Gave it a little more thought on a slow Saturday evening, here is some more info that came to mind.
If you plan to do 8 years as a GS on top of your 8 years in the Navy it is a no-brainer to buy your time. Instead of $5999 a year in retirement pay you would get $11,998, or $500 vs $1000 a month (if you retire as a GS-12 Step 5 with no locality pay, which is $74,991 a year now). I actually thought about it and since you served so very long ago (
) you may be only looking at $4-5000 to buy in, a buddy of mine who got out in '04 with 8 years in owed ~$8000 to buy in. You would make up your investment in a year if those were the numbers, a pretty good deal if you ask me.But wait, it gets better. If you retire at 62 or later you don't get 1% a year, you actually get 1.1% a year. The brings you to $13,198 a year instead of $11,998, $1100 a month for just eight years of service ain't too shabby.
Another thing to remember is your time in the military counts for leave purposes too. There are 3 levels of leave for the feds; 0-3 years, which gets you 4 hours of leave per pay period for 13 days a year, 3-15 years is 6 hours for 20 days a year and 15+ is 8 hours for 26 days a year. So you will start out with 20 days of leave a year vs 13, a big difference. Your DD214 to HR should suffice for that. You top out at 240 hours total of regular leave and if you exceed that you have to take before the end of the CY, use or lose. You also get 4 hours of sick leave per pay period, that doesn't top out ever. If your work offers it I would put in for the leave bank too, it is usually a one pay period donation a year and they have been fairly liberal if you need to use it where I work, better than having to send out an agency wide email begging for donations if shit happens.
