How do I Calculate my Extra Sick Leave Days to Burn?

Actually that’s a bit of a trick question. And a common mistake people make. They look at their extra sick days by themselves, without first adding in their working time and military time. You have to add everything together before you can arrive at the extra days you won’t get paid for. Just because you look at the sick leave chart and find that you have 5 months and 12 days of sick leave, don’t get fooled into thinking you have 12 sick days to burn. You don’t.

Have no idea what I’m talking about? Here’s a quick recap.

When a FERSonian retires, they get paid based on the total credit of service years and months. Not days. Only whole months count. For example, if someone ends up with a total of 30 years, 8 months and 13 days, they only get credit for 30 years and 8 months. The 13 days just vanish-poof. They don’t get paid for them. (See my other article on how sick leave works). So, an enterprising government employee may arrive at the conclusion that they should burn those days. Since they don’t get credit for them anyway. And they’d be correct. But you have to do it a certain way. Read on.

Step One: Let’s assume this employee is retiring 12/31/2022. Find all your working time and military time bought back (if any) as of that date. (You can use Time/Date Calculator for working time, military time will be in your eOPF.) Let’s say that an individual has 30 years, 8 months and 13 days of working FERS time. Let’s also say that person bought back 4 years, 1 month, and 10 days of military time. What are we up to so far? (hint: you have to add the two categories)

34 years, 9 months, and 23 days.

Step Two: Find your current sick leave balance as of your last Earnings and Leave Statement for last pay period. Let’s assume Mrs. Example here has a total sick leave balance of 944 hours at the end of the previous pay period.

Step Three: Find out how many pay periods (including this one you are currently in) are left before you retire. Let’s assume Mrs. Example is retiring 12/31/2022. And since there are multiple pay calendars in a year, we’ll assume she’s one of the 600,000 that get paid via NFC. For your viewing pleasure, I have supplied you with all of the NFC pay calendars for the upcoming years HERE.

(If you do not get paid by NFC, you’ll need to verify your pay processor’s pay calendar.)

As you will notice, 12/31/22 lands at the end of Pay Period 26. This is pretty rare. Most of the time, 12/31 is in the middle of a pay period, not exactly at the end like in 2022. Because she’ll work this entire pay period, Mrs. Example gets credit for PP 26 for leave purposes. If 12/31 was in the middle of a pay period and she retired, she would not count that pay period for sick leave accrual, since you have to work an entire pay period to accrue the leave. Leaving in the middle of a pay period means no accrued sick leave or annual leave for that pay period.

As I write this we are in Pay Period 8 for 2022. So, including this pay period, there would be 19 remaining pay periods for 2022. (You’ll have to adjust for whatever pay period you are in when you’re doing your calculations. I’m sure most of you will be reading this in future pay periods. So adjust accordingly.)

Step Four: Multiply remaining pay periods left by 4 hours each pay period. 19 pay periods x 4 hours = 76 hours. This is the additional amount of sick leave Mrs. Example will accrue for the remainder of her career. We add that to the existing balance of 944 hours she had at the end of last pay period. That equals a total 1020 hours.

Go to our handy dandy Sick Leave Conversion chart, and we find that the 1,020 hours gets converted into 5 months and 26 days of credit.

Step Five: Add it all together. 34 years, 9 months and 23 days of working time and military time PLUS 0 years, 5 months, and 26 days of sick leave equals a total of 35 years, 3 months, and 19 days.

(Remember—OPM months are all 30 days. So when we add the 23 days and 26 days, that equals 49 days. Meaning 1 extra month, and 19 remaining days.)

NOW we finally have our answer of the extra sick days—assuming you’re still with me. 19 days we can take and burn. But it’s not 19 days x 8 hours. No, that would be too simple. When you turn in sick leave to be used for credit, it’s not 8 hours in a day. It’s 5.80 hours, give or take, per day. You don’t really have to know that math, so it’s probably easier to just forget that fact. After all, that’s what the sick leave chart is for—to keep us from having to do the math.

Step Six: Find the number of actual sick leave hours you can burn by finding 19 days on the sick leave conversion chart and noting how many hours that is. 19 days is 110 hours.

Soooooo…..after alllllllllll that, Mrs. Example can burn 110 hours of sick leave and still get the same annuity she would if she didn’t burn any more sick leave the rest of her career. In other words, for OPM’s purpose 35 years, 3 months, and 19 days is the exact same thing as 35 years and 3 months and 0 days.

Make sense?

Let’s Recap:

1. Find your total sick leave balance at retirement by adding the balance from last pay period to all the sick leave you will continue to accrue until retirement. That would be all complete pay periods remaining multiplied by 4.

2. Consult the sick leave conversion chart to convert those hours into months and days.

3. Add FERS working time, military time bought back, and sick leave time together.

4. Any hanging or remaining days will be lost, so you can burn them and not affect your pension amount.

5. To find out how many hours you can burn, go back to the sick leave conversion chart and find the hours that equate to the number of hanging days (partial month) you have.

Maybe you are thinking, “My sick leave balance isn’t that high—it won’t help me that much. Would it be better just to burn it all?” It could be. That’s a very personal decision. There are some benefits to that approach. You’ll have to decide for yourself, but….

….as with most things FERS, I’ve covered it already. Read my article on that decision process HERE.

Finally, what happens if you make a mistake and take TOO much sick time. So that now you’ve used up all of your remaining days, and you’ve eaten into one of your whole months? Well, you’ve now reduced your annuity. By how much?

1/12th of 1% of your High-3.

Is that bad? Nothing to stress over. If your High-3 is $130k, your annuity will be reduced by about $9 a month before taxes. Hardly something that will make or break your retirement. If it does, you’ve got bigger problems to worry about than maxxing out sick leave!