Your situation sounds awkward and totally out of reality. How COME..
The feds have very particular ethics rules. They don't any more but they used to be that careful to "avoid the appearance" of impropriety when it comes to business interests. As for office coffee or water, there is no money appropriated for those purposes, even now. Employees would get together and buy refrigerators and coffee makers and no one ever made a stink about how they used taxpayer money for electricity. That's as far as it went. That didn't end until maybe ten years ago.
Now you're allowed to take nominal gifts, like a cup of coffee, and appropriate money can be used for punch at an office awards ceremony, but not more than that.
The military is different. Appropriated money is appropriately used, obviously, to feed the troops. When I worked as a civilian at the Pentagon I had access to officers' clubs and the Pentagon Racquet Club. That was nice, but that was the military.
Re health insurance, yes, it's good. I have Blue Cross for which I pay $110/mo. Of course, in two years when I go on Medicare, which will pay the bulk of my medical bills, I'll still be paying Blue Cross the same money. So maybe it won't be such a good deal anymore.
As for the total cost of health insurance, I turned down jobs in the private sector for twice my salary for the questionable security of early retirement and health coverage. Hard to tell if that was a smart move or not. Deferred compensation is always a risk. |
