United States 

Office of 

Personnel Management 

The Federal Government’s Human Resources Agency

Benefits Administration Letter 

Number: 07-102 Date: April 23, 2007 

Subject: Retirement Financial Education Plans

This Benefits Administration Letter (BAL) provides guidance on developing a retirement 

financial education plan for your employees. The Thrift Savings Plan Open Elections Act of 

2004 (Public Law 108-469) required the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to develop and 

implement a retirement financial literacy and education strategy for Federal employees as part of 

the retirement training offered by OPM under 5 U.S.C. 8350. The implementation of the strategy 

must educate Federal employees on the need for retirement savings and investment, and must 

provide information on how to plan for retirement and how to calculate the retirement 

investment needed to meet their retirement goals. OPM submitted the strategy to Congress. The 

strategy is available at: http://www.opm.gov/benefits/literacy_education.asp. 

The strategy identifies the roles of OPM, employing agencies and employees in implementing 

the retirement financial education programs. The administration of the Federal benefits programs 

is decentralized, and day-to-day administration of the programs is handled by the employing 

agency. Agency benefits officers have the primary responsibility to provide retirement financial 

education to their employees. The strategy requires each agency to develop a retirement financial 

education plan based on the educational model in the strategy. Agencies must provide OPM with 

an annual report describing the activities conducted under their retirement financial education 

programs and recommendations for improvements in the Government-wide financial education 

program. 

Agency retirement financial education plans. 

Our strategy takes a broad holistic approach to retirement financial education. It combines 

information and training on the Federal benefits programs with information employees need to 

know in order to set and achieve their retirement goals. Retirement readiness is more than just 

calculating how much money is needed. Our Retirement Readiness: NOW model combines the 

basic information about the benefits provided by the Government, as an employer, and the 

broader financial education needs of employees. Rather than being a “near retirement” event, 

the strategy considers retirement financial literacy and education as a career-long process. The 

model incorporates the broad range of information employees need to help them make informed 

Civil Service 

Retirement 

System 

Federal Employees’ 

Group Life 

Insurance Program 

Federal Employees 

Health Benefits 

Program 

Federal Employees 

Retirement 

System 

Long Term 

Care Insurance 

Program 
retirement planning decisions. It also recognizes that these needs change as a person moves 

through his or her career. 

We call our model Retirement Readiness: NOW. It has a total balanced approach to planning 

that covers: 

• Networking & Engagement – finding enjoyable challenges, and connecting with other 

people. 

• Overall Health – understanding the aging process and staying as healthy as you can for 

however long you live. 

• Wealth– preparing financially to have sufficient income to support your own standard of 

living in retirement. 

Retirement readiness is also dynamic. The activities and planning you need to do, such as the 

mix of your TSP funds and planning where you’ll live in retirement, change as you move 

through life stages. 

Agency plans should be on an agency wide level and discuss how the agency will manage the 

elements of the program in its components to support the financial education model. The plans 

should discuss the agency’s goals and objectives for their retirement financial education 

program. 

The purpose of the plans is to insure systemic design of programs developed to communicate 

information to employees so they can plan for retirement and make informed decisions. Just as 

there are differences among agencies, there are differences among the components of an agency. 

 Plans should account for these differences. Plans should follow the topics below and discuss the 

goals programs are trying to achieve and how they plan to achieve them. They should not be 

merely a catalog of activities conducted. Plans must describe how the retirement financial 

education program targets employees at three career points: new employee, mid-career, and preretirement. 

Key elements of agency plans. 

Plans must discuss four key elements: content, delivery, evaluation and sustainability. 

Content. The plan should address what type of information and training you are providing to 

your employees to help them increase their retirement readiness. In order to help you implement 

your agency plans we are developing a set of tools and resources for agency benefits officers to 

use in providing retirement financial education. The tools support the Retirement Readiness: 

NOW model and include: 

• Retirement Readiness Profile – a web-based tool to assist employees with their readiness 

to retire as they move through career stages. 

• Federal Ballpark Estimate – a savings goal worksheet that will allow employees to 

estimate how much they need to save to reach their retirement goals. 

• Workshops in a Box – a series of workshops for use by agency benefits officers to 

conduct lunch-time brown-bag events to their employees on a range of retirement topics. 

• Retirement planning video – an overview of the Civil Service Retirement System and the 

Federal Employees Retirement System. 

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• Guide to conducting financial education fairs – Benefits Administration Letter 06-107 

provides guidance to agency benefits officers on how to conduct a financial education 

fair. 

The contents section of an agency retirement financial education plan must provide information 

on how the agency is using these tools and other resources to provide information and training 

on the key dimensions of retirement readiness. Agencies must insure that their financial 

education activities are informational and educational in nature and that they do not provide 

specific financial investment advice. 

Delivery. The plan must describe how the information will be delivered to employees. 

Agencies vary widely in the occupational mix and geographic dispersion of their employees. 

The retirement financial education plan must identify the best methods for information delivery 

for their employee population. For example, a series of lunchtime workshops may be very 

effective in an agency where the majority of employees are in concentrated locations, but would 

be a less effective approach in an organization with many employees in widely dispersed 

locations. Delivery of materials via the internet might be the best choice for organizations whose 

employees work in offices but not for organizations that have large numbers of employees 

working in non-office environments. The plan must identify what delivery methods will be used 

and why they are appropriate. 

Evaluation. Developing and maintaining an effective retirement financial education program 

requires ongoing evaluation measures. Agency plans must establish specific goals and use 

performance measures to track progress toward meeting those goals. The evaluation measures 

should provide information on the impact on participants’ attitudes, knowledge or behavior. 

Initial plans should contain information on the evaluation plans and performance measures that 

will be used. Subsequent plan submissions should include measures of progress toward the plan 

goals. 

Sustainability. The key to the long-term success of retirement financial education programs is 

the effort to insure their sustainability. The focus of our financial education strategy is on the 

needs and planning goals of employees and recognition of the on-going changes of those needs 

and goals as employees move through the stages of their careers. Retirement financial education 

is not a one-time end-of-career event. In order to be effective it must be a career-long process. 

Plans should include information about how the education program goals have been incorporated 

in organizational goals, work plans and performance measures so the programs become standard 

procedures in benefits administration. 

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Reporting requirements. Each agency with employees covered by Chapters 83 and 84, title 5 

U.S. Code, must submit their agency plan to OPM’s Associate Director for Human Resources 

Products & Services annually by November 1st. The first plan is due November 1, 2007. Plans 

should be sent to: Associate Director for Human Resources Products & Services 

 ATTN: Retirement Financial Education Plans 

 U.S. Office of Personnel Management 

 1900 E Street, NW 

 Washington DC 20415 

 

 

Robert F. Danbeck, 

Associate Director 

Human Resources Products & Services Division 

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