service credit. Pay these in the 9-month-out window.

Mistake 7: Missing the lump-sum leave tax impact. Your agency pays out your unused annual leave as a single lump sum within a few weeks of separation. This is taxable income in the year of separation, and combined with your final partial paycheck and possibly a lump-sum back-payment from OPM later in the year, it can produce an unusual tax-year income profile. Plan for it; don’t let it surprise you.

8. After you’re approved — first full annuity and beyond

The day your case is finalized, several things happen in close succession.

OPM assigns your CSA number. This is your permanent claim number — usually a “CSA” prefix followed by seven digits. It appears on all future OPM correspondence and is your reference for any post-retirement question. Save it.

You receive a Notice of Annuity Adjustment. This document shows your final monthly annuity, the deductions applied (FEHB, FEGLI, dental/vision, federal tax withholding, survivor reduction), and the retroactive back-payment amount.

You’re routed to Services Online. OPM’s retiree self-service portal — at servicesonline.opm.gov — becomes your home for changing tax withholding, updating direct deposit, generating annuity statements, and pulling your annual 1099-R. Set up the account using the same Login.gov account you used for ORA.

Your monthly check shifts to its final amount. All deductions are applied. State tax withholding (if you elected it) begins. Your net check is the number you should have been budgeting against from the start.

Survivor election lock starts ticking. You have 18 months from the annuity start date to increase your survivor benefit. After that, the election is locked.

FEHB and FEGLI continue automatically. Provided you met the five-year rule and didn’t waive coverage, your health and life insurance carry seamlessly into retirement. Premiums now come out of your annuity check rather than your paycheck. (For the five-year rule details, see the FEHB 5-year rule.)

For most retirees, six months after separation you’ve reached the steady state: full annuity, all deductions applied, the supplement flowing if you qualify, and your retirement income picture established. The application is behind you; what remains is living the plan you built.