If you retire at MRA, you are not yet eligible for SS, so FERS gives you a separate payment roughly equal to your SS benefits until SS kicks in. Essentially you get SS five years early (if your MRA is 57 and you are eligible for SS at 62)
Oh wow that’s crazy. How do Feds who want to RE do it then? Seems like they give up a very significant chunk of change if they don’t stick it out to MRA.
The same way people who work in the private sector do, high savings rate. I look at FERS as extra Social Security. If I hit a number, I'm out, although there are options like taking seasonal jobs or part time jobs if yo uwant to grow the pension and are content making that type of time commitment to work.
By the way, you only get the FERS settlement if you have 30 years at 57, or you get targeted for a reduction in force voluntary retirement.
She has career tenure preference for life, so if she quits, she can always go back.
if she takes a few years off and decided that she misses working, she can always go back and try some other government job (is there a reason she hasn't considered just switching now if she is burned out on the current job? For me the biggest perk of government work is there are so many different things you can try, all over country and in much of the world, too.)