To understand how to use the field in the Benefit Estimator labeled “Add Hours of Cash Vacation Compensation”, the first step is to understand how vacation compensation affects the salary component of the retirement formula, and to understand the limits on how much vacation compensation can be included in the salary calculation. We have two resources available. The first is our website section on Understanding How Unused Vacation Leave Affects Your Retirement Allowance.

The second is to watch the portion of our Pre-Retirement Webinar that explains how vacation compensation affects your retirement allowance. It’s helpful to download the Retirement Planning Worksheet that is the worksheet companion to the webinar. Save it to your computer so that you can put numbers into the worksheet and save them. Here’s the video:

The video link above will flow into the explanation of how to use the Add Hours of Cash Vacation Compensation field. To skip right to the explanation of how to use the field, click the video link below.