While you have some amazing benefits, sometimes you're paying for things you don't need. Let's say that you have your FEHB, which is one of your best benefits, you have Federal Employee Health Benefits, but you're double covered somewhere else, either through your own employment somewhere else, or your spouse's employment, do you really have to keep at paying FEHB if you don't need it? Is there a way to hit the pause button, stick that on the shelf and be able to come
back to your FEHB later. If you've ever wondered the answer to this question, then stay tuned for this FERS Federal Fact Check. Hi, I'm Micah Shilanski with Plan Your Federal Retirement. I'm really excited to get into Michael's question today, and he says: Can I suspend my FEHB in retirement, then start it again later, if my new private sector employer offers health coverage benefits that I'd like to take advantage
of. Michael, such a great question. Now, I love what you're already thinking right here, saying, hey, my FEHB is really beneficial. I want to make sure I have this for retirement, I want to make sure I have this for the rest of my life, but I also don't want to pay for things I don't need, right? If my current employer or new employer has cheaper insurance coverage, right then, why am I being double covered?
Because it's not like your new employer can say, hey, you don't have health insurance, they pay more unfortunately, that's illegal, so you have to be ineligible for those benefits, so how do you make the most out of them? Unfortunately, the bearer of the bad news right now, the short answer is no, very, very rare occasions, maybe with TRICARE, we could have a conversation about postponing benefits, but the short answer is, no, you cannot postpone your FEHB insurance just to move into
a private sector, then later go and pull it back. The only thing you could do is cancel your insurance, which I am not recommending, right? Big, stop, big no, that FEHB in retirement is a beautiful thing, so I would not want to cancel that insurance. So I would definitely say to really look at the details of coverage in FEHB. What I've done with a lot of clients is because they want to keep their foot in their door with FEHB, but they don't want to, but they already have this
other coverage at the employer. We start moving to a higher deductible plan, start scaling down the benefits, if you will, on your FEHB plan, and that just makes the premium a little bit cheaper. So there are things you can do in Open Season to kind of lower the benefits, you can change the plan in FEHB, and it still keeps your foot in the door, but I would not cancel that coverage, because it is still great coverage throughout
retirement. If you have questions about your benefits and how they work in retirement, then make sure you submit them to us and you could be featured to the next FERS Federal Fact Check. Till then, Happy Planning!