I was hired into the FAA in September of 2007. Ohh to be young again. The white book was in full effect, and I was fresh out of the Marine Corps. Interesting times to say the least. Luckily for me, I had some damn good “old timers” looking out for me. One of the first things they told me to do was to make a Military Service deposit. Like a good little developmental, I sent away to my branch’s servicing center a request for my estimated earnings. About 4 months later I got that paperwork back and submitted it to FAA HR. They promptly sent me the paperwork to make the payment...that’s where my laziness kicked in. Sure, I could blame it on the fact that I moved apartments and in the shuffle of everything I stuffed the paperwork in a drawer and forgot about it. The truth is that I just got lazy. Fast forward 11 years, and I finally got motivated to finish the process. The problem is that interest had been generating on my payment for the past 8+ years. You have a two year grace period to make a payment before interest starts accruing (really it’s almost a three year grace period, because it accrues on the anniversary of your FAA start date...so it’s more like 2 years and 364 days).
The old paperwork for my buy back number was going to be different now. To figure out your deposit amount you need to know how much money you earned while in the military. I earned $94,165.99 during my 5 years in the Marine Corps. The deposit amount is 3% of that number. In my case, the original amount of my service deposit would have been $2,825.00. The juice has been running though. The added interest of $615.65 brought the total amount of my service deposit to $3,440.65. I got ahold of Paula Murray at the Benefits Operations Center (BOC) and she said that all I had to do was email her a scanned copy of my earnings estimate, and my DD-214, and she would get me my new deposit payment paperwork. True to her word, within 6 days of emailing her the required documents, my new payment paperwork was delivered to me in the mail.
There are two options for making a payment. 1) You can have a payroll deduction (at least $25.00) come out of your wages until the full amount is paid. The beauty thing with that option is that the interest stops accruing the moment you start the payroll deduction. I decided to go with option 2. I wrote a check and paid the deposit in full. I had grown impatient and just wanted the process to be over.
Through talking with coworkers, I learned that many veterans haven’t made a service deposit yet (about half the vets at Houston TRACON). If that average holds true, it means that there are a bunch of NATCA members throughout the country that also haven’t made a deposit yet. This is one of the best investments that you’ll ever make. Don’t delay any further. Below is a synopsis of what you need to do from start to finish.
1). Get your Estimated Earnings paperwork. To do this you need to mail a completed form
RI 20-97
along with your DD-214 to your Military Branch’s servicing center. Here’s the address for each branch:
Air Force
DFAS-Indianapolis Center
Attn.: Verifications Section (Estimated Earnings)
8899 East 56th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46249-0875
Phone: 1-888-332-7411 (Select option #4)
Title: ESTIMATED EARNINGS - Air Force
Fax: 866-401-5849
*Utilizing coversheet expedites processing time*
Army
DFAS-Indianapolis Center
Attn.: Verifications Section (Estimated Earnings)
8899 East 56th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46249-0865
Phone: 1-888-332-7411 (Select option #4)
Title: ESTIMATED EARNINGS - Army
Fax: 866-401-5849
*Utilizing coversheet expedites processing time*
Marine Corps
DFAS-Indianapolis Center - JFVBB
Attn.: Verifications Section (Estimated Earnings)
8899 East 56th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46249-0875
Title: ESTIMATED EARNINGS – Marine Corps
Fax: 866-401-5849
*Utilizing coversheet expedites processing time*
Navy
DFAS-Indianapolis Center - JFVBB
Attn.: Verifications Section (Estimated Earnings)
8899 East 56th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46249-0875
Title: ESTIMATED EARNINGS –Navy
Fax: 866-401-5849
*Utilizing coversheet expedites processing time*
This part of the process takes the most time to complete. It could take four months before you get your earnings estimate in the mail. Be patient.
2). Once you have your earnings estimate in hand, email a scanned PDF of it along with a scanned PDF of your DD-214 to
Paula.Murray@faa.gov
(be sure to title the email “Request Military Service Credit”). This part of the process could take a couple weeks depending on factors such as vacation or workload. Most of the people at I90 have gotten their paperwork in ten days.
3.) Once you have the Service Deposit Payment paperwork in hand, just follow the steps for how to make a payment. How you pay is up to you. As I said before, there are benefits to both. If you choose to pay in full with a check, from my experience it’ll be about a month and a half later that you receive your “Paid in full” notification. In the meantime, you’ll see the payment go through on your LES as “Cash Collection” and a separate line in deductions as “Military Service Credit Deposit”.
