FEGLI explained: Basic, Options A, B and C

What each part covers

Accidental death and dismemberment cover is built into Basic and Option A at no extra charge. Options B and C have none.

Basic: the automatic one

If your position is eligible, Basic starts on your first day in pay and duty status unless you waive it. Your coverage is your annual basic rate of pay rounded up to the next whole $1,000, plus $2,000. On $85,000 that is $87,000 of cover.

The premium is flat at every age: 16 cents biweekly per $1,000, or 34.67 cents a month. A 25-year-old and a 64-year-old pay the same rate, because Basic uses one composite rate for everybody and prefunds the coverage you keep after 65. Your agency adds 8 cents per $1,000 on top, which is the one third the government pays.

Option A: $10,000

A flat $10,000, with AD&D included. You pay the whole premium, and it steps up in five-year age bands. At 60 and over it costs $6.00 biweekly, which works out to $156 a year for $10,000 of cover.

Option B: 1× to 5× salary

Option B is where most people carry real money. Pick 1 to 5 multiples of your annual pay rounded up to the next $1,000. Note the difference from Basic: no extra $2,000 is added for Option B. Coverage rises automatically with your pay, and so does the premium.

Read down that table before you rely on Option B for the long run. The rate at 60–64 is twenty times the rate under 35, and it keeps climbing after that.

Option C: family coverage

Each multiple pays $5,000 on your spouse and $2,500 on each eligible child, and you can carry up to five. The price is set by your age, not your family's, and children are covered to age 22.

What a real paycheck looks like

A GS employee earning $85,000 a year, age 47, carrying Basic plus three multiples of Option B:

Now age the same person to 61 with the same salary and the same three multiples. Option B alone costs 255 × $0.40, or $102.00 biweekly — about $2,652 a year, nearly seven times what they paid at 47.

Enrolling and changing

• New hires: Basic is automatic. You have 60 days from your appointment to elect any of the options on form SF 2817, with no medical questions.
• After that: FEGLI has no annual open season. It does not take part in the Federal Benefits Open Season each November.
• Qualifying life events: marriage, divorce, the death of a spouse, or gaining an eligible child each open a 60-day window to elect or increase coverage.
• Any other time: you can apply with form SF 2822 and pass a medical exam, at your own expense.
• Dropping cover: you can waive or reduce it any day of the year. Getting it back is the hard part.
• Leaving government: coverage runs free for 31 days after you separate, and you can convert to an individual policy without underwriting in that window.

When the options stop being worth it

Basic is the steady part: one rate for life, a third of it paid by your agency, and cover that can follow you into retirement. The options are age-priced term insurance with no underwriting, which makes them a good deal in two situations — you are young and just need cover in place, or your health would make a private policy expensive or unavailable.

The case against them is the table above. Option B roughly doubles every decade after 45, and the multiples you bought in your thirties cost several times more in your sixties, which is exactly when many people no longer need them. If you are healthy, pricing a level-premium private term policy against your Option B multiples is worth an afternoon.

Common questions